For Conservatives, Mission Accomplished

Over the past 40 years, the right has out-organized, out-fought and out-thought liberal America.

A reflection of the birthday party that wonkette went to of the American Conservative Union.

Back in 1964, John Kenneth Galbraith smugly proclaimed: "These, without doubt, are the years of the liberal. Almost everyone now so describes himself." Today, a Gallup poll tells us, twice as many Americans (41 percent) describe themselves as "conservative" than as "liberal" (19 percent).

Brains are nothing without political brawn. That's why the American Conservative Union disciplines Congressional Republicans by rating them according to their purity (the average rating for House Republicans has risen from 63 percent in 1972 to 91 percent in 2002). Yes, liberal environmental and abortion rights groups rate members of Congress too, but those figures are more effective as fodder for conservative attack ads than as a way to keep Democrats in line.

"There is no such thing as spontaneous public opinion," Beatrice Webb, the great British leftist, once said. "It all has to be manufactured from a center of conviction and energy." The American Conservative Union is just one of many such centers on the right; it's a lesson that liberal America seems unable to learn.