A buddy of mine once asked, what question would I ask George Will if given the opportunity. His wife is a good friend of the gal who married Will's son and he was going to a marriage ritual of some sort with Mr. Will in attendance. I told him to ask Will whether you could be a Conservative and an anarchist at the same time. In my own personal estimation one presumably could, if simply enrolled to vote as such and otherwise held a belief that government had no place in my life. Of course Will ultimately scoffed at the notion expressing the historical impossibility of such a claim. The yearning of conservatism requires hero's like Ronald Reagan for people like Will. He gave a quick speech ahead of Mitt Romney at last week's CPAC gathering and there was a lot of media noise about this event in general. 
What always amazes me about these events are the amount of people who can afford or get paid to attend such events. All these folks so far removed from the necessity of bodily employ or otherwise useful economic behavior. Somehow the Michelle Malkin's and Ann Coulter's of the world can hawk books and their cult of personality to a select core who compromise their meal ticket. A Coulter book on average only sells 90K amount of copies (from what I once saw on CSPAN, can't find hard facts quick in this case). The reality is that she'd just making sure those sales keep going up amongst the faithful who cheered on her vulgar remark about John Edwards.
As a former 'conservative' gone off the reservation for libertarianism this bit from a Lew Rockwell speech at Grove City College conference on The Legacy of Ludwig von Mises, is an appropriate zinger for this segment of pundit leisure class. Rockwell is looking at the new breed of conservative intellectual and they are surely not the class or quality of George Will;
Not so today. If you look at the personalities that dominate what is called the conservative movement, the substance of their offerings amount to little more than micro-personality cults and their method amounts to offering broadcast bromides against their political enemies. You can read all the bestsellers on the conservative book list and not find a mention of any serious political philosopher or economist. They seem intent on raising a generation of ignoramuses who don't know more than the party line of the moment. And there is plenty of blame to go around here, from a cable tv network to radio talkers to that famous fortnightly founded by the man who called for a totalitarian bureaucracy to be built within our shores.
Aside from the absence of intellect is another hide bound tradition of conservatives that they must break in order to fully realize themselves. Elected office. To my knowledge NY is one of the few states that actually has a Conservative Party. Their most notable success came with the election of James Buckley to the US Senate in 1970. Since then it has been an apology of convenience in the form of fusion voting which gives them any clout. One might make the case that their endorsement of John Faso guaranteed the GOP nomination. But given the overwhelming support for Eliot Spitzer, might they have taken a chance by running one of their own ? Of course not. They might have lost ballot status. What a genuine waste to have ballot status and simply be the water boy for the Elephants. Have some guts, run for something. That's ultimately why I left the 'party'.
If Conservatives are so self-sure in their ideology and movement, why don't they run their own for selected offices ? The answer is basically that they are lazy and easily fooled into thinking that the GOP will carry forth the proclamation and real reduction of less government. The movement may continue to champion the likes that Rockwell describes, but the foundation and underpinning is not the example of great historical likenesses, rather the crusty opining of the likes of Will. True conservatives don't have a hard time with other people's Liberty, they used to champion it. Now they just sit back and consider the spoils that can be attained through their own simplistic beliefs that are often shrouded and wrapped in GOP power. It's doubtful that the GWB experience will do anything to mollify that, let alone initiate some existential meltdown whose only recognizable solution includes gay marriage, the right to end unwanted pregnancies and something without their imaginary friend promising salvation.
If I could do it again, I'd ask " Will the modern annals of Conservatism simply be bound to the legacy of Ronald Reagan, or is there just more acerbic personalities coming ?