"The War on Terror" Killed The Conservative Movement 
Back during the Reagan era and the Cold War, there was "synergy" between Conservative foreign policy and conservative domestic policy. When Conservatives bashed the Soviet "evil empire," they were not just bashing an authoritarian dictatorship, they were also implicitly bashing an ideology based on devolving economic power to the working class and away from the capitalists, and implicitly championing their darwinian "strangle the government in the bathtub" free markets model. Thus, their attack on unions, the minimum wage, a fair tax system, etc., etc., all fit perfectly with their attack on the Soviet Union, and both attacks mirrored each other and implicitly strengthened each other.
This synergistic effect was so strong that that it lasted well past the fall of the Societ Union, and fueled Newt Gingrich's Contract with America.
But that Conservative attack machine died on 9/11. Since that date, Conservative Republicans have been relentlessly posturing against an entirely different foreign enemy. An enemy with no particular economic ideology whatsoever.
In the absence of the Republican free markets rhetoric, which was born in Goldwater's day, and then dominated the debate throughout the Reagan era and even through the Clinton years, economic populism is once again ascendent. Democrats are proudly running on a message of economic populism, and the Country supports it.
Karl Rove and George Bush were right. 9-11 Changed Everything. In fact, it killed the conservative movement. R.I.P.
KEYWORDS: War on Terror
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