By almost any measure, American conservatives should be thoroughly depressed. The Republican Party they support has just lost control of the White House, the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. They are about to lose the Supreme Court, which they never really managed to control. And the Washington punditocracy has declared almost unanimously that they are just starting a long march through the wilderness of opposition.
So why are the 700 conservatives here on the National Review Post-Election Cruise enjoying themselves so much? Why do Governor Mitt Romney and Senator Fred Thompson exude such a relaxed confidence? Why is the mere mention of Sarah Palin — whom the media have pronounced definitively over — greeted by a prolonged burst of enthusiastic applause? And how come almost all 700 of them stay up into the small hours for a political cabaret starring Canada's own Mark Steyn? What right have these people to laugh so uninhibitedly?
A sense of relief is part of the explanation. Neither the Bush presidency nor the McCain candidacy was a pleasant experience for conservatives. George W. Bush was a liberal big spender in domestic policy and John McCain's "maverick" image was code for insulting conservatives in order to charm the travelling press. Having to swallow these irritations and support their authors was a trial that is now over.
Sarah Palin, by contrast, is in Margaret Thatcher's phrase "one of us." She does more than advocate — she incarnates — the practical common-sense conservatism of Middle America. The assembled right-wingers love her for the smears and condescension she has suffered on their behalf. And since they will be among the donors, precinct workers and voters in the 2012 presidential primaries, Ms. Palin clearly has a big political future. It was prudent of Mr. Romney and Mr. Thompson to join the sailing activists and lay down their markers.
In any event, conservatives can relax for the moment. Their own long discomfort with Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain is now over. They can look forward to happier days.
Or can they? A clear but modest defeat for the Grand Old Party came after a series of political failures, in the middle of a financial crisis, against an unusually attractive and polished Democrat, when all measures of public opinion showed a growing disquiet about the nation's direction.
Conservatives will have to rely in part on Barack Obama's making errors on a Jimmy Carter scale if they are to defeat him in 2012, but Republicans may well regain control of Congress in the three elections between now and 2016.
There is more to politics than politics, however. Conventional wisdom maintains that even if conservatives are well-placed electorally, they will be dragged down by broader ideological failures and cultural divisions. Does not the financial crisis show the bankruptcy of free-market economics? Are not well-educated middle-class voters now deserting the GOP for more government-friendly policies? And will not the GOP thus be kept out of power by what David Brooks of The New York Times sees as the divide between "reformers" who recognize these realities and "traditionalists" who want the old-time anti-government religion (not to mention actual religion)?
These arguments wilt under examination. Free-market financial deregulation (carried out mainly under the Clinton administration) was only one among many causes of the crisis. Much more important ones under both Republican and Democratic administrations were perverse regulation, encouraging and even compelling banks to lend to uncreditworthy customers, and an incontinent monetary policy that fuelled the tsunami of speculative lending.
