"I fear that people are turned off by the word 'conservative' these days because it's being used as a cudgel -- not just to point out differences of principle but also to settle old scores."

The above quote comes by way of Deal Hudson, in a thought-provoking essay about how movement conservatives are doing to the conservative brand what movement liberals did to liberalism some three decades ago.

The Coulter-Rush-Hannity-Dobson crowd ought to pause for a moment to reflect: They did all they could to get out the message that John McCain "is not conservative," and what happened? The voters in the Republican primaries chose John McCain anyway. This suggests that the movement's influence isn't what it once was, that the word "conservative" has lost much of its cachet, or both.

Hudson suspects this is, in part, because the c-word has been used as a cudgel, and this is no doubt part of problem. He also cites the immigration battles of the last few years, when a noisy, hateful minority became the image of "conservatism" -- a minority, by the way, that was soundly defeated in the Republican primaries. Mark Shea says that, for him, the word "conservative" became tainted when it became associated with supporting torture -- although here, too, the McCain victory suggests that the pro-torture crowd is less powerful politically than it may seem in the right-wing media.

What's also worth noting is that -- contrary to what the mainstream media have been telling us for years -- "moderate" Republicanism does not equal pro-abortion. There was one pro-abortion candidate in this race, and he got his head handed to him on a platter. The four Republicans who out-performed Rudy Giuliani -- John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul -- are all opposed to abortion. And if you look back at the Congressional sweep of 2006, many of those wins came in the form of pro-life Democrats. Elections have proven, time and again and regardless of what the media think, that the pro-life cause is not the GOP's albatross.

Yet interestingly, the pro-life cause is the one "conservative" issue that movement conservatives were willing to jettison in this primary, telling pro-lifers for months that they had to accept Giuliani because he was the only Republican "who can win." (That statement alone ought to discredit the movement analysis.)

American culture naturally, and rightly, has a preference for the underdog, the little guy. A conservatism that embraces this truism of our society and stands uniformly for human dignity -- whether it's the unborn, the terminally ill, immigrants, terror suspects, or the middle class -- is one that will have far more resonance with the American public than some tainted "conservatism" that's true to one principle alone: Might makes Right. (Pun fully intended.)