The American Spectator's R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. welcomes conservatism's quick return "from the wilderness".  His speech, delivered at the magazine's annual Robert L. Bartley Dinner, indulges in journalistic low blows - Tyrrell has the gall to quote those who anticipated a longer stay and a different conservatism:

". . .David Frump and David Brooks. They are conservatism's Branch Davidians, who occasionally attempt suicide in the newspapers, only to be saved from oblivion by Liberals who find their columns somehow wonderful. Let me remind you all of what David Brooks said on November 11, 2008. He was writing in his ongoing New York Times con-job. There he said a week after the '08 election that "the battle lines have already been drawn" between the Reformers for whom he had the utmost hope. And the rest of us, for whom he saw only gloom. 'In one camp,' he wrote, 'there are the Traditionalists, the people who believe that conservatives have lost elections because they have strayed from the true creed.'"

Read on.

I see that yours truly touched on this subject a year ago.