The latest conservative star in the N.Y. Times firmament

Heeeeeerrrrreeeee's Ross Douthat!:

At the very least, a Cheney-Obama contest would have clarified conservatism’s present political predicament....

Perhaps. Let's see:

...In the wake of two straight drubbings at the polls, much of the American right has comforted itself with the idea that conservatives lost the country primarily because the Bush-era Republican Party spent too much money on social programs. And John McCain’s defeat has been taken as the vindication of this premise.

<*Shhhhhh!*> [sotto voce] Don't anyone tell them!...


Update:

Some more Douthat:

“Real conservatism,” in this narrative, means a particular strain of right-wingery: a conservatism of supply-side economics and stress positions, uninterested in social policy and dismissive of libertarian qualms about the national-security state. And Dick Cheney happens to be its diamond-hard distillation. The former vice-president kept his distance from the Bush administration’s attempts at domestic reform, and he had little time for the idealistic, religiously infused side of his boss’s policy agenda. He was for tax cuts at home and pre-emptive warfare overseas; anything else he seemed to disdain as sentimentalism.

OIC. Maybe what Douthat means by "conservative" is "RW authoritarian". In that case, maybe Ctheney's just the ticket....