I don't get how the current incarnation of the Republican party could possibly be thought of as conservative.
There are a lot of strands of conservatism. "Small Government" is actually only one strand and a recent one at that.
As someone who is very far from a conservative, but tries to grapple intellectually with positions that differ from my own, there are some very valuable strands in the conservative tradition. It is just that most living conservatives tend not to pay much attention to them. "Compassionate Conservative" does not have to be just a bitter joke. There is a whole tradition of humane conservatives - Jonathan Swift, Burke, Disraeli, and some of the Inklings such as Chesterton and C.S. Lewis. That tradition includes a concern that abstract principle should not outweigh empirical evidence, that trust in potential virtue should be tempered by awareness of the range of actual human behavior, that policy and process alike should take into consideration human fallibility. Love of war and tolerance for cruelty are not fundamental to conservative philosophy. Because nobody wins everything I would prefer my conservative opponents be thoughtful humane, and fundamentally decent - also because I'd rather have an honorable opponent than a rabid enemy. For this reason I wish some thoughtful conservatives would go back to the best rather than worst of their intellectual roots, to drastically rethink conservatism. But I think conservatives may want to do this for their own sake as well.
Although Gore Vidal is usually thought of a far leftists, I sometimes suspect him of being a humane decent conservative - a "Red Tory".
