Is the Conservative Movement Dead?

50 years after the founding of National Review and 40 years after the Goldwater campaign, conservatives seem to be enjoying more power than ever. Republicans control all three branches of government, talk radio, and the biggest cable news station. The war in Iraq, regardless of your view on the conflict, most likely would not have been fought were it not for its conservative backers. Yet , if you read Conscience of a Conservative or National Review's "Standing Althwart History," any objective observer will see that conservatives have made absolutely no progress. Government continues to grow at unpreceented rates. Immigration continues to flood our country. Multiculturalism, gay rights, feminism, and other social movements that were unimaginable in 1955 currently grip our culture. Has its ascencion to power caused the movement to fail. Are conservatives simply inevitable "beautiful losers" as the late Sam Francis put it? Or does conservatism as a movement and philosophy still have much to offer. To discuss these questions are

Don Devine- Mr. Devine is the vice president of the American Conservative Union. He is an adjunct scholar at the Heritage Foundation and served as chief advisor on federal personnel in the Reagan Whitehouse. He is the Author of seven books: Reagan's Terrible Swift Sword, Reagan Electionomics, The Attentive Public, The Political Culture of the United States, Does Freedom Work?, Restoring the Tenth Amendment, and In Defense of the West: American Values under Siege. To get an idea of Mr. Devine's take on the issue, see this article http://www.conservative.org/pressroom/revitalizingconservatism.asp

Bruce Bartlett - Dr. Bartlett is syndicated columnist and author of several books, most recently Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. He has previously been a senior fellow in at the National Center for Policy Analysis and the Heritage Foundation, and worked under Reagan as deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department.