THE rIGHT IS THE lEFT:

The Republican candidates running under the banner of conservatism in next month's special elections to fill Georgia's two Senate seats do not exemplify the conservative disposition. Their brand of conservatism is ideological. Implicit in it is the assumption that the world is clearly divided between good guys and bad guys and that ahistorical reasoning is all that's needed to tell them apart. In a recent fundraising pitch, David Perdue referred to his campaign as "the last line of defense against a far-Left, socialist takeover of our country." And Kelly Loeffler warned donors, "The stakes have never been higher." Karl Rove, the National Finance Chairman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, summed up for prospective donors the importance of winning each race. "America's fate rests on the outcome of these Georgia races," he writes, as if Perdue and Loeffler are modern-day Washingtons crossing the Delaware.

Messages like "Support me because my socialist opponent wants to destroy America!" help Republican candidates win elections. But experience suggests that they won't translate into conservative policy victories in-between elections. When coupled with the fact that candidates do not exhibit the conservative disposition and rarely tell voters the details of their conservative views, their failure to enact conservative policy while in office reduces conservatism to a collection of policy prescriptions that depend on simplistic formulas derived from abstract and ahistorical reasoning. And people come to see conservatism merely as a doctrine that opposes progressivism; the other side of the ideological coin.

Yet this view of conservatism is inherently unconservative. And it ironically impedes conservative victories on the campaign trail and while in office. In reality, conservatism is not an ideology. It is a disposition to preserve the moral order and political truths that have been revealed to mankind over the course of history. The conservative disposition has been present in the DNA of Western Civilization for thousands of years. And the general principles it defends are essential to progress, not opposed.

The intellectual foundation of conservatism that is inherent in the conservative disposition came unmoored from the general principles it sought to put into practice. The means-ends bent of ideological conservatism gradually replaced the conservative disposition as events like the 1994 Republican Revolution convinced many conservatives of the utility in prioritizing policy questions, as well as electoral and legislative politics, at the expense of historical and philosophical pursuits. And once detached from tradition, ideological conservatives quickly lost sight of policy and became obsessed with tactical questions, reflecting their new win-at-any-cost mentality.

Admittedly, it is hard to get past the present morass of ideological conservatism. Doing so requires thinking about politics, not policy and procedural tactics, in holistic terms based on questions of standards, traditions, and human nature. Many people--many of them conservatives--have lost sight of the conservative disposition amidst the scandal-driven debates and news coverage of recent years. They have become transfixed by the phenomenon of continually breaking news to report the latest gossip out of the White House and from Capitol Hill. For them, ideological conservatism is a surer way to win elections. It is a means to an end; a Marxist mentality. And like Marxism, this conservatism is ideological because it is based on a rigid worldview. It is attractive to Republicans because it makes their jobs easier by giving them the tools to delegitimize their opponents, reducing uncertainty, and presenting them with prefabricated jingoistic appeals that they can use to appeal to the American people in elections. Neglecting the conservative disposition makes it possible for Republicans like Loeffler and Perdue to claim to be conservative on the campaign trail while governing like the complete opposite in Congress. Republicans have correctly surmised that the means-justify-the-ends ideological mentality so prevalent among conservatives today can be used to excuse almost anything while simultaneously delegitimizing their Democratic opponents.

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