As Goldberg puts it:

Anyway, here's the point. The rate and degree of societal change depend on a lot more factors than mere partisan politics. Technology, economics, culture, foreign events, demography, and for all I know the tides can play much larger roles in forcing change on society. I fear that the Republican party's success in recent years has much to do with the fact that they are perceived as a port in the storm, not the means of reversing the storm. It's entirely possible that the GOP will continue to rack up more and more victories even as society moves further and further to the left. Even Bush came out in favor of some kind of civil unions toward the end of the campaign.

The problem for conservatives is that a party dedicated to "security" or "order" is going to be less ideologically conservative (i.e. for aggressive reform, downsizing government, expanding markets, etc.) even as it becomes more temperamentally small-c conservative. Bush has straddled this divide without that much commentary over the last four years. When he said, "the government must move" when someone is "hurting," it was written off as either squishy liberalism or gross pandering. What if it's neither?

Too bad the gang at NR never seems to recognize this stuff when it comes election time, at which point they can be found lining up in lockstep behind whoever the GOP puts up, regardless of his "small-c conservative" bona fides.