But things change, and discourse has to change with them even if the underlying ideas don’t need to change. Conservative leaders who were part of the ascendancy became practitioners of a “normal politics” (perhaps stretching Kuhn a bit thin here), failing to recognize that the rhetoric they used as oppositional figures needed to be modified once in power, and that a further modification would be needed in the event of a decline. We had the “conservative moment” of the 80′s and 90′s, but we moved into a “post-conservative” period in the 00′s in which both proponents and opponents of conservatism began to forget the substance behind the well-practiced slogans. Once certain “paradigms” were established, conservative leaders forgot that political truths needed to be re-established with each generation to avoid the appearance of being stale.

This is especially true today, when the concrete advantages of conservative policy and philosophy have been obscured by economic and foreign crisis, and when the chattering class isn’t willing to say much good about it either. It behoves any conservative with a platform to go beyond just talking about “freedom,” and “tax cuts,” and “free markets,” and “family values” to actual policies reflecting those facets of the philosophy. In some cases, those words shouldn’t even be mentioned. The policy can speak for itself. I think Bob McDonnell, to some extent, did that in his campaign for Governor of Virginia. Paul Ryan and Bobby Jindal are capable of doing that, even if they sometimes veer off into right-think- land.

Someone who follows your advice, however conservative they are, would probably find themselves labeled a moderate in deep red states. Unfortunately the reactive climate, which you mentioned, is so dominated by the shrillest voices that you will have to pay lip-service to a certain kind of unsophisticated rhetoric in order to be elected in some places. As you’ve also pointed out, though, a conservative focused on knowing what their policies mean for their constituents should also be able to articulate the policies’ true conservatism to the base. But I suppose my main concern would be the confusion by the base of a moderate tone with actually being a moderate/ squish.