It's time to turn the guns on conservatism itself

It's about time liberals start taking aim at conservatism itself. If all your opponents are standing on the same structure, is it more effective to pick off your opponents one by one or knock the supports out from under all of them?

Republicans understand this. Check out the current crop of anti-liberal, anti–Democratic Party books from the wingnuts: The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life (Ramesh Ponnuru), Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton (Jonah Goldberg), Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism (Ann Coulter), and Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism (Sean Hannity). I also swear I came across a book called "Liberalism Hurts Kids," but I can't find it now.

Compare that to anti-Republican books like The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America or The I Hate Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity ... Reader: The Hideous Truth About America's Ugliest Conservatives. Democrats attack individual Republicans; meanwhile, Republicans attack all Democrats and liberals as fascists, terrorists, traitors, and murderers.

So I'm glad to see Democrats finally taking a page from the Republican playbook (minus the foaming-at-the-mouth, Goebbels-esque rhetoric) and train our sights on the very foundation of conservative government. The cover story in this month's Washington Monthly is titled "Why Conservatives Can't Govern."

But like all politicians, conservatives, once in office, find themselves under constant pressure from constituents to use government to improve their lives. This puts conservatives in the awkward position of managing government agencies whose missions — indeed, whose very existence — they believe to be illegitimate. Contemporary conservatism is a walking contradiction. Unable to shrink government but unwilling to improve it, conservatives attempt to split the difference, expanding government for political gain, but always in ways that validate their disregard for the very thing they are expanding. The end result is not just bigger government, but more incompetent government. [...]

If government is necessary, bad government, at least for conservatives, is inevitable, and conservatives have been exceptionally good at showing just how bad it can be. Hence the truth revealed by the Bush years: Bad government — indeed, bloated, inefficient, corrupt, and unfair government — is the only kind of conservative government there is. Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well. [...]

That is why conservatism so rarely makes for a good governance party. As far as conservatives are concerned, it is always someone else's government, one reason they can be so indifferent to their own mismanagement.