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This union occasioned a great deal of comment during 2008, which turned out to be an annus horribilis for conservatism, and little of it was positive. Populism’s corrosive influence on the conservative mind — or the conservative mind’s cynical manipulation of populism — was cited in briefs against Sarah Palin, against the record of George W. Bush and against the entire run of conservative governance going back to Richard Nixon. Sometimes it was liberals arguing that an earlier generation of high-minded conservatives (Buckley being the prime example) would be horrified by the anti-intellectual spirit that had overtaken their movement in the age of Bush and Palin. Sometimes it was conservatives, your David Frums and Peggy Noonans, hinting at the same. And sometimes it was left-wingers — like Rick Perlstein, in his teeming history “Nixonland” — arguing that conservatives had always been cynical manipulators of populist sentiment: the mask might have slipped a bit more in the Bush era, but beneath the genteel facade provided by wordsmiths like Buckley (or William Safire or George Will or whomever), the modern right has been Palins all the way down.

The author misconceives the cancer which is currently afflicting the Republican Party. Because he is a liberal his kind are energized by a belief that they can and should order the world in accordance with their schemes to lead us to the promised land where their rationality will do away with the superstitions of the right and permit the essential goodness of man to bloom under their husbandry. And that, of course, is why the left places such public stock in its alleged "intellectualism." This is why all Democrat presidents have to be geniuses and all Republicans are morons -because, this time, with the right liberal genius at the controls their scheme will actually work.

The problem for America and therefore the problem for the Republican Party is not a want of brains but a want of courage to preserve our freedom. Republicans, whether newly revealed Rinos like Peggy Noonan or crusty old conservatives like Mitch McConnell have abandoned the fight for freedom. Our author thinks that Republicans are animated out of a "populist" motive because that description carries so much negative baggage. It is not populism, which is rank manipulation of society by a different group by different means, which conservatives seek, it is liberty.

There is really no philosophical conflict between cerebral conservatives like William F. Buckley and trench fighters like Tom DeLay provided both keep clear that they are striving for freedom from the likes of this author. Sarah Palin is an authentic voice of conservatism which needs to master a few forensic skills to be nationally attractive. But she will never be a successful national figure merely as a populist no matter how glib she becomes.

The road for conservatives to the promised land is as clear for us as the needle pointing straight to the poll: we must defend America against the insatiable appetite of the Obama administration to make vassals of us all for our own good. We must defend the individual, that is our individual liberties, from the state.

It is not intellectual rigor which we lack but courage.