So Democrats are in general disarray. They're scrambling (so far unsuccessfully) to come up with a coherent position on the war and seem content to treat their total lack of a domestic agenda like a movie studio whose next feature doesn't open for nine more months: COMING FALL 2006: WHAT WE STAND FOR AS A PARTY.

Republicans, on the other hand, aren't doing much better. The White House has all it can handle trying to prop up public support for the war in Iraq, and the Republican Congress is bogged down with ethics investigations and squabbles over spending. Big ticket agenda items like Social Security reform have been tossed overboard without being replaced by anything new.  The President recently took a stab at pushing immigration reform and the House just passed another round of tax cuts yesterday, but still there is a distinct sense of a loss of momentum and lack of direction. 

Clearly, part of this is the season. We're at the end of another long, tumultous year.  But it feels like there's more to it than that. David Brooks senses it as well, and today he argues that the conservative movement has just about run out of steam for six reasons:

1) most of the issues that propelled conservatives to power have been addressed.
2) conservatism has been semi-absorbed into the Republican Party making it less creative and energetic.
3) conservative media success has led to intellectual flabbiness.
4) conservatives have lost their governing philosophy. They arrived in D.C. in 1994 with a core purpose of shrinking government and now they've become institutionalized.
5) conservative Republicans have lost touch with their base. Republicans offer almost no policies that benefit white rural and suburban working-class voters making $30,000 to $50,000 a year.
6) conservatives have not effectively addressed the second-generation issues like income inequlity, wage stagnation and social mobility. 

As usual, Brooks is right about a lot of this. For a movement and party that enjoys control over two of the three branches of government there has been a surprising lack of innovation, thought, and effort coming from Republicans recently. Who in Congress has been effectively articulating a vision or agenda to the American people in the last few months? Certainly not Bill Frist in the Senate. Not Tom DeLay or Denny Hastert in the House.

At the White House, George W. Bush's election theme of an "ownership society" was fresh and interesting, but it's been hidden away in a cryogenic freezer somewhere along with its mortally wounded cornerstone (the aforementioned Social Security reform).

Republicans in Congress can only reap the electoral rewards of Democrats' weakness on national security for so long.  At some point they'll need a reinvigorated agenda of their own or risk squandering decades worth of effort - something they already seem to be well on their way to doing.