I have recently seen many discussions by conservatives, real and feigned, attempting to analyze the collapse of the Republican Party at the polls and the apparent repudiation of ‘conservatism’, with no sign of any improvement in the next elections in two years.  This led me to think about what went so terribly wrong in conservative circles over the past several decades, as a movement with a strong intellectual heritage became associated with the blitherings and blatherings of Limbaugh, Coulter, Kristol, and others while jettisoning almost all its former political principles on the altar of George Bush and the new imperial presidency.
I think I have something worth adding to the discussion.
The usual dichotomy between ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ is a false one, and it serves to seriously warp the principles of American conservatism for two reasons.  First, until recently conservatism American style has been itself basically liberal in its orientation.  Second, and more deeply, conservatism is a habit of mind rather than an ideology, and so can be applied to any ideology.  When it itself becomes an ideology it ends up in utter confusion and contradiction because conservatism and ideology identify opposite polls of political and social thought.
FIRST, the easy point.  The conservatism of men like Herbert Hoover and Barry Goldwater saw itself as defending the tradition of our founding fathers, supporting constitutional limited government, federalism, and fiscal prudence.  Their criticism of modern liberals was that they had abandoned traditional American values in favor of social engineering and a government centralized and powerful enough to accomplish its goals.  As such, American conservatives claimed to be the ‘true’ liberals, the term having been hijacked by constructivist utopians.  Some called themselves ‘classical liberals’ and others did not, but what they shared in common was a veneration of our founding principles as they understood them.
Whether or not their criticism of modern liberals is valid (I think some is, some is not) American conservatives saw themselves fore square in the American liberal tradition that government should be subordinated to law and the constitution, and the constitution itself is an instrument preserving the sovereignty of the people (in some strong sense) over the government.
It does not take rocket science to see that ‘conservatism’ in power abandoned all these principles.
SECOND, liberalism is a roomy ideology, but conservatism is not an ideology at all.  Attempting to make it one is a contradiction.
An ideology is like a map.  It identifies what it takes to be the most important features of a complex reality to enable us to navigate it successfully.  Liberalism as a social and political philosophy starts with a key assumption: individuals are the fundamental moral and ethical units in society. Different kinds of liberals develop this assumption in different ways. Barry Goldwater took it in a different direction than did John Kennedy, but they shared this fundamental political and social orientation. The chief difference between them was Goldwater’s suspicion of government, even democratic government, and Kennedy’s easy acceptance of democratic government as a tool for realizing liberal goals.  Other ideologies offer different maps, as with the maps of Marxism, Fascism, Conservative Catholicism, and so on.
Conservatism is an intellectual orientation that virtually all of us share to some extent.  It is the belief that the world is complex, society is complex, many features of both are more important than they appear to be on the surface because our knowledge is limited, and so we should seek to change it with care, always with an eye to unexpected and often unpleasant consequences from our actions.  In its strongest form conservatism is concerned with preserving the status quo because it has gotten us this far and is likely the best way to get even farther.
Some of us are more characterized by this attitude than others, but it is all but universal, and not just with human beings.  Mammals in general are very conservative upon reaching adulthood, sharing a core attitude that in a complex world what has worked in the past is a guide to what will work today.
Among human conservatives, when change is necessary, it should be the minimal necessary to preserve the larger social and political order. Political conservatives are therefore suspicious of programs for change and reform and are very skeptical of our ability deliberately to change the world we inhabit for the better.  They are more willing than people we today call liberals to put up with problems because they suspect attempts at cures will make them even worse or breed even worse problems.  (I think this also explains the affection American conservatives have for market liberalism.  From this perspective the market makes our world better but not deliberately.  The ‘invisible hand’ does the heavy lifting.  There is much to explore here about the serious tensions that accompany this apparent harmony between market liberalism and conservatism, but a blog post is not the place.)
Conservatism as a frame of mind is applicable to any ideology.  It cuts at a right angle to all of them. Leonid Brezhnev brought a conservative temperament to the old Soviet Union, though the ideology he supported had almost nothing in common with liberalism. China’s reformers acted as enlightened conservatives.  They gave Chinese society enough capitalism to free it from the dead ideology of Marxism, while still preserving what they felt most important: rule by the Chinese Communist Party and the maintenance of social order.  This made no ideological sense, but it made lots of sense in terms of preserving the political order.
Conservatism’s true opposite is utopianism, the belief that we can reorder society pretty much as we want.  They believe we cannot remake the world to our desires. Utopians differ, and most of us, myself included, fall somewhere in the middle, regardless of our ideology.
In their search for political power, American conservatives forgot or abandoned their roots in the American tradition.  Defining themselves in opposition to liberalism as ‘left wing’, they welcomed into their tent anyone with a similar opposition, including the very anti-liberal in all its forms Neoconservatives and Christian Right.  Many allies came from the ideological descendants of the Confederacy, which was the only powerful movement to deliberately reject America’s founding principles.  (This again is too complex a topic for this blog post, but consider the contradiction between “states’ rights” and the recognition of human rights in our Declaration of Independence.)  These parties plus a long allied coterie of plutocrats and oligarchs made up the core of what has lately called itself ‘conservatism.’
The intellectual and political result was utter incoherence.  Not one of these allied parties was seriously committed to the traditional political and social values of American conservatism and many of them were committed to imposing their ambitious plans for international and internal reconstruction on the rest of us – the opposite of a conservative attitude.  People with conservative temperaments ended up supporting illiberal radicals.  The purest symbol of this repudiation of actual American conservatism was the Terri Schiavo case, where Republican radicals attacked state and national courts, federalism, family law, and the nuclear family.
The destruction of language in American political debate obscured the extent of his repudiation of American conservatism.  I believe this destruction began long ago, when American conservatives abandoned their use of the term ‘liberal,’ ceding it to more social democratic liberals.  That initial intellectual retreat has now worked out its inner logic fully.  American conservatives have ended up supporting groups that are neither conservative nor liberal.  And they have gone down to political defeat with their nasty brethern.
Now the hang over begins – after having done enormous damage to our country in almost every sphere.  Some  Republicans now advocate reaching for some more ‘Christian’ Right booze to make the pain go away.  Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Neil Bush offer different programs for that strategy.  None are conservative in any sense.  Others still pine for empire.  Bill Kristol and his kind offer us that promise as an alternative, ignoring its incompatibility with a free society.  What little soul American conservatism has left will be lost if they follow those paths.
Alternatively, they can try to rediscover their liberal roots, that which makes visceral conservatism harmonious with the principles this country was founded on and a brake on the less cautious plans of other liberals.  This approach pleases no oligarchs, no plutocrats, nobody on the ‘Christian’ right, and no Neoconservatives. It will not come easily if at all to what the Republican Party has become.
Conservatism will not go away.  It is a basic human attitude.  But it will not have a political home until it has cleaned house of the radicals who have hijacked its terminology and turned it against its basic values.