The third risk we now face is the most exasperating: the coming catcalls from the moronic Tea Party simians who will undoubtedly (and illiterately) gloat about our late-hour conversion from orthodox Obamaphilia. With this column I imagine my email inbox will soon be chockablock with lovely missives like, “hey, moran! I couldsa tolt y’all that dangity Obama was a commernist 2 hole yeers agoo!! Ima gessin I must be a hole lott smarter then yew with yore big smarty pants kollige words!! Hyuk hyuk hyuk!! Tea Party git r dun!!”

The irony of such sentiment is that it proves just how desperately the current conservative movement is in need of intellectual heft — precisely the kind of intellectual heft that thinkers like Frum, Brooks, Parker, Noonan and myself can offer, now that we are no longer exclusively devoting that heft in the service of Mr Obama. No less than the future of the conservatism is at stake, and its adherents face a stark choice: the lowbrow lunacy of Palinism, or the Ivy-honed judgment of those of us who are keenly attuned to the shifting trends of politics? The dimwitted Tea Partyists will of course attempt to make great hay of their premature, if annoyingly correct, warnings about the President; they will likewise seek to brand those of us who had a brief meaningless fling with him as political trollops, half suggesting we commit a guilt-ridden harpoon harakiri like my ancestor’s jilted admirer. But in the end conservatives must ask ourselves: shall we be led by the blind pig who occasionally stumbles on a truffle, or the gifted (if fashionably late) Cordon Bleu-trained chef who knows how to whip it into an intoxicating soup?