Cliven Bundy started as a conservative cause célèbre. He was surrounded by a small, brave, band of patriots standing courageously against federal tyranny.

Then came this:

"I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro."

Followup televised clarifications haven't helped him, but the very first interview endowed him with the green glow of conservative kryptonite.

And because they were basically on government subsidy – so now what do they do? They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never, they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered are they were better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things? Or are they better off under government subsidy?

- Cliven Bundy, April 23, 2014

Even the wingiest of wingnuts have scrambled for lead shields. The gleeful aiming of firearms at fleeing workers from the Bureau of Land Management has gone from the subject of bombastic boasts to the subject of FBI investigations. Members of Cliven Bundy's well armed band of brothers are now the keystone cowboys.

Racial suspicion remains the undercurrent of American politics. But recognizable, overt, in-your-face, racism strikes a painful nerve. Conservatives have nurtured the myth that racism is over, that the only remaining racism lies within those who perceive racism.

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North Carolina's new Republican nominee for the United States Senate, Thom Tillis, is Speaker of the State House of Representatives. He has worked tirelessly to cut back Medicaid in North Carolina. Folks in Thom Tillis' state who are seriously ill or disabled, and who cannot afford medical insurance, are blocked from receiving federal help.

Speaker Tillis refers to objections to the restrictions as "whining coming from losers." He is on video describing to an appreciative audience how he intends to appeal to those losers.

What we have to do is to find a way to divide and conquer the people who are on assistance.

We have to show respect for that woman who has cerebral palsy and had no choice in her condition that needs help, and that we should help. And we need to get those folks to look down at these people who choose to get into a condition that make them dependent on the government.

- Thom Tillis (R-NC), October, 2011

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Senator Lindsey Graham summarizes the memo, but he relies more on what he knows in his heart about motivation than he does on actual content.

What do you think they were worried about when she went on TV? Tell me about the property damage in Cairo? Explain the loss of the property in Cairo? They were worried about explaining the death of four Americans.

They knew America would be upset by losing the first ambassador in 33 years and other brave Americans. To say that this wasn't trying to shape the Benghazi story is inconsistent with the document itself, flies in the face of the facts, and yet another false, misleading lie.

- Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), May 1, 2014

Bill O'Reilly provides a motive for the conspiracy.

The President and the White House created a political agenda, saying a spontaneous demonstration led to the murders, not a coordinated terror attack. And they did this because the President was running for re-election on a platform that he had broken al Qaeda and any evidence to the contrary might have hurt his campaign.

- Bill O'Reilly, Fox News, April 30, 2014

It really is the coverup, isn't it, that implicates more than the crime that's being covered up?

The conspiracy theory does have a major flaw.

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Although most opponents of civil rights laws through the 1960s were openly motivated by race, this was not true for everyone. Barry Goldwater had quietly opposed segregation in Phoenix. He later described his efforts as a series of private appeals.

The Goldwater argument against Civil Rights law was based on a largely libertarian interpretation of Constitutional rights. "You can't legislate morality." The liberal response at that time was "The Hell you can't!"

Author Jim Fedako adds a wrinkle with a sort of goose and gander logic. If customers can pick and choose which businesses they will purchase from, why can't business owners make similar choices about which patrons they will serve? If government is to restrict the right of a business to choose its customers, why not dictate to customers from whom they must buy?

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You can't just poll voters, if you want to predict how voters will choose. You have to poll voters who will choose. If a voter isn't going to vote, that voter will not have much effect on an election.

It is hard to figure out who is going to vote. Some pollsters go by past elections, taking into account what percentage of different ages, races, income groups, and educational levels have voted. So, if you find you're over-representing left handed people with blue eyes, you just count their numbers less. It's called weighting.

But weighting depends on past patterns holding in the future. Patterns are getting tricky.

It's getting harder to figure out who is going to vote for another reason. Republicans have been taking steps to make it harder for minorities and college students and working class people to vote. At the same time, courts are beginning to take a harder look at voter suppression. So it's hard to predict who will have their voting rights taken away by conservatives.

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I confess to playing with those who subscribe to biblical literalism. A conservative in 1992 told me candidate Bill Clinton was among Satan's minions. I got a little impatient with that, so I asked him if he noticed that the acceptance speech given by President George H. W. Bush was exactly 66 minutes and 6 seconds long. The look on his face kind of mitigated the fleeting guilt I remember feeling. Because, you know, I had just made it up.

More recently, another friend insisted to me that Obamacare was designed by Satan to enforce the Mark of the Beast. A number would be issued to everyone. All business, even buying from supermarkets, would require that number. I suppose that, over the years, I have gotten a little bored with that sort of talk. So I succumbed to temptation yet again.

A number issued to everyone? You mean like the Social Security number you carry in your wallet? The startled realization that he was already among the doomed pretty much ended the discussion.

I got to thinking about religious paranoia as I read about the impeachment of Nixon. That is to say Jay Nixon, the governor of Missouri. Jay Nixon is a Democrat. The Missouri House of Representatives is dominated by Republicans. They are even more conservative than those national Republicans we all know and love. In fact, they erected a little statue in the Capitol Building in Jefferson City in honor of Rush Limbaugh. No kidding, they really did that.

Governor Jay Nixon is pretty popular in Missouri. But Republicans regard him as a horrible chief executive. They have three reasons.

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Professor Ian Morris of Stanford University knows how to sell his work. He has just published a book the central thesis of which is that war, over the long range, is good. The implication is that we should want more of it, because war brings peace.

He has written the short version in an article published by the Washington Post last week. His logic isn't hard to follow. War leads to to expansion, which leads to empire, which leads to law, which leads to order, which is ... well ... peace. What holds it all together is economic interest.

Empires were established to enrich those who ran the base countries. Romans wanted to tax dominated subjects. It was messy, but it worked. They put taxing franchises up for local bid in the conquered provinces. Those individuals who paid enough for the privilege were given their quotas. At tax time, they sent the required amount to Rome. If they collected more, they were allowed to pocket the difference.

That pretty much explains how tax collectors are viewed in the New Testament, and why the fact that Jesus would occasionally commune with them was a potent accusation. Tax collectors were not popular people.

But empires also benefited from trade. Trade routes were protected from lawlessness. Trade had the unintended effect, from the viewpoint of the rulers, of benefiting both sides of each bargain. The Empire was enriched, and so were those in conquered territories.

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Republicans, for the most part, seem to regard Mitt Romney as vindicated by the aggression of Vladimir Putin toward Ukraine. Not surprisingly, Mr. Romney takes his place at the head of the line.

Well, there's no question but that the President's naivete with regards to Russia, and his faulty judgment about Russia's intentions and objectives, has led to a number of foreign policy challenges that we face.

- Mitt Romney, on Face the Nation, March 23, 2014

And, who can blame them? Barack Obama verbally beat Mr. Romney to a pulp during one of the debates in 2012.

Governor Romney, I'm glad that you recognize that al Qaeda is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what's the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not al Qaeda; you said Russia.

The 1980s, they're now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War's been over for 20 years.

- President Barack Obama, October 22, 2012

At the time, Mitt Romney pointed out that he had said no such thing. He had only suggested that Russia was one of several threats to the United States. He had, in fact, pointed to to Iran as the greatest threat.

But he did have one problem. Television can be video taped.

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Republicans have been counting on Obamacare being a train wreck. It has been their number one issue, with number two being a blank. If the economy bumps up, if President Obama's popularity increases, it will help Democrats.

If Obamacare turns into a wild success, maybe election losses will be less than anyone now believes.

Well, keep not believing it.

The Fox poll says this:

Most voters say ObamaCare will play an important role in their vote in this year’s elections, and over half are more inclined to back the candidate who opposes the health care law.

- Fox News Survey, released April 21, 2014

Yeah, I know. Fox.

These are the same people who were so confident Obama would lose in 2012. They're the same folks who tell polling participants that President Obama and his administration are lying, then ask the polling question: why do you think they're lying?

Here's why they're right on this one.

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Until recent times, it wasn't that hard to trace philosophical principles of conservatism going back hundreds of years.

American conservatism continued to hold Edmund Burke to heart long after British conservatives moved on. Perhaps it was because Burke was able to oppose the French revolution, but supported American independence.

There were other differences. Adam Smith, with his economic model of capitalistic self-regulation, the invisible hand, was more enthusiastically embraced in England, at first. Americans liked Smith, but with reservations. Hard to believe now.

The clearest separation between British and American conservatives eventually came over slavery. Conservatives in Britain became suspicious, then hostile, to the proposition that one human could own another. American conservatism has evolved, but has always been way behind the British curve.

There were other influences. David Hume went toward pragmatism, John Locke to personal rights. In more modern times, William F. Buckley became a guiding light. He shepherded American conservatism back to Burke and Hume.

Today, the intellectual moorings of American conservatism have changed to fit the times. The most vibrant of conservatives have little use for philosophical constructs from past centuries, or even past decades.

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