Michael Brendan Dougherty really hit one out of the park with this article linked by TAC, disassociating himself—if that term is strong enough—from movement conservatism. There are so many great parts that it is hard to summarize, but here are a few high points:

You may not know this. But all the smartest people on the Right are basically ashamed to be associated with you. Your “success” in building a set of near-permanent institutions, think-tanks, and magazines to promote your ideals in an uncontaminated environment leaves us with two choices:

1) Sell out to the movement. That is, we may occupy ourselves by explaining that whatever the GOP is promoting—whether it be torture, pre-emptive war, Mutually Assured Destruction, or supply-side economics—is an enduring Western value. If John Boehner is doing it, we’re supposed to figure out why Edmund Burke would support it.

Or:

2) Sell out the movement. That is, pitch our articles to liberal audiences. Trash the movement (like I’m doing), and trade our actual conservative convictions for the ephemeral respect of our peers. . .

The only thing you’re really good at is preserving the conservative movement. And that project bored me to tears. . .

But, we’re done. I tried to “improve you,” from my associate editor perch at a dissenting conservative magazine. Now? I wish you would go away. You’re an obstacle, taking every civic impulse of your audience and turning it into rotten populism. You turn every bit of goodwill and honest anxiety into a sleazy direct-mail fundraiser.

About ten years ago—before Bush—I knew that I was different from movement conservatives, but I figured I at least had a little in common with them. I have long since given up on that illusion. Conservative politicians can’t govern and the intellectuals and activists in the movement don’t seem to care. I noticed several years ago that the animating feature of the Bush administration was their contempt for reality. It took me a few years to realize that the pretty much the whole Republican party and conservative movement are as reality-challenged as Dick Cheney or Don Rumsfeld.

On a related issue, I’ve seen some people remarking on an ABC News/Washington Post poll question that featured a strong majority (58%) in favor of “smaller government with fewer services.” This filled Freeman Hunt and Glenn Reynolds with glee, but it’s meaningless without specifics. Do these people want to end the American Empire or abolish Social Security and Medicare? Perhaps they want to put Yellowstone up on the auction block, or get rid of the EPA. If you read the very next question, you see that a majority opposes “legalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use” even though that would be a small step toward “smaller government with fewer services.”