Mississippi fallout: Conservatives need to accept that change comes slowly

This self-absorbed speech – which equated the broader conservative cause’s success with an already-lost election – reflects a relatively new tendency in conservative politics. Until recently, the party’s moderates – Wayne Gilchrest, Joe Schwarz, Lisa Murkowski, Dick Lugar – had always been the ones more likely to embrace the sore loser’s mantle, even as they and their allies complained that conservatives were destroying GOP unity. But the Right keeps finding new ways to give up the high ground.

Conservatives once had the patience to lose, keep fighting, and win slowly. Through the tragedies of Barry Goldwater’s landslide loss, Richard Nixon’s presidency, Gerald Ford’s 1976 nomination, and betrayals big and small by more than one President Bush, conservatives quietly did the unglamorous work of electing and promoting their candidates, state by state, district by district. Over decades, they changed the national political conversation. And they moved the Republican Party – not just its fringes, but its center and its establishment as well – far to the right of where it had once been.

But for some conservatives, patience has lately given way to demands for instant gratification. Why accept defeat just because we got fewer votes? So what if we failed to elect enough conservatives to defund Obamacare – we want it, and we want it right now. Or we all quit!