You don't have to be a commie like me to understand that it isn't 1993 or 2003 or even 2013 anymore. The world changes. The pressing needs change. The failures of certain policies become more important. The demographics of voters changes.
One consistent message of this dumb blog which I think has held up pretty well is that even if your policy agenda is fairly moderate, "not quite as evil as the other guys" is not really a winning message. But in addition, after 40 years of "the best we can do, mostly, is try to slow the backslide into Reagan hell" as the moderate policy agenda, that isn't good enough either, especially as we see how quickly most of the few genuine gains can just be erased.
Conservatives don't really hide who they are and what they want, even if David Brooks tries to do that for them. What they want is bad and it isn't enough to say "whoa, slow down there.'
