The disappearance of the unhyphenated conservative

This profile of Sen. Chuck Hagel is notable for the fact that none of the positions ascribed to Hagel (a prudent internationalist in foreign policy, opposed to big government and deficits, opposed to No Child Left Behind, the new Medicare drug benefit, and agricultural subsidies, pro-life, etc.) would have, at least until fairly recently, been thought to be anything but standard conservative fare. But the occasion for this article is that Hagel is a “maverick” and a “dissident” who’s broken with President Bush and much of the rest of the GOP on several of those issues.

Whereas Hagel’s views are pretty much indistinguishable from the conservative mainstream of 5-10 years ago (I recall that he was touted by National Review for having sound foreign policy views back when he was being floated as a possible running mate for George W. Bush in the 2000 election), the conservatism of today has become increasingly polarized into neos and paleos who regard each other with distrust, if not outright scorn and hostility, with apparently little room for the kind of unhypehnated conservatism that Hagel represents.