Mark Thompson has a very good post in which he urges conservatives to start challenging the policies that have been motivating the movement since the 1960s and instead adapt to more contemporary challenges. I think that he makes his best point about the state of current conservatism here:

In the face of relatively low levels of taxation, the Laffer Curve gave way to “starve the beast” and the notion that tax cuts were a panacea for just about any problem. To justify Cold War levels of defense spending and militarism, Saddam Hussein, Iranian Ayatallohs, and Kim Jong-Il transformed from regional pests into an Axis of Evil as threatening to our existence as a fully-mobilized Josef Stalin. Illegal immigration ceased to be solely an economic issue and instead became one of national security as much as anything else. And so on.

His solution, then, is to adopt new policies that embody enduring conservative principles:

What conservative wonks needed to do instead of finding new narratives to justify the same old policies was to start pushing for new solutions to new problems that were consistent with their individual visions of what conservatism should be about. They needed to push these solutions not because of their electoral appeal, but because they believed those solutions to be the right thing to do. If this meant annoying a segment of the base or another strain of philosophically-grounded conservatism, so be it.

In other words, they needed (and still need) to engage in a competition of ideas with each other. They needed to (and still need) to bring these new ideas before the base to try to persuade the base in their direction rather than simply criticizing the base for not following their direction in the first place. And yes, Grand New Party is an example of doing precisely this; but a book by a then-obscure pair of young conservatives is hardly going to be adequate to fix the problem.

But here’s my major problem with Thompson’s point–one of his major issues is telling reform conservatives to ignore pointing out the faults with Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, et al. And to a certain extent, that’s a good idea–the Party is bigger than Limbaugh, National Review, etc., which is why John McCain was the nominee and not Mitt Romney, and why Sarah Palin will run for the 2012 nomination and lose.

But on the other hand, it’s through Limbaugh and Beck that primary conservative ideas are disseminated. I have a number of acquaintences that I talk politics with who I know for a fact do not listen to talk radio (indeed, many of them find it boorish), but nevertheless repeat ideas and memes that I know started there by virtue of my nerdish obsession with politics.

Much as I hate to say it, the major obstacle to reforming conservativism is the talk radio/Fox/RedState axis. If you offer up ideas outside of their core, you’re a “RINO.” Or you want to be liked at Washington cocktail parties. Or you want a job at the New York Times. In other words, you’re not a “real” conservative. This is a tough obstacle, because even though they don’t call all the shots in the party, they call the shots of the activists and donors, and even the Congressional votes of the “moderates.” (You’ll note that McCain took a sharp right turn during the 2008 elections and hasn’t strayed from the path since.)

However, I agree that Conor Friedersdforf, David Frum, et al. are making a mistake in tackling Limbaugh, Levin, Beck, etc. head on. Instead, they need to engage them. They need to take their concerns seriously (crazy as they might be) and judo flip them to the reform path that they want. Whether that’s czars, Iran, taxes, “socialism” or what have you, the task that reform conservatives need to take upon themselves is to address those concerns in a serious way, and offer up conservative alternatives to the traditional conservative solutions.

Even though I don’t really consider myself a conservative, I do consider this to be a serious issue. Democracy needs healthy debate and discussion of policy in order to succeed. As long as conservatism is mired in the state that it’s in, the Democrats are going to win by default. And that’s not a good thing.