Seemingly, my apostasy of the last year or so hasn’t yet gotten me written out of the conservative movement. Thus, I will be speaking at the National Review Institute’s Conservative Summit, January 26-28. Specifically, I’ll be debating Ralph Reed as to the role of the Religious Right in the GOP (at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, the 27th, I’m told).

There are also going to be some other debates, including:

On immigration: Mark Krikorian v. Tamar Jacoby

On energy: James Woolsey v. Jerry Taylor

A fuller roster of speakers includes:

Jeb Bush, Tony Snow, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, John Boehner, John Bolton, Rich Lowry, John O’Sullivan, Kate O’Beirne, Mark Steyn, Laura Ingraham, Kathryn Lopez, Robert P. George , Maggie Gallagher, Ramesh Ponnuru, Ed Whelan, Marvin Olasky, James Woolsey, Jerry Taylor, Ward Connerly, Byron York, Jonah Goldberg, Rob Long, Pat Toomey, Ralph Reed, Ryan Sager, Mark Krikorian, Cliff May, Tamar Jacoby, Charles Murray, John Miller, Rick Brookhiser, Bill Kristol, Terence P. Jeffrey, Michael Steele, Abigail Thernstrom, Mona Charen, Ed Gillespie, Andrew McCarthy, Charles Kesler, Edwin J. Feulner

You can register for the Washington, D.C., event here.

Today, my old New York Sun colleague Ben Smith gets hold of a 140-page memo from the Giuliani camp laying out soup-to-nuts everything they’re trying to do and everything they’re worried about over at Rudy HQ.

It’s a hell of a scoop, and there are some interesting tidbits. But, at first glance, it doesn’t look like there’s anything particularly damaging in there — just a lot of acknowledgments of things of things we already knew (e.g., Bernie Kerik and Rudy’s ex-wives will be problems).

…to National Review for including The Elephant in the Room in its roundup of “Best Books, 2006.”

It also looks like I’ll be speaking at their Conservative Summit, in late January — most likely on a panel with Ralph Reed about the role of the Religious Right (somehow, I think he has more in-depth knowledge of this topic than me, but I’ll do what I can). More details on that when I have them.

Also, thanks to anyone who’s bought, read, or written thoughtfully about the book this year. It’s really quite an undertaking to write a book (so many words … and I’m a man of few of them). But it’s worth it when it can move a debate forward meaningfully. It’s been great to get feedback from so many of you, both on your blogs and in reader emails (there are a lot of you disaffected western libertarians out there, I have the inbox to prove it … stay strong!).

Anyway, it was a productive 2006. Onto a better 2007 and a time of rebuilding for both our parties and our country.

Man, it felt good to not blog or write anything for the last week-plus. I’ve especially enjoyed not discussing the future of the Republican Party. May it rest in pieces.

But, alas, all good things must come to an end. So, here’s more from Brink Lindsey on “liberaltarians.” Needless to say, I think there’s a lot to be said for his arguments — especially given the fact that the GOP seems to have learned nothing from its defeat in November. While a libertarian alliance with the Democrats remains a fairly shocking proposition, it seems increasingly plausible.

Most notable fact from Brink’s latest piece: Democrats gained with libertarian voters in 2006, without alienating other major voting blocs. This at least puts a dent in the idea that no one can offer anything to libertarians without sending the rest of the electorate screaming from the room like a call girl from Milton Berle.

The Economist asks whether the GOP is becoming a regional party of the South (or, OK, makes the argument that it is becoming that):

The problem for the Republicans is that a regional stronghold can become a prison. The South has one of the most distinctive cultures in the United States—far more jingoistic than the rest of the country and far more religious. Fifty-eight per cent of deep southerners identify themselves as either evangelical or born-again compared with a third of non-southerners (the figure in Mississippi is 73%). But for every non-southerner who waxes lyrical about southern charm there are many more who associate the South with racial bigotry and cultural backwardness. The 2006 election—which saw social conservatives such as Rick Santorum and Kenneth Blackwell go down to humiliating defeat—suggests that non-southerners have grown particularly impatient with the South’s brand of in-your-face religiosity.

The magazine also argues, as I have, that Mitt Romney, despite being from Massachusetts, is the “southern” candidate in the GOP field coming into 2008.

(Also, isn’t their graphic great?)

Deroy Murdock makes the case on NRO today.

I made the case back in July here (for his viability, that is, not for the reasons he should win).

Meanwhile, Rudy Blog notes that the conventional wisdom on Giuliani is changing, slowly but surely.

Apparently, Mitt Romney has never heard of federalism.

In trying to get to the right of Rudy and McCain, Romney is criticizing John McCain for opposing gay marriage at the state level but also opposing a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage at the federal level.

While I disagree with McCain’s support for the Arizona gay marriage amendment (which failed on November 7), this sort of cultural federalism is exactly what the GOP needs to start embracing.

Romney, of course, is far too busy courting the National Review crowd to make any such fine distinctions. But his lack of intellectual honesty (or capacity) ought to be kept in mind as the campaign proceeds.

The Salt Lake Tribune picks up an interesting trend out West:

After the Republican landslide of 1994, Democrats spent six years in a Western political wilderness. But since 2000, Democrats regionwide have hacked into the Republican majorities.

A Tribune analysis of U.S. House results shows that Democrats have narrowed a 20-point GOP edge in 2000 to a slim 48 percent to 47 percent deficit in 2006. In three states - Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico - Democrats have turned their red states blue, winning a majority in the House races.

In 1996, the eight states in the Rocky Mountain West sent 18 Republicans and four Democrats to the House. When Congress convenes next year, there will be 11 Democrats and 15 Republicans representing the Western districts.

Democrats now control five of the eight governorships and, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, picked up seats in five of the eight legislatures in 2006.

Where have we heard this all before?

The paper also offers this handy map (download as PDF here):

It might be a little tough to read unless you download it, but, essentially, red is Republican, blue is Democratic (sorry for insulting your intelligence). You see a solid Republican advantage in most states since 1994. The red over blue dominance reached its peak in most places in 2000. But that’s been followed by a steady uptick in the Democratic vote in all eight states of the interior West over the last three elections.

Republicans can choose to believe this is just a blip (or that it hasn’t been caused by the GOP’s abandonment of small-government principle in favor of a God-and-government coalition). But the numbers don’t lie. Especially that pull-out pie chart in the bottom right-hand corner.

(HT: Darcy)

A new Pew poll shows Rudy and McCain neck-and-neck. I’m not going to stick cotton in my ears every time there’s good news for McCain. But I’ll just note that this poll is a pretty big aberration from most other polls of Republican voters. And it was taken November 9-12 — right when McCain announced but before news of Rudy’s toes-in-the-water committee hit.

While we’re on the topic of Rudy, however, I can’t believe I missed this a while ago … RudyBlogger highlights a poll from Cook / RT Strategies that shows Giuliani’s numbers remain strong even when respondents are prompted regarding his views on social issues. I continue to think the social-issues question won’t kill Giuliani in the primaries. His personal life and characters like Kerik … well, we’ll see.

I’m going on the road with my Destroy the GOP Road Show for the next two days (OK, just down to D.C. and back). So, I’ll be doing a limited amount of blogging.

Just wanted to weigh in quickly then on another troubling move by Bush/Rove: Mel Martinez for RNC.

That would be Mel “How Can We Make Political Hay of This Vegetative Woman” Martinez.

Bad choice. Terrible choice.

How do you say “Miers” in Spanish?

Rise up, my libertarian brethren, and help stop this. Call anyone whose number you know.

This isn’t the “Bush Party” anymore. Serious appointments can’t be made on the basis of who’s loyal to the president. Or, more likely, whose name the president has heard before.

Forget Martinez. Remember Michael Steele. And, while we’re at it, forget Boehner and Blunt and remember Mike Pence and John Shadegg.

A lot of choices are being made in a short period of time. Unfortunately, they all matter.

Rudy Giuliani is forming an exploratory committee.

Immediately sending libertarians into fits.

And giving pause to some chronic Rudy doubters.

Great news for anyone who cares about the future of the GOP.

I’ve got a real fan down in Alabama:

Yes, Ryan Sager, I mean you. When I need lectures about the “true meaning” of conservatism and the history (or the future) of the Republican Party, I’ll damn sure not be listening to a 27-year-old smart-ass who thinks he’s God’s gift to punditry.

Young Mr. Sager has made himself into a latter-day Larry Sabato, a quote-whore consulted whenever someone wishes to oversimply politics: San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, Christian Science Monitor, The Myrtle Beach Sun News (!?) …

Damn, son, I wish when I was 27 I could have found a job where all I had to do was answer calls from reporters desperate for my keen insight into What It All Means. You have made an auspicious start toward being one of the all-time great windbags of American political punditry, a worthy peer of Kevin Phillips and Andrew Sullivan in the pantheon of overrated blowhards.

TO ALL REPUBLICANS: It is imperative that you shun the counsels of Ryan Sager. His sudden emergence as an opinion-monger this year should have been seen for what it was — and what I immediately recognized it to be — an ill omen, a portent of the impending doom that befell the GOP on 11/7.

There is no “Battle to Control the Republican Party” in the sense that Sager claims, for the simple reason that what he is describing is just the incessant bitching of one side of that alleged “battle,” namely certain urban sophisticates who don’t like being considered gauche because they vote Republican.

Sager is pimping for the Giuliani/McCain wing of the party — those who, 10 years ago, were what you might call the “Arianna Huffington Republicans” — which simply doesn’t have the votes to nominate, much less elect, a Republican president.

The McCainiacs have been pouting ever since McCain lost the South Carolina primary in 2000. Giuliani’s supporters are New Yorkers nostalgic for the mid-1990s, when Rudy was cracking down on urban blight and the Long Island Republican machine, in combination with old Jack Kemp Upstate Republicans, could elect a D’Amato and a Pataki.

These are the same people — some at National Review, others at The Weekly Standard — have been trying to handicap the 2008 GOP presidential field since the day after Election Day 2004. It is imperative to the Northern urban-sophisticate type of Republican that the guy (or gal) who gets the GOP nomination in 2008 be their kind of candidate, i.e., someone who can make the Republican “name brand” a more marketable commodity in places like Long Island, so the sophisticates can feel good about themselves again.

I don’t blame them. But they have completely misconstrued the nature of the problem, just as they’ve misconstrued the GOP’s problems in post-Reagan California. The problem really isn’t about policy or ideology, it’s about culture. The refusal of the urban-sophisticate Republicans to take seriously the culture war is at the root of these problems, and has been ever Pat Buchanan and Dan Quayle tried to warn them back in the early 1990s.

In the short term, those who wish to see the Republican Party recover from the 11/7 disaster must cease attempting to project their inner worries onto the GOP by casting the 2006 election in ideological terms. We can fight these battles after the GOP gets its mojo working again. Right now, we’ve got a busted mojo, and intra-party bickering ain’t gonna fix it.

Sager’s arguments — except so far as they reflect the general Republican consensus on such matters as corruption and out-of-control spending — are divisive and harmful to the GOP. There is nothing to be gained for the Republican Party by listening to Sager’s attacks on evangelical Christians, social conservatives and Southerners. Get new leaders, recruit new candidates, and watch like hawks for opportunities to capitalize on the predictable blunders of liberal Democrats.

Fix that mojo. Everything else is just noise.

There’s not much I can do about being 27 (I’ll be 28 next year, Bubba). As for the rest of the argument, I’ll just note that my book is not an attack on Evangelicals or the Religious Right. It’s a call to return to an earlier understanding of the libertarian-traditionalist alliance, one focused on small-government instead of the mixing of government with religion. I do think the GOP has too much of a southern flavor, to its detriment in the rest of the country. And I think that’s clear to anyone who can read the results of the last election (massive losses in the Northeast, big losses in the Midwest, and the West turning into a real swing region).

You can’t win the presidency or the Congress back with just the South. Dixie’s loss of political clout may be difficult for some to take, but it’s the direction things are headed. And it is, I submit, a good thing for the GOP and for America.

Over at The American Spectator, Philip Klein makes the excellent point that one strike against John Boehner for minority leader is his role in passing the No Child Left Behind Act:

No two laws better represent the modern brand of big government Republicanism than the Medicare prescription drug law and the No Child Left Behind Act. Any congressman who voted for either legislation should not be taken seriously as a proponent of limited government, and yet Boehner voted for both of them.

Not only did Boehner vote for the largest federal expansion into education since the Carter administration, but he sponsored the legislation. Shortly after President Bush signed the bill with Boehner standing over one shoulder and Sen. Ted Kennedy standing over the other (see photo), Boehner said its passage was “one of the proudest accomplishments of my tenure in Congress.”

No Child Left Behind is up for reauthorization next year and in his post-election press conference President Bush cited it as an issue he wanted to work together with Democrats on. If they are going to be negotiating education policy with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Republicans can ill afford to be led by Boehner, a man who is personally invested in the legislation and who proved willing to compromise conservative principles in order to get a “bipartisan” bill passed.

The original No Child Left Behind bill included provisions for school vouchers, but Boehner was willing to abandon those provisions in desperate pursuit of Democratic votes. Boehner also ditched a push by House conservatives to allow some states to decide how to spend federal education dollars.

Boehner is better than some of the others in the DeLay-Hastert crew. But he’s still part of the problem. It’s time for fresh blood.

Along those lines, Rep. Mike Pence has released a vision statement for the new GOP minority. From the first page:

Let me be very clear. I do not believe we need to figure out what our vision should be. I do not think we need to go back to the drawing board and mix and mash into place a set of principles to guide us. We already know what those first principles are – the same ones articulated by Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and the authors of the Contract with America. We just need to remember them and why we came here.

We came here to promote freedom and opportunity. We came here to allow American families to keep more of their hard-earned money and spend it on their own priorities rather than Washington’s, a reality that only can be accomplished through less government, lower taxes, less federal spending, and economic prosperity. We came here to rekindle the fires of men, material, and morale that warm the warriors who stand on freedom’s ramparts in far-off lands. And we came here to assert again the constitutional rule of law, an unalienable right to life, and the traditional values shared by millions of Americans.

That is our vision. It does not need to be constructed out of papier-mache or run through a focus group. Instead, it must be remembered, embraced in our hearts, and endlessly articulated, even in the midst of adverse political winds.

The whole thing is here (in PDF form).

Here’s Dick Armey in the WSJ today on the future of the GOP:

Moving forward, my advice to Republicans is simple: Don’t go back and check on a dead skunk. The question Republicans now need to answer is: How do we once again convince the public that we are in fact the party many Democrats successfully pretended to be in this election? To do so, Republicans will need to shed their dominant insecurities that the public just won’t understand a positive, national vision that is defined by economic opportunity, limited government and individual responsibility.

We need to remember Ronald Reagan’s legacy and again stand for positive, big ideas that get power and money out of politics and government bureaucracy and back into the hands of individuals. We also need again to demonstrate an ability to be good stewards of the taxpayers’ hard-earned money. If Republicans do these things, they will also restore the public’s faith in our standards of personal conduct. Personal responsibility in public life follows naturally if your goal is good public policy.

Besides the obvious impact on the House and Senate, Tuesday’s elections will no doubt redefine the Republican field going into early presidential primary states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. It will be up to grassroots activists in those battlegrounds to establish a constituency of expectations that anyone aspiring to be the next president of the United States must satisfy. To voters I say: Demand substance and you will get it. To Republican candidates for office I say: Offer good policy and you will create a winning constituency for lower taxes, less government and more freedom.

I like that phrase, “a constituency of expectations.” The biggest mistake the Republicans made on the way to their ultimate demise was the nomination of George W. Bush in 2000 — the ultimate “soft bigotry of low expectations.” That’s the elephant in the room people have been unwilling to talk about until now: that Bush has been a disaster for conservatism.

But, in 2008, we get the chance to make amends.