Erick Erickson’s warning to conservatives (and Ann Coulter)

Matt K. Lewis Senior Contributor
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I’ve seen this movie before. So have you.

Conservatives are persuaded to cast aside their principles to help a Republican. Those unwilling to make this compromise are accused of aiding and abetting the enemy — tantamount to helping the left. Eventually, conservatives get burned and swear never to be co-opted again.

(Repeat cycle.)

This, of course, happened during the Bush years when many conservative leaders and writers were co-opted.

In the wake of the Bush era, many swore it would never happen again.

But it is.

Over at RedState, Erick Erickson has penned a pointed warning:

I am afraid supporting Mitt Romney will undo a lot of the repairs made to the conservative movement in the past few years. Already people are defending inherently not conservative ideas by calling them conservative. Already people are too willing to keep their mouth shut to do no harm to the party and, in the process, are doing harm to the intellectual capital built up within the conservative movement.

Ann Coulter’s defense of Romneycare, released on the same day Romney rejected years of conservative arguments against the social safety net and the welfare state, is a canary in the coal mine. We are returning to that point where the voters decided they could no longer trust conservatives to be principled.

Matt K. Lewis