That's a fair response. I'm all-too willing to accept your categorization of Limbaugh and Hannity as entertainers in order to quarantine them away from the actualization of policy and Republican thought in general, but I think you and I know that essentially isn't true--both have been rather intimately connected with the administration during the past 8 years (not in a legislative sense, but in a imagistic way).
I don't buy your symbioses argument. I just don't think it holds up under a microscope. It's impossible to know, of course, but I think Buckley would abhor Sarah Palin (perhaps his son's reaction is reasonable evidence for this; perhaps not). Brooks' cancer metaphor is far more apt. When I see a Sarah Palin rally, I think, "who is this woman and is she listening to what she is saying?" She meets all the conservative litmus thresholds but beyond that is a blank slate, on which really any agenda, conservative or otherwise can be written. Do you really want a President Palin, with who-knows-what-ideas she's absorbed or accepted as fixed, ready to pull the trigger on those ideas? I would say we've effectively had that with George Bush. We've seen this model in action, and it's proven ineffective at both governance and advancing conservative principles. I'm amazed to say it, but the McCain-Palin team actually makes me nostalgic for Mitt Romney. At least with him, one could be reasonably certain there was a solid unmovable core of ideas through which he sees the world (which also happens to hold that Jesus appeared to the Indians and something about some mysterious golden plates, but whatever).
I think your line about fixed ideas is interesting during a week in which Alan Greenspan has expressed doubts, perhaps for the first time in his life, about the self-regulation powers of the free market. But to your final point, I'm not sure the conservative movement at this point is capable of producing another towering intellectual figure--such a person would undoubtedly be ejected by the Palins or the Limbaughs for some modest heresy to 'conservative principles' long before they could gain such status.
And, on Obama, since I haven't said anything about him: I think that the conservative commentators who are supporting him (expressly or not) are doing so based on the hope that he truly is a moderate and will govern as such--despite the lack of evidence in his legislative record (which is why they have to go back to temperment). I think we've seen this story before, where a leftist-grown politician governs as a moderate, and this seemed to be the right's distinct hope if Hillary became president. If Obama would come clean and acknolwedge that his agenda cannot be enacted now due to the economic crisis and its costs, I think he would sweep up a bunch of economic conservatives (or maybe he already is, who knows). Moderate or raging leftist... I guess we might be about to find out. We'd probably be asking the same questions about a President McCain on a variety of issues.
