Back to GOP basics, Mr. President

William F. Buckley, American conservatism’s gray eminence, was recently asked by a writer for The New Yorker what he thought about the state of the movement he helped found 50 years ago. Said Mr. Buckley, “I’m not happy about it.” More and more of us on the right feel his pain.

Conservatism, said Buckley, is “to a considerable extent, the acknowledgment of realities. And this is surreal.”

He was talking about President Bush’s grandiose wish to frog-march liberal democracy around the globe, but he could have been speaking of any number of unconservative things foisted upon the country by an ostensibly conservative president and a compliant Republican Congress.

American conservatism was thrown in crisis because the bizarre Harriet Miers nomination imposed a surreality check on the right, forcing us to consider just how much nonsense we had gone along with for the sake of party discipline.

Where to start? With the LBJ-level spending? The signing of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, which candidate Bush had denounced as unconstitutional? The race-preferences sellout in the University of Michigan cases?

There was also the cynical use of the federal marriage amendment, which the administration dropped after turning out the social conservative vote in 2004. And grass-roots conservatives cite the president’s intent to liberalize immigration policy with Mexico.

Then there is the Iraq quagmire, which, even if initially a worthy cause, has become a rolling disaster.

On top of this came the Katrina debacle, which further damaged conservatism’s claim to competent governance.

Conservatives, consciously or not, looked the other way for far too long, mostly because we felt it important to back the president in wartime and because nothing was more important to the various tribes of Red State Nation than recapturing the Supreme Court. For the first time in a generation, a conservative Republican president and a Republican majority in the Senate made that dream a real possibility.

Whatever else Bush might fumble, we trusted him to get that right.

Instead, he gave us a crony pick of no special talents or discernible vision, except for love of Our Lord and George W. Bush, and support for racial preferences. This is what we drank the Rovian Kool-Aid for? The Miers selection was no isolated incident, but the tipping point in a series of betrayals.

Can this marriage be saved? For Bush’s sake, it had better be. His approval rating is in the ditch, and most Americans are rightly uneasy about the future. If special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald delivers an indictment of Karl Rove, this presidency will be close to flat-lining — with three years left to go.

Movement conservatives have issued a rude altar call to the backslidden president. Now that Miers has withdrawn her name, Bush has to replace her with a conservative jurist of the first intellectual rank (Michael McConnell, say).

Result: a unified base, fired up to rally for battle behind the president on this and other fronts.

He should also push Congress for big spending cuts. If framed correctly — as acts of courage and responsibility in the face of mounting fiscal adversity — they would signal bold leadership in changed circumstances and remind conservatives what we are supposed to be for.

He should also surprise us with a get-tough policy on illegal immigration, including securing the southern border and imposing tough penalties on businesses that employ illegals. This will make his corporate backers and establishment elites howl, but would be popular, as Americans — even Democrats — oppose by wide margins policies coddling those in the country illegally.

Will the president do any of this? Well, what choice does he have? Bush has alienated both a significant portion of his base and all of his opposition, so he cannot hope to triangulate his way out of this one. With his political blood in the water and toothsome challenges making ever-tighter circles around his presidency, Bush should give his mutinous mates a reason to toss him a life preserver.

Conservatism is in an unhappy place now, but the movement is still bristling with intellectual ferment and ideological confidence and is beginning to look past the Bush era to new leadership.

Truth to tell, Bush needs conservatives a lot more than conservatives need him.

Back to basics, Bush. Show us some love.