Fred Barnes writes, “The last time a Democrat won as an unalloyed liberal was 1964.” I don’t know if I would say, as Barnes implies, that Bush just won re-election as an unalloyed conservative; but I take a different view than Barnes of what conservatism is, especially in relation to the size of the federal government. What interests me about the quote is that if you take, say, Ted Kennedy as a paradigmatic modern liberal, you would have to conclude that no unalloyed (modern) liberal has ever won the presidency. LBJ was obviously quite hawkish (even if Goldwater outdid him), and was not associated with post-’60s social liberalism. I’d say the last time an unalloyed conservative won the presidency, meanwhile, was in 1984. (Sure, Reagan had his pragmatic deviations from conservative orthodoxy. But I think it’s reasonable to think of him as being as conservative as Ted Kennedy is liberal–I’m not using Dennis Kucinich as my paradigmatic liberal.)