Conservative "Survivor": Sullivan voted off the island

Sullivan has been posting a lot about the recent crack-ups in the conservative movement. His most recent is here. This is only natural, since he’s being declared a “non-conservative” by the Ponnuru faction. While I disagree with his conservatism, I find the unhinged from reality faction that is banishing him even more frightening. And it seems that the real fault line these days in American politics is not liberal vs. conservative, but reality vs. fantasy. One of Sullivan’s readers tells him:

Actually, I don't consider you a conservative anymore either, for the same reasons I don't consider myself one anymore. In this day, in this country, to be a conservative is to buy into a program of relativism and deconstructionism (scientific knowledge in evolution and climate science is just one "perspective" or is totally unreliable because scientists are a bunch of liberals and science is just a political agenda). To be a conservative is to believe that good government rests on the personal character and godliness of an unshackled executive, not on the time-tested processes and institutions of democracy. To be a conservative is to let your worst enemies dictate your moral values. To be a conservative is to believe that insufficiently conservative judges are enemies of America and should be eliminated or marginalized as illegitimate.

You see, being a conservative is no longer about holding this or that view about taxes, entitlements, affirmative action, etc. It is about believing uncritically in a certain ideology, and bowing down to a specific person. Sullivan’s reader continues:

So you want to cut entitlements? Pardon my French, but big fucking deal. You want to cut entitlements because you have weighed the evidence of their effectiveness and found it lacking. You're still part of the democratic machine and you still respect democratic reasoning.

Conservatives aren't as quaintly obsessed with evidence and balancing costs and benefits as you are. They want to cut benefits on principle, no matter what. They want to slash taxes as a first principle, expensive wars and basic human decency be damned. They are not rational decision makers in the sense that they distinguish between effective and ineffective programs. The slash taxes, period - no thinking required.

All I can say is, this crack-up is long over-due. I’m glad that the “conservative” intelligencia is waking up to the fact that Bushism is a hideously ugly thing for this country. Maybe they will stop carrying water for him and those who think like him (i.e. the Republican Party). I hope they realize how their punditry and “expert opinion” helped pave the way for Bush’s ascendancy. (I think Sullivan does, and has apoligized for it repeatedly.) After all, Bush is the embodiment of a lot of conservative ideas, and has done a lot to further their agenda. I think Bush has done more to spread the “Government is corrupt, incompetent, and wasteful” meme than any liberal ever has. It’s not government that’s the problem. It’s Bush and the Republican philosophy of governing that’s the problem.

Could the Democrats successfully become the “sensible people’s party”? I think there’s a major opportunity for it to do so. Reality-based Republicans should switch or become a third party.