It’s amazing how even political junkies can miss the divisions in the conservative movement. Mother Jones’ blog has a post here noting that, jeez, even The American Conservative wants to dump Bush!! The magazine doesn’t seem to grasp that TAC is part of the paleoconservative movement, and members of that strain have never liked Bush in the slightest. Like liberals, paleocons opposed the Iraq war from the outset.

I’d say there are three right-of-center ideologies with some sway in this country. The first is neoconservatism (e.g. The Weekly Standard), which espouses social conservatism, free market economics and the use of American foreign policy to spread freedom in the world. Paleoconservatism (e.g. TAC) has social conservatism, restrictions on immigration and imports, and isolationist international relations. Libertarian conservatism (e.g. Reason, though they have left-libertarians on staff as well) has social liberalism, free market economics and a distrust of unnecessary military deployment.

The American Conservative went so far in 2004 as to refrain from official endorsement. Rather, they had each writer endorse a candidate of his or her choice, and they ended up with Bush, Kerry and Nader represented. So it’s no shock whatsoever that TAC is aiming to dump Bush. They didn’t want him to begin with.

Robert VerBruggen blogs at http://robertsrationale.blogspot.com.