The conservative rethink: A survey

Progressives like to think they're the engine of history. They fight for change, and eventually conservatives succumb. But it doesn't always work out that way. History is littered with liberal ideas - pacifism, high taxation, single parenting by choice - that conservatives challenged and defeated. Progressives may drive history, but conservatives filter it.

That's what makes the reflections of conservative writers on the 2012 presidential election so interesting. It's the filtering process at work. Republicans have suffered a defeat, and they're seeing, in polling trends, signs of trouble ahead. Many of them believe it will become increasingly difficult to win elections with their party's current positions on immigration, marriage and other issues. They're trying to figure out what the GOP must do to restore its viability, and whether they can stomach the changes. Once this process is complete - once the party has decided which changes will be accepted and how they will be reframed and assimilated into a conservative worldview - this stage of history will be consolidated. The old radicalism will be the new consensus.

What will that consensus look like? Here are some early glimpses, through the eyes of the right's leading essayists.

1. America is assimilation.

Michael Gerson, the former George W. Bush speechwriter, argues in his Washington Post column that the GOP must change its attitude toward Latinos. Instead of Mitt Romney's self-deportation scheme, Gerson proposes "a vision of American identity preserved by the assimilating power of American ideals. And that would lead Republicans to endorse the Dream Act and to support a rigorous path to citizenship for undocumented workers already in the country." According to Gerson, this approach would abandon notions of nationalism based on "the exclusion of outsiders" and "the building of walls."

2. Illegal immigrants epitomize American values.

If the Republican argument against illegal immigrants is that they "don't share our values," Bret Stephens writes in the Wall Street Journal, "then religiosity, hard work, personal stoicism and the sense of family obligation expressed through billions of dollars in remittances aren't American values." So get over your ethnic hang-ups and your English-only fixation. "What's so awful about Spanish?" Stephens asks. "It's a fine European language with an outstanding literary tradition - Cervantes, Borges, Paz, Vargas Llosa - and it would do you no harm to learn it. Bilingualism is an intellectual virtue."

"Most voters already favor less punitive immigration policies than the ones angrily advocated by clenched-fist Republicans," writes George Will. And what these angry Republicans refuse to see is that "immigrating - risking uncertainty for personal and family betterment - is an entrepreneurial act." That's a law-and-order conservative welcoming immigration, not only without reference to its legality, but with approving emphasis on its degree of risk. A Republican shift along these lines would reorient the party from enforcing rules to embracing the virtues of rulebreakers.

4. Gay marriage is a bourgeois triumph.

"Public support for same-sex marriage has risen a lot, among young people especially, and the Republican Party will have to soften its opposition to it," writes Bloomberg's Ramesh Ponnuru. Will counsels that conservatives "need not endorse such policies, but neither need they despise those, such as young people, who favor them." Gerson, looking at the same poll numbers, says "it is more advisable than ever to make public arguments about morality in aspirational rather than judgmental ways." Stephens adds:

1/8begin ital 3/8

If gay people wish to lead conventionally bourgeois lives by getting married, that may be lunacy on their part but it's a credit to our values. Channeling passions that cannot be repressed toward socially productive ends is the genius of the American way. The alternative is the tapped foot and the wide stance.

That's a neat fusion of conservative impulses: realism about human nature, skepticism toward nave laws, attention to cultural consequences. You can see, in these reflections, how the GOP gradually reconciles itself to same-sex marriage.

5. Focus on opportunity, not government.

Several writers preach an economic rather than ethnic approach to Latinos. The New York Times' Ross Douthat says the GOP can reach "downscale white voters" as well as "upwardly mobile Latino voters" by moving beyond its "fixation on upper-bracket tax cuts" and acknowledging that, in the words of American Enterprise Institute's Henry Olsen, "Government can give average people a hand up to achieve the American Dream."

David Brooks of The New York Times goes further, noting that Hispanics and Asian-Americans, as measured by surveys, "value industriousness more than whites. Second, they are also tremendously appreciative of government. In survey after survey, they embrace the idea that some government programs can incite hard work, not undermine it; enhance opportunity, not crush it. Moreover, when they look at the things that undermine the work ethic and threaten their chances to succeed, it's often not government. It's a modern economy in which you can work more productively, but your wages still don't rise. . . . What are the best ways to rouse ambition and open fields of opportunity? Don't get hung up on whether the federal government is 20 percent or 22 percent of G.D.P. Let Democrats be the party of security, defending the 20th-century welfare state. Be the party that celebrates work and inflames enterprise. Use any tool, public or private, to help people transform their lives."

(Optional add end)

6. Make things affordable.