If you wanted a snapshot of how out of touch the conservative movement has become, and why it is in the process of becoming so marginalized, you need look no further than this one.

The Conservative Political Action Conference is happening this week, a confab where the movement gets together, gives itself whiplash by nodding in agreement and rails against threats within and without (but mostly within). It was here, last year, where Ann Coulter called John Edwards a “fag” - a high point in the history of conservatism.

This year, things have gotten even sillier.

President Bush spoke today, and in so doing he called Vice President Cheney “the best vice president in history.” It’s a laughable statement - Cheney may in fact have had more authority than any vice president in history, and thus bears much culpability for what’s happened to the country these past eight years. But “best?” Right.

But the movement conservatives in attendance, though, weren’t laughing. Indeed, they were cheering Mr. Bush: “Four more years.”

Now, here we have a president who has hit 30 percent in a new AP-Ipsos poll just this week; who more than any other single individual (except perhaps Cheney himself) can be blamed for the complete implosion of the conservative movement and its clout within the party; the Jimmy Carter of his generation, the president who will be remembered for the war in Iraq and Katrina and “heckuva job, Brownie” and Harriet Miers and Abu Ghraib and warrantless wiretapping and more, far more, than we could ever fit on the internets.

But the movement wants “four more years.”

I’m coming to think, in the wake of the scuttling of the Mitt and Rudy campaigns, in the wake of the fact that there is no legitimate conservative left in the presidential race, that maybe the influence of the conservative movement has been overstated all these years. Certainly they rallied the faithful; but the faithful never constituted a majority of the country. A majority might have been induced to march alongside the movement, but that didn’t constitute the permanent realignment hailed, prematurely, by conservatives.

And we see now that those Republicans who were not true believers have broken from this orthodoxy. Those who remain - let’s again call them the 30 percenters - just don’t seem to get it. Everyone else is wrong; they’re right. Everyone else is a fool; they are the only ones who see.

Four more years.

They are failing to grasp that a solid majority of the country is aghast at the mere thought. They are oblivious to the damage that they’ve caused. It just does not compute. But by this point, it should; this - they - are specifically why there is no conservative candidate left in the presidential race.

Yet it strikes me that all of this may serve, in the mind of the movement, as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The conservative movement all these years, even when all three branches of the government were dominated by their Republican Party, thought itself oppressed; saw enemies on all sides. Now they really are being marginalized - or rather, they are marginalizing themselvews. Now they really are becoming the minority, and may stay that way for yet another political generation. Now the forces against them really are closing in.

But you know how that goes. Never admit error, stay the course. The movement still thinks there’s virtue to be found in this. But the rest of the country abanadoned that course long ago.

Update: He’s a laff riot, that funky president of ours:

Prosperity and peace are in the balance,” the president said in speech excerpts the White House released on Thursday night. “So with confidence in our vision and faith in our values, let us go forward … fight for victory … and keep the White House in 2008.”

Yes, the Democrats certainly do threaten our current era of prosperity and peace.