Put simply, "conservatism" died in 1963

Rick Perlstein recently gave a talk at a Princeton conference titled, "The Conservative Movement: Its Past, Present, and Future." The speech was about the abandonment of Goldwater's conservative movement by the Republican party that would be led by Richard Nixon. It's definitely worth a read, particularly if you have a certain fondness for the Arizona senator and a distaste for what followed him. Here's a nifty little passage:

This past year, I interviewed Richard Viguerie about conservatives and the presidential campaign. I showed him an infamous flier the Republican National Committee had willingly taken credit for, featuring a crossed-out Bible and the legend, "This will be Arkansas if you don't vote." "To do this," Viguerie told me, "it reminds me of Bush the 41st, and not just him, but other non-conservative Republicans."

Republicans are different from conservatives: that was one of the first lessons I learned when I started interviewing YAFers. I learned it making small talk with conservative publisher Jameson Campaigne, in Ottowa, Illinois, when I asked him if he golfed. He said something like: "Are you kidding? I'm a conservative, not a Republican."

But back to Viguerie's expression of same. With a couple of hours' research I was able to find a mailer from an organization that was then one of his direct-mail clients that said "babies are being harvested and sold on the black market by Planned Parenthood."

Why not cut corners like this, if you believe you are defending the unchanging ground of our changing experience? This is what many Americans of good faith seem to be hearing conservatives telling them. I wonder how many conservative activists know what most liberal activists know: that the White House has in operation an automated program to make it impossible for citizens access through Google certain combinations of words on its website--like: "president/mourning/Iraq."

The conservative obsession with secrecy is exhibited in groups like the Fellowship, which organizes the National Prayer Breakfast each February. They claim a $10 million a year budget and own a group house where eight members of Congress pay subsidized $400 rents and helped broker meetings for foreign dignitaries with Ronald Reagan, but refuse to get permits for the group homes it runs for juvenile delinquents who caused a rash of burglaries in the neighborhood. "There is no such thing as the Fellowship," employees say.

For a less obscure example, consider a group called the House Republican Caucus. They hold their controversial votes in the middle of the night: 2:54 am, 1:56 am, 2:39 am, 5:55 am on a Saturday morning. Or, for a vote on school vouchers in the D.C. public school system during primary season, during an out-of-town presidential debate.

Hypocricy, an aversion to open government, a fervid and unwavering sense of "right" -- being right all the time, having rights that trump all others' -- an obsession with money (usually in furthering control of power, but as with "Duke" Cunningham, not always), these are all hallmarks of the modern "conservative" movement. Goldwater would be appalled.