Ross Douthat Surveys The Conservative Landscape

Ross Douthat is fast becoming one of my favorite Conservative voices. He writes a column for the New York Times among other things, and he blogs at the Times' blog site.

This entry really does a great job of laying out the tensions between the different tribes who pow-wow under the Conservative tent (laid bare a bit yesterday by my post on Tea Parties).

I'll summarize it this way--there is the intellectually motivated policy wonk think tanky crowd (my homies, though they'll surely never have me), there's the "movement" Conservatives (Radio, Foxnews, Tea Parties, etc) and there's the politicians. All three groups have to live with each other and for Conservatives to govern, they have to cooperate. But it's not always pretty.

I do think we're in a bit of an intellectual renaissance with respect to Conservative policy-making. Time in the wilderness will do that for an ideology, and I think we're making progress.

Douthat's analysis here is worth the read.