Digby: "Real Conservatism Has Never Been Tried"

That has a kind of familiar ring to it doesn't it? Get used to this new permutation of a very old trope. It's about to enter the lexicon. Predictably, like the Trotskyites about whom the fathers of the modern conservative movement obsessed, (and the fathers of the neocons were) the modern conservatives are reaching the point at which that sad rationalization is all they have to hang on to.

There is a very interesting discussion taking place all over the left blogosphere about how the conservatives have discovered that the entire Republican establishment, particularly the George W. Bush administration, are liberals. Glenn Greenwald has been directly taking on Jonah Goldberg on this subject (which is something like my cat "taking on" his toy mouse), Hunter at DKos has written a lengthy and fascinating explication of the process, and Kevin Drum, in a different vein, discusses political Lysenkoism as the consequence of conservative loyalty over policy.