I’m getting a lot of interesting grief for the concluding paragraph of yesterday’s column. I wrote:

Personally, I dislike much of Bush’s “compassionate conservatism.” Indeed, I find it astounding that even as Bush has moved the Republican agenda leftward in many key respects, the left has screamed all the louder about how “right wing” he is. But simply because I think Bush is wrong about, say, Medicare, it doesn’t mean I think it’s a sign the conservative movement is falling apart. Lots of folks thought FDR’s New Deal was a disaster at the time, and look how that turned out.

I could have been less cute and more clear I suppose, but I was pressed for time and sleep. My point here was this: The folks peddling the crack-up thesis look at bad policies and think they must translate themselves into bad politics. The confusion of personal policy preferences for smart political moves is one of the most common bad habits among all political commentators. Lefties like Thomas Frank want the Democrats to embrace radical populist economics. But they cannot content themselves with arguing in favor of the policy, they also have to believe it would be smart politically for the Democrats to return to the days of FDR or William Jennings Bryan. For example, a while back Andrew Sullivan argued that it would be both good policy to embrace gay marriage but, hey, Republicans would even pick up a few gay votes. Now, I have no problem with Sullivan or anybody else who favors gay marriage making their case for gay marriage. But the idea that gay a pro-gay marriage stance would be a net gain for Republicans at the polls is silly.

Anyway, all of the folks telling me that the New Deal was a “disaster” miss my point entirely. Yes, it may well have been a policy disaster in many respects. But what serious historian or political analyst would call it a political disaster? Who would argue that liberalism fell apart — i.e. cracked-up — because of FDR. Liberalism surely changed — I think for the worse — because of FDR and, interestingly, this was when the libertarians (then called “traditional” or “19th century” liberals) bolted from the Democrats (and, oddly, the Communists) and increasingly became the intellectual shock troops of the American right. There’s a reason the first chpater in George Nash’s history of the post-1945 Conservative intellectual movement is titled “The Revolt of the Libertarians.”

Anyway, Rove and Bush are changing the Republican Party and of necessity the American right. I don’t like all of these changes. Some of these changes may have been inevitable in the wake of the Cold War and with the advent of new technologies, globalization etc. I don’t which were inevitable and which were whimsical. I agree with my libertarian friends that many of the changes are troubling or at least worrisome. And sure, some libertarians may well feel the need to jump ship. But let’s keep in mind, the story of modern American conservatism is also the story of libertarians jumping ship and either drowning on their own, setting-up shop on tiny islands no one cares about, or eventually swimming back to the boat in the hope being taken back.

Regardless, I don’t confuse these changes as a political calamity. Keep in mind: The reason Bush & Rove are changing the party is in order to get more votes. In other words, political success can be the source of ideological calamity — and vice versa. There’s a certain amount of narcissism involved when a commentator says “I don’t like their policies, therefore the whole thing will surely blow up.” You’d think by now conservatives and libertarians would recognize that the mass of American people don’t always share our views of ideal policy outcomes.