“…[C]onservatives are pretty much irrelevant to the outcome. The first move is all up to Mr. Obama and Mrs. Pelosi.” Donald Devine, Conservative Battleline

One of the few principled conservatives left in Washington is Dr. Donald Devine who edits a weekly opinion blog for the American Conservative Union.  Dr. Devine writes in Conservative Battleline that the President-elect and Speaker of the House Pelosi will drive policy for some time to come.

For how long?  Unfortunately, the answer now appears to be “forever.”

That there is no immediate source of recovery is apparent from the few principled conservatives left in Congress or state governments, the domination of academia by the left and mainline media’s left-leaning proclivities.  The long seventy-five year struggle to recover some semblance of limited government from the New Deal, Fair Deal, New Frontier, Great Society and other socialist nostrums led to one triumph—the election of Ronald Reagan as President. But by the time Reagan won election after three tries, he was an old man and easily controlled by experienced "realists" from the Nixon/Ford administrations.  The Reagan “Revolution” was held in check by those who thought they knew better and the baton was handed to George Herbert Walker Bush who promptly betrayed his predecessor's economic plan. 

The return to power of the left was accomplished by President William Jefferson Clinton and his successor President George W. Bush who succeeded in reviving the New Deal and driving conservatives out of public life.  As a result, President-elect Barack Obama has the privilege of fashioning a centrist government thus assuring the dominance of his party for the foreseeable future. 

That means that nothing can or will be done to defeat his policies and the current generation of conservatives who cared enough to run for public office will die before the tide turns.

Given the dominance of socialist ideas for the remainder of this century we may expect that ambitious conservatives will not seek public office but will seek quiet, private lives, dedicated to supporting themselves and their families.  The current generation of conservative leaders whose average age is 47--born between 1958 and 1962--will be driven from public life and who can blame their successors if they choose private, not public, lives.

Those who will give it a try are mostly non-educated twenty-something conservatives who were taught nothing about economics, Constitutional government, and the great philosophic traditions of the West that root us in reality.  Political observers have noted that conservatives have been ‘dumbed down’ and raised on slogans for decades.  That is the price we pay for neglecting higher education.  So even if a new generation tries to assert an alternative to the socialist policies pursued by Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, their fundamental ignorance will be revealed and they’ll be laughed off the political stage.  The fate of Sarah Palin at the hands of Katie Curic will become the hallmark of conservative politicians the remainder of this century.

A vital conservative part of the American psyche has been eclipsed and the conservative philosophy of limited government will become a relic.