The Right Right

American conservatism has been a remarkably unstable thing since the end of the Cold War. Twenty years ago, the “compassionate conservatism” of George W. Bush and the hawkish foreign-policy views of the neoconservatives were ascendant. A little less than ten years ago, the right was supposedly in the midst of a “libertarian moment,” and the Tea Party’s only rival appeared to be a high-minded and technocratic “reform conservatism.”