Megan McArdle asks:

Are conservatives out of ideas? Um, no. But the conservatives aren't running the Republican party right now. Neither are the libertarians. Right now, fat, happy, pseudo-dems are running the party and the only ideas they possess come from the Democrats. It's called liberalism lite and it sucks.

Megan posits that some are looking forward to the years in the wilderness:

There is, however, a nascent optimism in the conservative and libertarian policy worlds. The last five years have been pretty demoralizing. Now I'm seeing more and more people who are actually looking forward to going into the wilderness for a little while, where they can get their heads together without having to worry about the intellectual compromises of actual politics. There's disgust at certain policies that they can't stop, like the revolting farm bill. But people are kind of excited about figuring out what the next big thing is.

The wilderness sucks. We've been there for the last few years. Four more years of it makes me want to hurl. There are plenty of conservative ideas, the Republican leadership just doesn't like them.

FYI, the above is part of a feature I have over at my blog called "Stuff You Should Know" which is a round up of all sorts of links that don't merit their own blog post, but are interesting. Go check it out.

Cross-posted at Dr. Melissa Clouthier