Ed Kilgore on the Conservative Crossroads

Ed Kilgore contributes regularly at Talking Points Memo. Here he discusses the conservative movement's present as it looks into its future.

Conservative self-confidence has regularly alternated or even coincided with defeatism and paranoia. There’s always been an undertone of cultural despair in the post-Moral Majority Christian Right, where the legalized-abortion “regime” that has prevailed since Roe v. Wade occasionally tempts conservatives to compare the U.S. to Nazi Germany or the antebellum South. And even in times of conservative political ascendancy, claims that the Judiciary or academic elites were thwarting the achievement of conservative policy goals have been very common. But at least since 2008, the question of whether conservatives are winning or losing in the battle for dominance of American culture and politics has been confused by internal conservative disagreement as to whether majoritarian or anti-majoritarian values are at stake.