A Doctrine of Surpassing Purity

res is a bit busy today. Read some Thomas Frank while she sticks it to works for The Man:

Corruption and misgovernment are defined away as properties unique to the left; conservatism, meanwhile, is a doctrine of surpassing purity, accountable for no misdeeds of any kind, standing reliably on the side of principle and freedom and goodness every time. If it didn't deliver those fine things, that's because it never really got the chance.
...

The comfortable course of action for Democrats will be merely to pocket the coming windfall, to burble about how they have lifted the curse of ideology from the land, to replace the current gang of free-marketeers with their own gang of free-marketeers, and to resume the merry triangulations of eight years ago. The ins will give way to the outs, and they will rule happily ever after . . . until the next culture war takes them by surprise and sweeps them again from their contented perch.

Another route is possible, though. If they are willing to go beyond the regal rhetoric of post-partisanship, Democrats might find that they are, for the first time in decades, running against a philosophy of government that has utterly discredited itself. Should they choose to make 2008 a referendum on conservatism itself, they might deliver the knockout blow. They should start with the bad ideas that have delivered such disastrous consequences.

The whole thing is here.