Bill Kristol: Celebrating the Demise?

My good friend and co-blogger Mark Noonan at Blogs for Victory cited an article in which Bill Kristol extolled the virtues of a McCain candidacy:

Here’s the good news–and it’s really quite good. A reasonably conservative presidential candidate, leading a reasonably conservative party, has a good chance to win the general election. With a difficult task ahead of it–holding on to the White House for a third term, and in this case for the sixth out of the last eight–the GOP has lucked into having as its nominee John McCain, one of the most popular politicians in America.

What’s more, conservatism as a set of ideas is in pretty good shape. “Neoconservative” thinking on America’s place in the world has beaten back attempts to revive the crabbed “realism” of some congressional Republicans in the 1990sas a plausible approach for dealing with the world of the 21st century. And there is a resurgence of creative thinking on domestic policy, reminiscent of the neoconservatism of an earlier generation. Younger conservatives are displaying a welcome heterodoxy in their approach to health care, taxes, and family policy issues…

…Conservatives, in short, are adjusting to the times. This is a good thing, and is one of the neglected lessons of Ronald Reagan’s success: Reagan’s 1980 platform differed from Barry Goldwater’s in 1964. Consider further that 2008 is as far removed from 1980, as 1960 was from 1932. Movement liberalism in 1960 yearned for a purer, more orthodox FDR-style liberal than John F. Kennedy. Eleanor Roosevelt was appalled that the old guard had to give way. But it was surely better for liberals and liberalism that JFK called for a New Frontier rather than an extension of the New Deal.

What really caught my eye in the Kristol piece was this passage, to reiterate:

“Neoconservative” thinking on America’s place in the world has beaten back attempts to revive the crabbed “realism” of some congressional Republicans in the 1990s [READ: Contract With America --ed.] as a plausible approach for dealing with the world of the 21st century [READ: Conservatism is passe and unworkable--ed]. And there is a resurgence of creative thinking on domestic policy, reminiscent of the neoconservatism of an earlier generation. Younger conservatives are displaying a welcome heterodoxy in their approach to health care, taxes, and family policy issues…

And each “give” on the conservative side is yet another incremental move toward all-out socialism and loss of personal and economic liberties.

I don’t know why Bill Kristol is celebrating. "Heterodoxy," of course, referring to the ever-creeping spectre of socialism-as-good-in-small- though-ever-increasing-doses into the mainstream of the American psyche.

Incrementalism, my dear readers. Incrementalism.

There is nothing, I repeat nothing that liberalism has to offer that is in any way compassionate. Even in small doses.

A slow, yet insidiously-increasing demand for servitude to the State in a free society is not compassionate. Nor is it anything to celebrate.

This is the time for movement conservatives to stand up for conservative principles, and demand that candidates adhere to them, or conservatism, like classical liberalism, is doomed to the ash-heap of “good ideas” that were compromised in the name of expediency.

Politicians who pine for the support of the Republican Party should be required to earn that support, not expect it. The time to fight for what we believe, is now.

(Cross-posted at The Ice Palace)