[GSlob]

"It would certainly re-define conservatism."
Conservatism is already defined as a reasonably broad notion, including "social conservatives", "economic conservatives", "libertarian" and so on. If anything, the attempt to restrict "conservatism" to its "social" branch only would be a re-definition. And since any social movement in a democratic system needs to be sufficiently attractive to the mass of electorate outside of itself, one could argue that the "base" - any base [ours, sharptonite, or moveon variety] - is good only at foaming at the mouth and scaring everyone else away. Joe Lieberman in his most recent election provided an excellent example of where the "base" rightfully belongs.

[durasell]

A discussion of the concept of “base” would be of great interest to me.

Any chance of getting a new “base” thread going?

[KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle]

Conservatism is already defined as a reasonably broad notion, including "social conservatives", "economic conservatives", "libertarian" and so on.

"Libertarian" = conservative? BWAH-Ha-Ha-Haaaaaaa!!!