Rod Dreher's blog

One of the things that drew me to conservatism so many years ago was the inability of my side, the liberal one, to acknowledge how the things we believed in and advocated for had failed, and would fail if people lived by them. We acted as if we ought to be judged by our intentions, not the results of our principles put into action. Conservatives, on the other hand, as a general rule believed in taking responsibility for oneself and one's failures. But it turns out it's not true. We're just as prone to blaming everybody and everything else for our failures as anybody else. I don't suppose I can expect Palin to have written a mea culpa for her own shortcomings, but I think it would have been something that made at least some people who had written her off reconsider her. As it is, she's written a screed that will only serve to reinforce some of the worst tendencies of her base to consider all criticism a form of unjust persecution. That's not something limited to the right, of course, but it's a shame to see this mentality having settled in just as strongly on our side as on the left. It has broader implications for a movement whose self-examination and self-recrimination consists only of "the only thing wrong with us is we didn't do what Reagan would have done." Clark Stooksbury notes:

One lesson from the last few years is that movement conservatives are never responsible--they are always victims circumstance, the Liberal Media, or of nefarious "moderates" and "RINOs" that nobody previously noticed being in charge in the GOP.

As has often been noted, in this way of thinking, conservatism can never fail, it can only be failed. Or betrayed. Same with conservatives.