Conservatives may be out of power, but they may not be permanently out of favor. The great danger for conservatives before the onset of the Obama administration (in those heady days when the transition was running smoothly) was not that he’d turn out to be the greatest leftist ever to occupy the White House, but that he’s be a more successful and popular version of  Bill Clinton — dominating the vast middle of the political spectrum and pushing the conservatives out onto a sliver of the political landscape.

Had he done that, conservatives would be irrelevant and without purpose or direction. But he chose not to do that. Instead he veered left. Michael Gerson, therefore, has it backwards when he writes:

American conservatism — intellectually ascendant during three decades in which relatively low taxes and a stable money supply produced the greatest accumulation of national wealth in history — is now staring into an abyss. It has been voted to the edge of political irrelevance, assaulted by a European-style budget and overshadowed by a new president of colossal skills and unexpected ambition.

Actually it is liberalism that is staring into the abyss, or, more accurately, over the cliff — where the economy and the markets are heading. The deepening of the recession, the devastation of Americans’ portfolios and 401K accounts, the very real potential for stagflation, and the co-dependent corporate socialism between an incompetent bureaucracy and incompetently managed firms are what lay ahead, if Obama “succeeds.” In that event, it would not be conservatism that’s discredited, but liberalism.

In the meantime, conservatives have found intellectual coherence. You say a movement can’t be based on a negative proposition — “No On Obamaism” ?  We forget how instrumental Carterism was to the rise of Reaganism. And, moreover, it has been a long time since conservatives were buzzing about defending free market capitalism, explaining the efficacy of low taxes, and instructing their fellow citizens on the relative growth rates in the U.S. and Europe. Conservatives finally have a purpose and a mission: defense of the free market. That’s as positive a message as a political movement could hope to find.

And if Obama is rebuffed and changes course then conservatives will take pride in having pulled him back from the abyss. And if he plunges on, conservatives will be there to pick up the pieces. Just as Margaret Thatcher did in Britain and Ronald Reagan did in America, as Pete Wehner reminded us. Until you suspend the laws of economics and extinguish Americans’ love of individual liberty, conservatives will not be facing the abyss. Only when they neglect both do they face ruin.