I see that Mark (Levin) and Kathryn have already commented on Bill Kristol’s editorial for the Weekly Standard on McCain and his critics. Kristol thinks that 2008 is a moment of opportunity for conservatives, in part because Republicans have nominated an impressive conservative who can win in November and in part because of what he regards as the revitalization of conservative ideas.

What’s more, conservatism as a set of ideas is in pretty good shape. . . . [T]here 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.

In this passage, Kristol very kindly refers to an article that I co-wrote. Note, Mark, that he is not saying that the young writers he mentions are “neoconservatives,” merely that it is “reminiscent” of neoconservatism in its heyday–presumably in that the neoconservatives of the late 1970s successfully adapted conservative principles to the social realities of the day. I hope he is right to note that resemblance.

But here’s the problem. The conservative domestic policies that McCain is most interested in pursuing are spending cuts and earmark reform, which are entirely orthodox conservative issues and not ones that are going to do much to build a center-right majority. He has not supplemented those policies with anything that goes in a direction that is both new and conservative. Each of the two parts of Kristol’s case for optimism may be right, in other words, but they do not yet mesh well.