Catch-Up Conservatism

 Like Mark Steyn, my email is filled daily with please for money to keep the Senate in Republican hands.  But as Mark says: 

 Well, okay. But I just wish these Republican establishment types would occasionally cough up something in return.

Mark Steyn explains, as only he can, the biggest problem with the so-called "conservative" Republicans once they get in office.

Conservatives are those with positions supported by the left ten years ago, as they say.

Indeed. In 2000, when the Vermont Supreme Court mandated same-sex "civil unions", American conservatives were outraged. By 2010, when the left had moved on to gay marriage, conservatives were supportive of civil unions but insisted marriage was an ancient institution between a man and a woman. Now, the left having won that one and moved on to transgenderism, conservatives profess to be a bit queasy about transitioning grade-schoolers.

So you can take it to the bank that by 2030 rock-ribbed Republicans will be on board with penises in the girls' changing rooms, but determined to hold the line against whatever the left's next cause du jour is: human cloning, mandatory transitioning for delinquent boys, voting rights for animals.

Wait.   Isn't that already a thing at the fringes of the Left, and rapidly moving to the center? 

There really isn't much point to conservatism that's just leftism ten years late, is there? ...

It is surely telling that the only issues on which the right has made any progress at all in moving the ball in its direction - Brexit in the UK; illegal immigration and a belated honesty about the rise of China in the US - had to be injected into public discourse by two outsiders, Nigel Farage and Donald Trump. And indeed in the teeth of opposition by the establishment's catch-up conservatives.

Catch-up conservatism gives the game away: The right has lost the knack of persuasion, and increasingly doesn't even bother to try.

If you want to see how feckless and gutless Republicans are, take a look at the Republicans in the Michigan legislature when they are in the majority!  They are not only steamrollered by the Wicked Witch of the West Whitmer - they can't even defend themselves from being cheated out of the last election.