I was asked to participate in a Time forum on the current state of conservative thinking and politics. Here's part of my answer:
The current crisis in the conservative movement is embodied in a GOP presidential primary season in which the two frontrunners used to support the health care mandate that is supposedly the ultimate sign of President Obama's Third World socialist tendencies. Conservatives never really believed in shrinking the size and scope of government, at least not when they were running the show. That's why we're $15 trillion in debt as a country and poised to reelect a President whose stimulus was an utter failure by his own predictions, whose extrajudicial killings of American citizens are justified by Bush Administration dicta and whose health care plan has managed to increase premiums even before being put into practice, and whose bailout of GM has created the Terri Schiavo of car companies, a living corpse that will never again rise from its deathbed.
And in case anyone is wondering whether GM has really turned the corner and is back (as President Obama said in his State of the Union address), check out the latest Treasury estimate on the losses on the GM and Chrysler bailouts.
The home page for the forum, which includes input from Grover Norquist, Ramesh Ponnuru, and Rich Lowry, Erick Erickson, and my upcoming debate partner Ann Coulter, and many others, is here.
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