Ann Coulter's column declaring Sarah Palin Human Event's "Conservative of the Year" will prove a rich document for historians trying to understand the death of America's conservative majority. Palin is not named for her winning ways amongst the electorate nor for her innovative attempts to inject new thinking into American life. Rather, she merits the honor because she sent "the left into a tailspin of wanton despair," because she "drove liberals crazy," because "she made liberal heads explode." Indeed, says Coulter, "Who cares if Palin was qualified to be President?" Yes, who cares indeed? There was a time when liberals seemed to be toeing around the edges of a conservative country. This was Bill Clinton's great talent: Subverting fundamentally conservative goals for moderately liberal ends. His great domestic accomplishments shrank the government, ended the deficit, and reformed welfare, all in ways that liberals could, if not necessarily like, at least live with. But now it's conservatism that feels increasingly derivative of liberalism. It's conservatism that feels like a strategy of affirmation rather than governance. Palin is the year's most important conservative not because she won, or because she came close, but because she provoked the most outrage among liberals. And Coulter's column presents all of this as triumph. There's no sorrow over Palin's loss. Rather, the column is suffused with glee for the lark of it all. Remember that time Palin made that joke about lipstick? This is not the metric of anything so fearsome as a bully. It's the measure of a mere pest. And the hard question for conservatives is, what if Coulter is right? What if Palin really is the leader of modern conservatism, the best representative of its modern mission? "Palin was a kick in the pants," Coulter says. And right now, that's enough.
