First, Whittaker Chambers is absolutely right to call her protagonists "operatic caricatures." This leads (and I forget whether it is Chambers or someone else who makes this point) into some disturbing but illustrative parallels between Atlas Shrugged and Nietzsche's thought, which many Rand-fans disavow or won't take seriously.
Secondly, I don't think you can really bracket the sexual ethics of Atlas Shrugged and set them aside. For Rand, sex is a mirror game where its highest form is realized by engaging in it (usually violently and with lots of scratching and blood, btw) with the most virtuous (read, most profitable) person around you can find. On the flip side, without economic virtue mirrored in both partners, sex becomes a shameful act of self-loathing. Either way, there's a consumptive violence here (either in the act of attempting to achieve that virtue, through sex with many partners, as Dagny does, or through economic acquisition, as Reardon does) that Rand acknowledges only on the side of the looters. When the good guys do it, that violence morphs into pleasure. Maybe some Freudian thinker could untangle this mess, but at the very least its a dishonest parallel.
Look, on the whole I think Rand is right about some things, and the book is pretty good; but I don't really think we need take it as seriously as Rand insists it should be taken. Hers is a totalizing world-view that brooks no compromise (which is why it is just as vulnerable to conservative critiques as it is to liberal ones ), and her over-sized characters are a symptom of that. I mean, Watchmen puts forth a sort of politics, too (which, ultimately might be a more realistic one that Rand's), but you don't see people arguing for the full-scale totalizing implementation of that politics.
But that's the box that Rand puts her followers into. It's all or nothing. You're in or you're out. You're a producer or a looter. The minute you enter the real world and attempt to effect policy change you've left Rand's paradigm and belong to the category of looters, because you will by necessity end up compromising your position as you enter the messy realm of policy, even if you are ultimately trying to curtail the scope and power of government.
Rand is, ultimately, either utopian or revolutionary, neither of which are conservative positions. Which is why she was so fully excommunicated from conservative order, I'm guessing. The tone of Atlas Shrugged makes it nearly impossible to rehabilitate or co-opt any of her individual positions piecemeal, which is exactly how she wanted it. Her work and thought dwells on the periphery because she chose that position. Now that most conservative politicians and policy-makers dwell there too (though not especially by choice), any sort of alliance is going to be problematic for conservative electoral politics.
[Edit: I just glanced at that NRO piece, and it looks like my points are the same as John Bean's. I didn't look at it first, honest!]
[Edit the second: Bert, you characterized that NRO piece as if it was saying that Rand is relevant in the age of Obama. The majority of those writers seem to be saying that Rand was barely ever relevant, and that she definitely is not now. Their tone is dismissive and haughty--I mean, I was at least fairer than that. Though offering a fair and honest analysis is a pretty low bar that NRO nevertheless rarely manages to clear these days. Ok, no more edits. And, super-zing, NRO!]
