130 seats expect to be declared between 10 and 10:30pm and another 198 between 10:30 and 11:30pm, 57 of which are marginals the Tories need to win most of to come out on top.

It reminds us that adhering to principle without respect to current context and lasting consequences can be pleasing but destructive.  It reminds us that those consequences can last well beyond the current election and survive even subsequent electoral victories by people dedicated to the reversal of those consequences.  It reminds us that statesmanship is hard and the course to policy and political victory is inherently uncertain and fraught with peril.

Nevertheless, I feel it is not complete.  It ignores the context in which the 1964 election was fought, and therefore understates the importance of the 1964 defeat for the 1980 victory. It is too harsh in describing Reagan’s legacy as “temporary and provisional”.  Finally and most importantly, it lends itself to a misinterpretation about its potential implications for the nature and aspirations of American conservatism.

The Goldwater candidacy can only be understood in the context of the times. After 1932 the Republican Party lost five consecutive Presidential elections, one of the longest losing streaks in American political history.

It returned to Presidential power on the back of a national hero, Dwight Eisenhower, who explicitly ran as a “Modern Republican” who accepted the legitimacy and permanence of the New Deal.  Eisenhower’s Modern Republicanism was an American version of the path of the British Tories, accepting both the existence and the legitimacy of the welfare state and arguing that only the wiser heads of a moderately conservative party could be trusted with its prudent administration and expansion.

Modern American conservatism was explicitly founded in opposition to this idea.  Buckley, Goldwater, and their associates believed that this approach merely managed the decline of the West, that short-term electoral victory would mask long-term national and civilizational decline. Only by establishing a counter-narrative based on freedom, taking the intellectual narrative back from the left and institutionalizing this narrative in a political vehicle – the Republican Party – could America and the West be saved.

The 1964 nomination battle was a struggle over which view would prevail.  Had Goldwater failed the modern conservative movement would probably have splintered into its component parts and the American Tory wing of the party become unchallenged in its dominance.  Even so, the Tory wing reasserted itself after the Goldwater defeat and regained control of the national party in the persons of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

It’s true that Carter lost the 1980 election more than Reagan won it, but it is hard to see Reagan or any freedom-focused American conservative winning but for the political cohesion obtained by the 1964 defeat.  Even then, Reagan’s path to the nomination was not easy as the Modern Tory Republican establishment fought tenaciously to prevent his ascendancy.  But that establishment was split among many candidates; had former President Ford run again, it is not clear than Reagan would have won the nomination.

Conservative Republicanism was much more politically successful than Modern Tory Republicanism.  Between 1980 and 2008, the Republican Party never fell BELOW 44 Senate seats; between 1958 and 1980 it never received MORE than 44 seats.  Between 1980 and 2008, the GOP ran the Senate for 16 ½ years; between 1958 and 1980 it never controlled the Senate. Between 1994 and 2008, the GOP ran the House for twelve years and never fell below 200 seats.  Between 1958 and 1980, Modern Tory Republicans never ran the House and never had more than 192 seats.

The 1994-2006 period was the longest time the GOP held such continued Congressional dominance and representation since between 1918 and 1932.

Nor did this period provide merely ephemeral gains.  Despite the Obama victory, the Soviet Union is no more.  Would a Ford- or Bush-led nation have achieved victory in the Cold War?  Would they have engaged in the sustained military buildup and rhetorical confrontation that sped the Communist behemoth into the ashcan of history?  Their performance in power during the mid-1970s suggests not.

Even the Obama ascendancy does not promise to unravel all of Reagan’s domestic victories.  When he took power in 1981, the top marginal tax rate was 70%.  Obama proposes to raise it a shade under 40%.  When Reagan took power, unions represented about 20% of all American workers; today it is under 10% and even card check will not reverse that quickly.

Still, all this does not make our path forward any easier.  Republican strength is low and prospects are dim.  How should conservatives think about getting out of this hole?

We must start by acknowledging what history teaches.  The left has held the political and intellectual initiative in the developed world for at least a century.  Parties of the right have held power, but largely by taking the growth and centralization of economic power in the state off the table.  They win elections on one of three grounds: nationalism, faith or fear.

Nationalist parties, like the British Tories or French conservatives, focus on empire or national pride; faith-based parties like German and Italian Christian Democrats argue that welfare statism is a Christian duty and focus instead on preserving the traditional family and community.  These parties use fear of a radical left that openly attacks private property or the family to drive the center toward them.

American freedom-based conservatism is the only electorally successful effort to offer a different path.  American conservatism includes elements of nationalism and faith, and certainly has benefited from fear as American liberalism became too secular and redistributionist.  But it gained its power from its distinctive element, a counter-narrative based on human freedom as way to interpret events and offer policy guidance.

This counter-narrative provides a center-right party with the ability to set the terms of the domestic debate rather than simply decide how much of the center-left agenda is passed and in what forms.  The prospect of the success of this narrative as recently as four years ago is what accounts for much of the left’s anger and provoked much of their recent political activity.

Freedom-based conservatism has the added advantage of being in tune with our national rhetoric.  Polls show that Americans use the words “freedom” and “liberty” when asked what it means to be an American, and transformational political leaders from Jefferson through Reagan have sought to define their agenda in terms of enhancing individual freedom rather than expanding national greatness or sectarian primacy.

The questions American conservatism faces today all derive from one basic question: can a political movement and party so founded and so dedicated long endure?

This single question leads to three subsidiary ones.  Is it possible to devise a freedom-based political agenda that responds to today’s challenges and context?  If so, can this agenda be advanced within a party whose political base is social conservatives who, while sympathetic to freedom, can use rhetoric that calls the individual exercise of freedom into question?  If such an agenda is either intellectually untenable or politically impossible, what principle – nationalism, faith, or some mixture of the two – will replace freedom as the core of American conservatism?

David’s piece implicitly raises but does not clearly answer these questions.  His analysis of the 1964 defeat can give rise to the idea that American conservatism ought to be more like British or European conservatism, focused more on preventing the predations of the left than on defining the debate.  Other of his writings, such as Comeback, suggests that he does believe in the possibility of a freedom-based agenda that will restore conservative dominance both intellectually and politically.

This is a distinction with a crucial difference.  If conservatism must remake itself, if its Goldwaterite founding can no longer offer it guidance, then Republicans are doomed to wander in the political wilderness for at least a decade.  Remaking a party takes time.  It has taken the British Tories 12 years to remake themselves after their crushing 1997 defeat. The current base of the Democratic Party, socially liberal and college-educated people, started its efforts to gain control in the 1950s with their battle against unions and big-city bosses.  Even now they rely on the political skills of one individual and must uneasily co-exist with union advocates and moderates who remain suspicious of their agenda.

I suspect Comeback is more representative of David’s views, that he (like I) intends to reform rather than remake American conservatism.  In which case, our task is more like Reagan’s, to build on what came before and adapt those principles to our current circumstances.  If so, a full, complete and sympathetic understanding of 1964 is crucial to our endeavor.

The Fact: 42% of John McCain’s vote came from white evangelical or born-again Christians.

That’s right: according to the exit poll, 26% of the electorate is white evangelicals, and 74% of them voted for McCain.  McCain pulled slightly less than 46% of the vote, so about four-in-ten of McCain’s voters were white evangelicals

To put it in perspective, white evangelicals are nearly twice as important to Republicans as African-Americans are for Democrats.  Despite the surge in African-American turnout and the record high percentage Obama received from those voters, blacks comprised only 23% of the winning coalition.

This documents what people have long suspected:  the white evangelical community is now the Republican Party’s base.  And it creates the challenge all conservatives and Republicans need to answer, how to build a stable majority coalition by building on that base.

It’s tempting to think one can throw that base away and start anew.  But that’s not how politics works.  Every stable, new political coalition builds upon an existing party base rather than start from ground zero.  Indeed, FDR’s New Deal coalition did not reject the Solid South; he added Catholic and African-American voters from the GOP and built a majority that lasted nearly 40 years.

Ronald Reagan followed FDR’s playbook.  He did not reject the shrunken GOP base of the mid-1970s.  Instead, in his landmark speech before the 1977 CPAC convention, he argued for a “New Republican Party” in which the GOP base among economic conservatives would be supplemented with new votes among social conservatives.

Three years later, his vision was vindicated as Republican bastions in high-income and northern Protestant neighborhoods were joined by the “Reagan Democrats” – middle-class, Catholic suburbanites, conservative white Southerners, and a larger share of the Jewish and Latino vote. This majority coalition lasted over a decade, and formed the base for the historic 1994 Congressional takeover.

Obama’s attempt to create a new Democratic majority operates on a similar “build up, not tear down” strategy.  Obama is finding ways to add moderate upper-income, educated whites of moderate-to-no religious persuasion to the Democratic base of racial minorities, labor union members, and progressive and secular whites.  Conservatives and Republicans must think similarly if they hope to regain the majority.

Adding to the base does not mean that white evangelicals must continue to vote 74% Republican.  Reagan’s conservative strategy reduced the GOP strength among traditional Republicans, as some voted first for John Anderson and ultimately became Democrats. But the loss of share among traditional GOPers was more than made up by the newcomers.

There are many ways to rebuild that majority by adapting Reagan’s 1977 playbook to the modern playing field.  Conservatives can compete with Obama and the Democrats for votes among the mass educated affluent.  Such an attempt could focus on social issues that unite people of various religious persuasions and economic issues that emphasize limiting government’s growth while reforming the public sector to make it more responsive to individual needs.

They can also try to add working class Catholics and members of other faiths to the white evangelical base.  A move in this direction could emphasize social issues that unite these disparate faiths and, crucially, use rhetoric that is cross-denominational.  It would also require greater openness to the economic worries of the lower-middle and working classes, which include high payroll and property taxes and stagnant formal wages (rising health care costs are soaking up these workers’ productivity gains).

Conservatives can also court the growing non-white portion of the electorate.  This group is split between lower-skilled Latino workers and higher-skilled Asian immigrants, making the task complicated.  But whatever the economic and social issues such outreach would employ, it will be difficult to make a serious play for these voters with an immigration platform that is perceived as restrictionist and exclusionary.

Each of these targets of opportunity presents challenges.  But the challenge was no less for FDR as he built a coalition including blacks yearning for freedom and white segregationists, prohibitionist Baptists and wet Catholics looking for a good beer.

Recovery starts when denial stops.  Republicans and conservatives who want to regain majority status must recognize that today’s party base is different from the one Reagan built upon, and this fact shapes the contours of the coalitions they can build.  The sooner they accept that fact, the sooner they can meet that challenge.

Conservatives need however to be prepared for a more challenging possibility: the possibility that the economy will perform poorly, even very poorly, for some protracted time. In this case, issues of security and prevention may soon displace the politics of tolerance and opportunity.

Working class voters will want protection for their jobs, which will likely lead to demands for restrictions on immigration, trade barriers, increased union power, and other measures to limit layoffs and downsizing.  The mass affluent will have kept their jobs but lost their wealth.  They will want housing price supports and policies to refloat their portfolios.  Both sets of voters will redouble their focus on education, the working class because that is the only way their children can avoid a downturn in their lives; the mass affluent to ensure their children stay on top.  Both sets of voters will also demand re-regulation of the financial sector, both out of a pragmatic judgment that this will ensure financial crashes will never happen again and out of a sense of justice, that those who supposedly caused the crash are made to pay for it.  The latter impulse will be particularly strong because of the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer bailouts steered toward financial institutions.

The political sentiment in this worst case scenario will be “never again”.  This will not be the first time American politics has been governed by the “never again” principle.  The Great Depression was perceived to have been caused by excess financial speculation and too much market instability.  “Never again” led to the New Deal, permanent federal involvement in the economy, and the beginnings of the welfare state.  World War II was perceived to have been caused by U.S. isolationism and the unwillingness to confront expansionary states.  “Never again” led to a permanent U.S. engagement in the world through a web of alliances, a permanently large standing military, and the Cold War.  The Great Stagflation of the 70s was perceived to have been caused by overregulation of the economy, both by government and by large unions and corporations.  “Never again” led to a fierce anti-inflation policy, avoidance of tax hikes, and a commitment to reviving entrepreneurial market forces – and to a desire to restrict immigration and free trade among those working class voters whose industries never recovered.   Political parties and entrepreneurs who want to succeed in this world will ignore the “never again” principle at their peril.

Conservatives need however to be prepared for a more challenging possibility: the possibility that the economy will perform poorly, even very poorly, for some protracted time. In this case, issues of security and prevention may soon displace the politics of tolerance and opportunity.

Working class voters will want protection for their jobs, which will likely lead to demands for restrictions on immigration, trade barriers, increased union power, and other measures to limit layoffs and downsizing. The mass affluent will have kept their jobs but lost their wealth. They will want housing price supports and policies to refloat their portfolios. Both sets of voters will redouble their focus on education, the working class because that is the only way their children can avoid a downturn in their lives; the mass affluent to ensure their children stay on top. Both sets of voters will also demand re-regulation of the financial sector, both out of a pragmatic judgment that this will ensure financial crashes will never happen again and out of a sense of justice, that those who supposedly caused the crash are made to pay for it. The latter impulse will be particularly strong because of the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer bailouts steered toward financial institutions.

The political sentiment in this worst case scenario will be “never again”. This will not be the first time American politics has been governed by the “never again” principle. The Great Depression was perceived to have been caused by excess financial speculation and too much market instability. “Never again” led to the New Deal, permanent federal involvement in the economy, and the beginnings of the welfare state. World War II was perceived to have been caused by U.S. isolationism and the unwillingness to confront expansionary states. “Never again” led to a permanent U.S. engagement in the world through a web of alliances, a permanently large standing military, and the Cold War. The Great Stagflation of the 70s was perceived to have been caused by overregulation of the economy, both by government and by large unions and corporations. “Never again” led to a fierce anti-inflation policy, avoidance of tax hikes, and a commitment to reviving entrepreneurial market forces – and to a desire to restrict immigration and free trade among those working class voters whose industries never recovered. Political parties and entrepreneurs who want to succeed in this world will ignore the “never again” principle at their peril.

Henry Olsen is a Vice-President of the American Enterprise Institute and Director of its National Research Initiative