No conservatives anymore? Actually, compared to virtually all other nations, the US hasn't got a political left. Republicans take a hard right approach, and Dem's just take a weak right approach. A true political hard left would be a communist party, with a weak left of a socialist party.
Of course, I'm only talking about what they claim to be - actually our "conservatives" lately have been incredibly on the tax-and-spend side of things fiscally ever since the neo-cons took over the republican party. The trouble is that all the spending is on third-world nation type concerns that benefit only those already rich or those who like serving in the military at wartime. At least some liberal spending would be economically beneficial to the country instead of a few rich bastards, saudi arabia, and china, as the current administration has made it.
The funny part of it all is that our "liberal" side is now the more protectionist, our conservative side more guilty of flagrant deficit spending. Meanwhile, true to the part of siding with the rich, republicans policies are breaking our economy because they fear regulation, which is simply a set of rules to play by. Apparently conservatives also fear history books, where it warns about fat cat economics, and what happens when you don't have firm anti-trust laws and such.
Here's another thing to look at - ever wonder why our prison population and recividism rate are so vastly higher than other westernised nations? It really started to break the camel's back when we started hard-line republican "tough-on-crime" legislation that just said, "we're scared of criminals, lock them up and give them nothing more to live for. Make it harder for them to get jobs, lose the stigma or anything else, and maybe it will make less crimes happen." Yet had we taken a less terrified "liberal" approach, we could have been looking at canadian or european crime levels, by simply paying attention to consequences of such legislation - ie when it's tough to get a job and prison doesn't care about rehabilitation or teaching skills, going back to crime is just a whole lot easier.
That's where conservative fear is the problem - conservatism as pragmatism is useful, it keeps some common sense in among the idealism, but when it becomes a knee-jerk fear reaction with no attention to consequences, you get exactly the negative impact we've been seeing all along with the bush admin.
