are conservatives really on the defensive?

There's a lot of talk now about a liberal moment and conservatives being on the run.   The gay marriage ruling, health care, and the taking down of (some) Confederate flags are cited as evidence.  One was has written of "peak leftism" as a cultural phenomenon.

I'm less convinced.   Consider a few facts:

1.  Most of these "liberal" decisions are in fact being made by conservatives.   The swing votes on the Supreme Court are Roberts and Kennedy--hardly liberals by any definition.   The Confederate flag thing was started by two Republican governors.   If it's such a liberal moment, why are conservatives making the decisions?

2.  You have to distinguish conservative from populist causes.   There's nothing inherently conservative, certainly not Republican, about the Confederate flag.   Gay marriage is a hybrid cause: the gay part progressive, the marriage part traditional.    Even Obamacare was orginally a Republican proposal.   To a large extent, these issues releate to generational changes and/or changed situations rather than underlying philosophical issues.

3.  To the extent that these issues affect national politics, they probably help Republicans.   Instead of people screaming that they lost their insurance or can't get married, there will now be people screaming that their premiums are going up or their church is being picked on.   People in 1964-65 thought there would be a permanent Democratic majority.   It didn't turn out that way.

What I do think is happening is that a certain historical phase--what we might call the southernization or the wallaceization of the national Republican Party--has more or less run it course.   This phase was characterized by the GOP becoming, rather than a genuinely conservative party, something more akin to right-wing populists.    At a recent Republican event, I was depressed to hear speakers rattling off a list of issues--taxes, ISIS, cultural changes--as if they were running against Jimmy Carter, or at very best Al Gore.

The flip side is that a Republican who can distance themselves from the tone of cultural resentment, focusing on economic growth and exhibiting a mixture of personal conservatism but tolerance for cultural diversity, has a good chance of breaking this mold.   This is particularly true if they are running against someone, like Hillary Clinton, whose enthusiasm for recent changes is pretty clearly of the convenient variety.   President Rubio, anyone?