Doesn't make a lot of sense

Let's see.

According to this article- and other sources, including the sense I'm getting from the comments on this blog, social conservatives are upset with President Bush and the Republican Party because :

1) spending is out of control (a bad thing, I grant- but a primarily economic issue, and one largely driven by security concerns and the war in Iraq, which most of them support);

2) the President and many conservative leaders tried, but failed, to save Terri Schaivo- and by misreporting the case and distorting its facts, the media made Bush, the Republicans, and social conservatives look bad;

3) the President and the Republicans have failed to push doomed attempts to amend the Constitution to prohibit abortion and same-sex marriage;

4) Pat Robertson is a loose cannon, who brings not only "Evangelicalism" but social conservatism into disrepute on a regular basis; and

5) some few Republicans- who almost by definition are retiring from public life and sometimes going to jail- have turned out to be crooks.

They are happy, however, about Mr. Bush's appointments of Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, thereby bringing the conservative bloc on the court to within one vote of overturning Roe v. Wade, ensuring that states cannot be compelled to recognize same-sex "marriages" even if other states legalize them, and provide both a realistic means to address constitutional issues with social import an effective firewall against further assaults on the Constitution and the Western ethical tradition by activist judges.

In order to address these concerns, they therefore are contemplating sitting on their hands during this year's Congressional campaign or even voting Democratic, apparently reasoning that it "wouldn't be all bad" for the Democrats to regain control of Congress- thereby ensuring that if President Bush has a chance to nominate a third candidate for the Supreme Court during the next two years, he or she will not be confirmed, and a golden chance to both reverse Roe and advance the rest of that socially conservative agenda by means which might actually bear fruit will be lost.

None of this is to say that both social conservatives and the American people generally don't have legitimate grievences against the Bush administration and the Republican Party. But more productive course of action for social conservatives- who really have nowhere to go but into exile- would be for them to go to war in the primaries and caucuses this year and in 2008 to advance the agenda they think the Party has lost sight of. A Democratic victory this November will not purge the Party of non-conservatives, but give them a powerful argument for taking the party over. It would also ensure that social conservatives will no longer be taken seriously. The result will be seen as a repudiation of their agenda, confirmation that they are wild-eyed fanatics bent upon a course of rule-or-ruin, and establish them in the eyes of power-brokers within the Republican Party as unreliable allies.

Besides defeating the very agenda they supposedly stand for and squandering the chance to re-take the Supreme Court, that is.

I've watched conservatives long enough to know that, as a movement, they have the political instincts of cats and the survival instincts of lemmings. Can they really be as self-destructive and self-defeating as the pundits- and often they, themselves- claim? For all our sakes, I hope not.

HT: Drudge