If all a Tanenhaus wants is a Right that is a.) a little abashed about how Iraq turned out, but not really repentant, and b.) in favor of a “pro-family” welfare state, then he already has much of what he wants, since Ramesh Ponnuru, David Frum, Ross Douthat, David Brooks, and a host of neoconservatives already affirm a program exactly like that. Hell, Karl Rove belongs in that category, too. These are the most prominent names in “conservative” print media, and fairly influential voices within the Beltway. They would all complain that the grassroots aren’t on board with their “moderate” military welfarism — the grassroots are too brusque, too bumptious, too worked up about Obama’s birth certificate and illegal immigration. But the grassroots Right is in the state it’s in thanks in no small part to the likes of Ponnuru, Frum, Douthat, and Brooks. Since their program of welfare for families doesn’t inspire anyone, their political allies wind up having to whip up enthusiasm for the military side of the program, and have to throw in some red meat about gays, immigrants, and abortion. But the NY-DC axis have no cause to complain, since that’s the only way to sell the public on their insipid welfare-warfare program. He who wills the end must will the means. The only means toward getting the Right to embrace the welfare state is to get the Right hopped up about real wars or culture wars. But that’s precisely what has cost the Right political power over the last four years.

In short, the moderates created the extremists. And now they’re just proposing more of the same. Mencken may have said that no one ever went bankrupt underestimating the intelligence of the American people, but in this case I think the people have a lot more sense than media mod-cons. If they want welfare, they’ll get it from the experts — the liberals.

What is the Tory Anarchist? Casual ruminations from me, Daniel McCarthy, senior editor of The American Conservative. The blog takes its name from a paradoxical epithet that’s been applied to writers like H.L. Mencken, Albert Jay Nock, and Auberon Waugh. The ideal is one of radical principles and Tory manners. I don’t claim to hit that mark myself, but I think it’s the one to aim for.

Even deadly tarantulas? I suppose the emphatic adverb is appropriate, because a deadly tarantula would be real news. There is no such thing: no tarantula is known to be deadly to humans, unless the human being happens to be allergic to tarantula venom. And even then, death is unlikely and ginning up hysteria about deadly tarantulas is about as sensible as admonishing us to watch out for deadly halibut — some people are allergic to fish, after all.

Here’s Southern Avenger Jack Hunter’s three-part radio interview with Conley:

Part 2. Part 3.

I had a feeling of deja vu: the outcome reminded me all too much of the Ron Paul campaign, where youthful energy and principle, and strong fundraising (Singh didn’t raise millions, but he did outraise Ellmore handily) did not translate into winning vote totals. Weigel notes the youthfulness of the victory party crowd — the candidate himself, at 33, may have been the oldest person in the room. I noticed the same thing at a Singh fundraiser two weeks ago. There’s a silver lining in that: although young people don’t vote in very large numbers, youthful activists who cut their teeth on campaigns like Paul’s and Singh’s will be around for a long time to come and will only become more skilled and effective. And the GOP right now needs new blood. For all the attention that’s been paid to the turmoil in the Democratic presidential primaries this year, the Republicans have a quieter but perhaps even bigger problem: the middle-aged and elderly Republican die-hards who vote in presidential and congressional primaries are out of phase with the rest of the country. They’re still selecting candidates in the mold of George W. Bush and Old Man McCain. Ellmore beat Singh by painting Singh as a disloyal Republican and himself as a McCain stalwart. That can win a Republican primary, but how is it going to play up against Jim Moran in November? Moran won’t even have to notice Ellmore. It would take a miracle for Ellmore to perform better than Moran’s last Republican challenger, Tom O’Donoghue, who garnered only 30 percent against him in ’06.

Singh wouldn’t have beaten Moran, but he would brought some new voters into the Republican fold and he would have thrown Moran for a curve — after all, Moran would actually have been philosophically closer to Bush than Singh would have been, and the Singh team were prepared to make that an issue. But it’s not to be, at least not this year. Singh is in a strong position to run again in 2010, if he’s so inclined. The 44 percent that supported him this year will, I think, continue to back him, and now he’s a seasoned candidate and a more familiar name to the kingmakers in the district. (Some of whom, from what I hear, supported Ellmore just because they thought it was his turn — and some of whom, I also hear, came to regret their pre-emptive support for him once Singh got into the race.)

The Ron Paul revolution has produced impressive results in Republican congressional primaries in Maryland and North Carolina. Murray Sabrin’s defeat in New Jersey and now Singh’s loss in Virginia are of course disappointing. But what seems most important to me, considering that none of these candidates would have been likely to beat their Democratic rivals in November, is that Ron Paul Republicans and traditional conservatives keep building their forces steadily, gaining political experience, perfecting the areas in which they’re already strong (fundraising and youth outreach) and cutting into the party-loyalist base. The Christian Right didn’t throw in the towel after Pat Robertson’s failed campaign in ’88, they kept organizing and provided shock troops for the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. They also seized control of Republican parties in several states. (The national Christian Coalition has long since lost its bite, but state-level Christian Coalition groups and other religious Right organs still carry a lot of weight.) It took six years for the Christian Coalition to come into its own. It’ll take a few years for the Ron Paul revolution to get up to speed as well. Singh’s campaign, even though it didn’t get the nomination, was a good start. It’s a foundation on which to build for the future.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft reviews Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, alongside volumes by John Lukacs, Nicholson Baker, and Lynne Olson, here. Wheatcroft is critical of Buchanan (“Although Buchanan’s argument isn’t stupid, it requires something like a historiographical sleight of hand, and is conducted backward, as it were”), but he isn’t romantic about Churchill:

Churchill led the way in cruel, brutish, and exterminatory war-making against women and children partly thanks to his uncompromising personality, partly thanks to what was seen as the logic of the situation. Three years after he hoped for “devastating, exterminating” attacks on civilians, he was shown blazing German towns filmed from the air, and exclaimed, “Are we beasts? Have we taken this too far?” And two years after that he tried (not very creditably) to dissociate himself from the destruction of Dresden by Bomber Command.

There’s much more of a Churchill cult in America than in his (and Wheatcroft’s) home country. A reconsideration of him is long overdue.

As for the word “isolationist,” which I’ve always thought had a nice pacific ring to it, Rep. Paul gives taxonomic reversal the old college try. He tags the unilateral bullies of the Bush administration “isolationists” and avers, “I favor the very opposite of isolation: diplomacy, free trade, and freedom of travel.” And ‘tis true that the “isolationist” Paul was the only GOP presidential hopeful to support lifting sanctions against Cuba.

He fires off this nice line: “Mine is an ‘isolationist’ position only to those who believe that the world’s peoples can interact with each other only through their governments, or only through the intermediary of a supranational bureaucracy.”

Update: Dave Weigel offers a Reason-ed review of The Revolution here, while Stacy McCain reviews Bill’s book over at The American Spectator on-line.