In these trying times, movement types try to claim it’s a yawning chasm. Kevin Drum is having none of it:

Nonetheless, now that the Republican Party has been brought low, an awful lot of conservatives are jumping ship, claiming that it really doesn’t represent them at all. But look: when the GOP made common cause with evangelical extremists, conservatives cheered. When the GOP accepted Grover Norquist’s tax jihad as sacred writ, conservatives cheered. When Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay all but declared the GOP the party of corporate welfare, conservatives cheered. When George Bush declared war on the Middle East, conservatives cheered. Somehow Burke never really entered the discussion. But now that it turns out these positions have been pretty much played out, Burke is back in and Karl Rove is out. That’s just a little too convenient.

But a lot of of people who identify themselves as stalwart conservatives have no idea who Burke is. And that’s probably part of the problem; not that everyone can or should be a scholar, but then Limbaugh and O’Reilly become the “thinkers” for the broad bulk of the movement, and even those who have an intellectual basis for their conservatism have been content to let this be the case - Limbaugh and O’Reilly get a lot more voters in the booth than does some long-dead Englishman. But that’s how the movement, or at least the bulk of its followers, become detached from the intellectual ideas that once inspired conservatism. When it’s all about hating liberals and Muslims, you’re not going to get much deeper thinking than that; those whose conservatism does have more depth are going to be disaffected, maybe stray. Those who don’t are going to be confused - and then they’ll just send a few more Obama is a Manchurian Muslim! e-mails.