Mark Sanford praises his fellow governors as a source of conservative ideas: “you don’t have to look far to find examples of how sticking to conservative principles not only yields a better-working government but, frankly, yields electoral success as well.” That would seem to be the preferred tactic for Republicans with political aspirations — separate themselves from the Republicans’ “home office,” and run against the Beltway crowd.

The Washington Post agrees — and offers a glowing piece on Bobby Jindal. Now Republican insiders come forward to declare that youth, verbal acuity, conservative ideas and executive competence matter. Well, at least they figured out what was missing last time.

First we learn that turnout wasn’t historic and now we hear that Barack Obama’s reliance on a broad base of “small donors” was exaggerated and virtually identical to President Bush’s figures. Not so much “change” and not really “New Politics, ” I suppose. What’s next –staffing up with retreads from prior administrations and dumping his campaign rhetoric?

Thomas Friedman concedes: “In the last year, though, the U.S. troop surge and the backlash from moderate Iraqi Sunnis against Al Qaeda and Iraqi Shiites against pro-Iranian extremists have brought a new measure of stability to Iraq. There is now, for the first time, a chance — still only a chance — that a reasonably stable democratizing government, though no doubt corrupt in places, can take root in the Iraqi political space.” And after acknowledging that Barack Obama ran against the surge, he concludes that Obama can not only “end the Iraq war but salvage something positive from it” and thereby “enhance the Democratic Party’s national security credentials.” Huh? Well, with columnists helping to obscure the Bush administration‘s salvaging and the Democrats’ obstructionism, I suppose anything is possible.

George Will is the latest commentator to ask why we are repeating the New Deal if it didn’t work the first time: “history is not one damn thing after another, it is the same damn thing over and over.”

Fred Barnes observes: “If Obama wants to pursue economic and national security policies that would thrill MoveOn.org, William Ayers, and the Democratic left, he has a funny way of showing it. The only reasonable conclusion is he’s spurning the left.” The mystery remains whether Obama believed what he said in the primary and changed his mind or whether he doesn’t believe in much of anything.

David Frum lists among President Bush’s eight biggest accomplishments: “After 9/11, Bush passionately championed America’s vast majority of law-abiding Muslims — and perhaps due to his leadership, the much-feared wave of hate crimes never occurred.” Hmm. “Much-feared” by whom? And was there ever any indication that Americans would have done such a thing if not for some mosque visits by President Bush? (It seems that two superb Supreme Court nominations should have made the list instead.)

So much for the notion that George Bush or the Iraq war is what fuels Islamic terrorism, says Rich Lowry. He explains: “They have an ideological goal larger than any one conflict or any American president. And the absolute malice of the Mumbai terrorists is a reminder of a piece of supposed Bush/Cheney alarmism: that should these as-yet low-tech killers — armed with guns and grenades — ever acquire weapons of mass destruction, they will use them without hesitation. Already there is debate over whether the Mumbai attack had an international or home-grown origin. This can be a false distinction. The global jihadist movement is larger and more diffuse than al-Qaeda, even if it is inspired by it.”