Over at the American Thinker, J.R. Dunn says 2008 “marks the end of liberalism as a governing force in the same way that 1968 marked the end of liberalism as a political doctrine.”

Yes, but only if you believe 2009 will be the year that giant, man-eating bunnies will become our new Overlords.

Dunn goes on to make his case, which amounts to a laundry list of Democratic scandals. Spitzer and McGreevey get prominent mention. Dunn makes the usual conservative case against Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as well:

Barack Obama was supposed to be another matter. Obama has ascended on a cloud of pure moral superiority and nothing else. That has now evaporated, thanks to impolitic comments from his wife and the news that he has for two decades belonged to what amounts to a racist cult. Obama has nothing else to offer in the way of experience or achievements. Beyond his current difficulties, there lie his continuing and as yet unexplained entanglement with Tony Rezko (He barely knew the man, he insists. All he did was show Rezko his new house before closing. I always clear major purchases with people I scarcely know, don’t you?), along with pending revelations concerning his relationship with Bill Ayers, a former terrorist who began his career as one of the driving forces of the Weather Underground.

Obama’s response, his “Kennedyesque” speech on race, was in fact purely Clintonian in that it attempted to transform his failings into virtues while placing the blame on the country as a whole. (Not to mention his innocent typical white grandmother.) In less than two weeks, Obama has succeeded in lowering himself to the same level as Madame Hillary. Quite an achievement.

The problem is that Dunn, like so many other conservatives these days, lays out the case against the liberals without making the case FOR conservatives. Dunn says:

2008 is being promoted as the year of the Democrats. Under the circumstances, it’s difficult to see this as anything but media hype. Weak as the Republicans may be, they do boast such figures as Schwarzenegger, Jindal, Crist, and Coburn among many others, not to mention a presidential candidate who, whatever his drawbacks, is a different order of being than the opposition.

But there have been danger signs. In the past few years, we’ve seen a number of “conservative” politicians who have adapted the liberal style, masking their own flaws with acceptable rhetoric. The latest of these is Mike Huckabee, who presented himself as a conservative messiah while governing Arkansas like… well, like a typical governor of Arkansas. Liberalism has demonstrated that these tactics lead nowhere. We must be careful not to succumb.

Liberalism will stagger on. It still has control of all those urban political machines, along with the unions and bureaucracies. But it has no future. Personality cults and ideology will take you only so far. We may yet live to see this albatross removed from the nation’s back.

If you’ve read my favorite book of the year, then you’ve at least been exposed to the theory that liberalism (and liberal fascism in particular) is ALREADY here, and can be found in both Democrat and Republican policies. The center has inched leftward in many ways, and I’ve heard very few people explain why this is a bad thing.

I’m sure that Dunn is writing for a conservative audience and therefore doesn’t feel the need to explain why and how conservatism is a better philosophy than liberalism. But his argument that 2008 is the year liberalism dies seems far more like wishful thinking than insightful analysis, and that’s a shame.

Dunn says “Personality cults and ideology will take you only so far.” That’s true. The problem is, sometimes they’ll take you far enough that you can get into the White House, or Congress, or a governor’s mansion. And until conservatives can effectively explain why our philosophy and ideology leads to a better life, snarking about liberals won’t do much but cheer up the choir.

Jim: Every political movement looks its worst when the public has gotten to see its failures — or failures committed in its name — up close and personal. The liberalism of Bill Clinton’s first two years, and the Carter-era Democratic control of the White House, House, and Senate, is long forgotten. Most of Obama’s youngest supporters have no memory of the Iranian hostage crisis, gas lines, “malaise”, etc. Even the Clinton administration’s early botching of health care reform, the failure to provide armored vehicles and worldwide perception of defeat of U.S. military forces in Somalia, Jocelyn Elders’ pledge to teach masturbation in schools, even Clinton’s failed effort to bring sides together to avoid the cancellation of the World Series — these are long-forgotten as examples of what happens when the left gets their hands on the controls of government.

Right now, Americans have seen what happens when a country is invaded based on faulty intelligence, with limited discussion of the commitment of blood and treasure required to complete the task. They have seen Republican Congressmen go to jail for corruption, so-called conservatives spend like there’s no tomorrow, and several Bush appointees fall well short of what the moment demands. They’ve seen a personal lawyer nominated for the Supreme Court. They’ve seen a Republican senator withdraw his resignation after getting caught toe-tapping in men’s rooms. Failures of the Democrats and the left are dusty memories; failures of Republicans and the right are in living color above the fold. That’s not media bias, that’s just a matter of where and when.

Conservatives can say that liberals have a bunch of ideas that sound good in theory and always fall apart in practice — but Americans may need to see it to believe it again. The American voter has a remarkable capacity to unlearn quickly.