Future of Conservatism

I read a great article today by Mark Thompson over at The League of Ordinary Gentleman. It was a review of a panel discussion on the future of conservatism featuring Ross Douthat, David Frum, Daniel Larison, and Virginia Postrel. He concludes that we are a long way from seeing a Republican Party able to build a coalition that is serious about the task of governing. This of course is not encouraging, but the discussion itself does shed a light on the changing dynamics among movement conservatives and the review is well worth a read. Some highlights:

One thing that made this panel so worthwhile was that it provided a good cross-section of the various schools of thought that have largely made up the conservative coalition for the last 30 or so years. ...

[T]he coalition of the American Right will creep its way back into power, if only by virtue of the fact that we have a two party system in which one party is not the Democrats – inertia can be a powerful force. What is difficult to conceive, however, is how that coalition can conceivably govern well once it is returned to power...

And perhaps most interesting:

Ultimately, this all boils down to the fact that the old “three-legged stool” is unsalvageable because, as Frum notes, the issues have changed. Where I think Frum and Douthat, and to a lesser extent Postrel, go wrong is in the assumption that “salvageable” means “capable of winning elections.” The old coalition will remain capable of winning elections, if only because of the inertia of our two-party system. Where it is unsalvageable, however, is in its ability to govern well on a federal level once it is in power unless and until it can chop off one of those legs and replace it with a leg that is currently compatible with the other two. It doesn’t much matter which leg gets chopped off (that leg, I assure you, will wind up swapping places with a group in the Dem Party), just that it gets chopped off.

Again I highly recommend reading the review in its entirety.