I have been getting grief in the comments section, my inbox, and on the Corner about my characterization of Dr. Krauthammer as a representative of “fusionist” conservatism. I’m too young to pretend to be a guardian of the official history of the conservative movement, and readily admit I’m not cleaving to the original meaning and context of that word with anything like philological rigor. But it was, at the same time, a conscious choice. I have three reasons:

1) The word that seems most often employed to characterize Krauthammer’s thought is “neoconservative” (Dr. K used it to describe himself in our chat). But as convenient of a shorthand as it may be in friendly circles, it’s a nebulous, bogeyman word just about everywhere else — and often a dog-whistle for anti-Semitism. I haven’t cared to use it in quite some time.

2) And related to (1), my (perhaps idiosyncratic) reading of the history of the conservative movement is that what separated “fusionists” from their “paleocon” brethren (and ‘paleoconservative’ is still another nebulous term) was and is their views on the wisdom of conducting an affirmative — that is, ‘muscular’ or ‘imperial’ depending on whom you ask — foreign policy as a critical component of a broader national security. In the Cold War context, this of course manifested itself as a strident anti-Communism. In the 21st century, the biggest bone of contention between the various factions of conservatism has been the prosecution of the War on Terror and its adjunct in Iraq. On that issue, Krauthammer is surely closer to the fusionist position (as advocated in the pages of National Review) that the success of liberty at home depends, to a certain extent, on the success of liberty abroad.

3) It’s fashionable these days for elected conservatives (see also Mike Pence and Jim DeMint) to argue that social conservatism and fiscal conservatism, that traditionalism and libertarianism, are mutually reinforcing — that one is a necessary condition for the other. I think that’s pretty much right. Another way of saying this is that the battle over what “mainstream” conservative domestic policy is has been met and won — by the fusionists. When we don’t have time for caveats, conservative domestic policy just means the coupling of traditionalist and small-government objectives. Now, some commenters have pointed out that Dr. K’s fiscal conservatism is a work in progress, or that he is weak on abortion (for the record, I don’t think he’s weak on the morality of abortion). That’s all fine, but I don’t think his heterodoxies rise to the level of heresies, or that they preclude us from mentioning Dr. K in the same breath as WFB, Ronald Reagan, and other great fusionists past.