Social conservatives have an incompetence problem.

Conor Friedersdorf differs with Kathleen Parker.

The part he quotes from Parker is bad, certainly, but bad arguments don't exempt social conservatives from correct blame...

Blame religious voters enthralled with Sarah Palin for being cheap dates, or for caring so exclusively about shared religious values that they ignored her deficiencies as a candidate, but even having done so it remains the case that John McCain and his campaign are the ones who bear blame for her nomination, and that plenty of non-religious conservatives made fools of themselves over Palin as absurdly and excessively as any religious conservative of whom I’m aware.

Sure, McCain deserves plenty of blame for gambling with an unvetted unknown who he'd only met once and who proved disastrous on the mainstream national stage. But a necessary part of the blame lies with the evangelical base for motivating his bad decision. Had they been more amenable to his other VP options or just to McCain on his own steam, he would have been more likely to choose a politically viable candidate who wouldn't cause as many people left of center and some center-righters like myself to recoil in Sullivanesque, dream-haunting horror.

He mentions non-religious conservatives, and the same analysis applies. Naturally they weren't excited to promote Palin because they cared about her religion on a personal level, but rather because of her vast "political talent" of inspiring hordes of adoring evangelical fans to volunteer and turn out to vote for the Republican ticket and create the short-term illusion that Republicans stood a chance at defying the odds enough to hang on to the White House after the most unpopular Presidency in the history of approval ratings.

One need not be a religious conservative or agree with their agenda to see they’ve gotten precious little of what they want under George W. Bush

True, but they are the ones who kept him politically viable amidst his many other failures, because he was still "one of them", ineffectual social agenda notwithstanding. I really don't see how a non-evangelical President would have been allowed to get away with the same arrogant, reality-defying job performance as Bush. Without evangelical support he would have been impeached already.

Neocons hawks remain neocons hawks and their support for Iraq+Iran wars come hell or high water continues to be predictable, however tragic. That's a different kind of blame. So-cons had a real choice in the matter. They are the largest block of irrational enablers who defended, excused, or simply denied Bush's incompetence and caused Palin's farcical candidacy to be exalted for her "immense political talent" of winning their adoration.

Recall less recent history. Southern evangelicals and Dobsonites are the people who deprived us of the John McCain of 2000 and the Colin Powell of 1996. Despite some of Parker's unsound arguments, the fury many of us feel towards George W. Bush and Sarah Palin's enablers is a righteous one, and it's not going away. They must redeem themselves if the GOP's cohesion is to be restored.

Alas I fear the timeframe will be measured in decades. Maybe an intelligent so-con like Jindal can right the ship, but I remain very skeptical. Plus we're still talking 2016 at the earliest.