Conservative Insularity as Self-Perpetuating Cycle of Defections

Refusing to rethink rejected positions leads to defections to the "other side."

Pretty sharp, more evidence of the usefulness of comparative political analysis, and the probable consequences of the coming circular firing squad.

Thanks again to Andrew Sullivan for finding all kinds of goodies and linking the "Daily Dish" to them.

The clincher from Steinglass's post (towards the bottom):

In the US, the process of alienation from the Republican Party’s increasingly rigid apparat has already produced a Democratic Senator — interestingly, one tied to the US’s history in Vietnam, Jim Webb. Webb’s conservative and military credentials have allowed him to partially reimagine class-divide issues as a white working-class concern, which is one potential future direction for the Democratic Party. But the real question is whether someone like Webb, with his Vietnamese-American wife (multiracial family), his unconventional, anti-jingoistic take on the military, and his genuine concern for the economic interests of the working class, could provide a sounder basis for Republican ideology going forward. It seems to me that people like Ross Douthat are closer to Webb’s politics than to Palin’s.

One problem for the GOP might be that while in a one-party system like Vietnam or China the experience of being purged leads to a period of ideological reflection, in a two-party system like the US many of those purged will do what Webb did: defect to the opposition, depriving the Party of an opportunity for rethinking its ideas.