Ephemeral Comfort of Conservatism

By CHARLES M. BLOW
NYT

After November’s Republican rout, and after Republican Party identification hit a record low and the party’s approval rating reached a near-record low, many liberals openly hoped that the G.O.P. and its conservative tenets would go the way of the Whigs. Au contraire.

A series of recent Gallup polls has actually detected an uptick in conservative sentiment across a broad range of measures. For example:

• The party identification gap between Democrats and Republicans is now the smallest it has been since 2005.
• There is a “renewed desire” for government to promote traditional values.
• An August report saw a marked increase in the number of people who want to decrease immigration.

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