I was thinking earlier that Republican primary politics seemed a lot like Calvinball to me…

That has always been true, and always will be true.

All other so-called “principles” of conservatism can change over time.*

*(I just came across a nice example while reading Trollope’s Barchester Towers: conservatives then were adamantly anti-free trade. But that was because the landed interests—the rich—benefited from protectionism in 1850. Also, and entertainingly, the evangelicals were the liberals! Positions on issues can change, because circumstances cause changes in how issues benefit interests. But conservatives always serve the interests of the rich. That never changes.)

And, for me, capitalism’s most important function is reflecting the cost of a good in its price.

You’ll have a problem with that. Land (as in “unimproved”), for example, has no cost(*), but it certainly has a price due to demand.
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(*)Meaning the cost to keep a given factor in production.

Honestly, you could pull in Dems with ideal conservativism, let alone moderates. Ideal conservatives (maybe that’s a better name…) would insist that the public’s money is spent wisely. NO ONE would be against that. Trouble is the system rewards largesse by all elected. So you need your new footsoldiers to say true to the cause long enough to fix that.

Ideal conservatives would spend national security dollars wisely. Not on hummers for idaho and not on fancy weapons systems (really just corporate welfare) that don’t work and the bases don’t want. And in the end the military has to spend their own dough to maintain them, cutting resources for the soldiers to do it. I’d be all for that. Ideal conservatives would know/remember that the army does not work well as a police force, because true conservatives learn from past mistakes. Ideal conservativism would prepare for military threats that are likely and would shift resources away from ones that are not likely because they want to save money. I’d vote for that.

The life thing, unless it’s implemented in the order of preventing unwanted pregnancies is tantamount, followed by small government trumps the fed owning every womb, I can deal. Otherwise women revert to chattel under Olde-conservativism.

Let’s see, what else was on the list… You didn’t mention corruption, but perhaps that’s implicit in small government. I like to it listed separately. The government DOES do useful things that the market cannot. Running markets for one by setting up laws to prevent fraud. Those calling themselves conservatives now cannot even bring themselves out of the mud long enough to acknowledge this gravest threat to their much-worshiped capitalism.

I’m a Dem who loves capitalism. You can get me behind a theme of more capitalism any day. That means, no corporate welfare because that upsets the market, damn-it. Regulation to make markets run smoothly. And, for me, capitalism’s most important function is reflecting the cost of a good in its price. That is so critical. It is so critical in fact that if social costs are not included in cost (via taxation) the system goes all to whack (see our current national transport system for example).

I’ve rambled on long enough. I think there is something here… smells like revolution in the air. Oops, true conservatives HATE revolution. Dang. Forget that.

It’s proved to be quite self-contained actually, a mobile home of principles, and we are finding that a trailer park can be founded where ever they choose.

I don’t think ‘if’ either, but if I recall Dean (I read his book a while ago so maybe I’m mistaken) made a distinction between conservatives and tories. I couldn’t see one—I think the conservatives would’ve just called themselves tories then—but as Dean still thinks of himself as a conservative, he’s got a motive to try to differentiate from them.

Interestingly, Dean suggests conservatives if they had existed in the late 1700’s they would have supported England and the monarchy.

Not ‘if’. They did exist and they did support the monarchy. And they have jumped through hoops to make the peasants believe the founding of this country was done by conservatives. You know how they do it? Boston Tea Party. A revolt against taxation. Remove all context, say those words only and the it sells itself after that.

I’d always heard it as “Phlogiston,” but extra nerd points to you for even knowing it.

It is phlogiston, I was typing pre-coffee post work-out.

He mentioned that conservatism never sat upon a solid intellectual foundation as the act of revolution that founded the nation and established its core concepts—liberty and ‘unalienable rights’ for all, etc—was radical, an antithesis of conservatism, so the underpinnings of conservative thought were from the get-go based on either revision or evasion of this fact.

He says that it was this nebulousness that enabled it to be highjacked so readily. Because conservatism lacked a firm anchor or foundation, the right-wing authoritarians attracted to it discovered it was therefore possible to put a pry bar under the meaning and move it.

It sounded like a good explanation to me as to why conservatism can mean what ever the hell the Goper nutters want it to when they want to.

It might provide a clue to the wingnut propensity to move goalposts and insist on making their own reality, too. It’s been part of the whole thing from the get-go.

Interestingly, Dean suggests conservatives if they had existed in the late 1700’s they would have supported England and the monarchy. They certainly would have been opposed to radical, rapid change like a revolution and a social upheaval that something like the Bill of Rights portended. (That social upheaval was delayed some 80 years, when the full import of those radical ideas on paper was put to the test.)

If that’s true about conservatism, then conservatism really is opposed to the ideas the nation was founded upon. It takes a lot of intellectual legerdemain to make it come out like the opposite. Perhaps this trait manifests itself as that infamous belief in a malleable reality (‘we make our own reality’). Up is down, down is up, liberals are fascists, and conservatism is not conservatism, unless of course it is, at least until they don’t like you. Then you’re not.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared.....html/1.stm

Conservative. It means absolutely nothing- it really is code for “in the cool club.”

Brits of course take this a bit more literal, see the below picture of the Bullingdon club, an Oxford University student club famous for expensive uniforms and trashing restaurants:

Back row, second left: David Cameron MP, currently leader of the Conservative Party.

Front row, third left: Boris Johnson MP, currently Conservative candidate for Mayor of London.

Also, what everyone else said. We look forward to being pissed off at you again when your party regrows it’s brain and soul and you jump back in.