And that -- phrased different ways or from different perspectives -- was the conservative realist line of opposition to the whole enterprise -- the arguments Kaplan and his compatriots villified and slurred for literally years. Kaplan's one of the smartest and most candid of the neocons (not much of a compliment in itself, I grant you, but deserved in a fuller sense in his case). But here you have the final come-down. Not an admission of error here or there or in execution, but total -- that the whole idea and concept and program was upside-down-wrong in its essence.

Mark the moment -- that's the ghost given up.

-- Josh Marshall

So: if you go by what people say, conservatives outnumber liberals 55% to 32%. If you go by how they act, conservatives outnumber liberals 47% to 40%. Here's a bit more detail on how this breaks down:

Adults are conservative on foreign policy and national security (52 to 48) and values (62 to 38), but liberal on economic/social policy (57 to 43) and fiscal policy (60 to 40). Consistent with the idea that liberal is a stigmatized word, just 56 percent of operational liberals self-identified as liberal, while 30 percent self-identified as conservative. In contrast, 79 percent of operational conservatives said they were conservative.

If you're interested, there's more detail over at Scott's blog.

The National Review’s John Derbyshire explains why he’s uneasy about immigration: “The U.S.A. was born with two race problems: the African Americans and the Native Americans. … Would it be wise to import a new one? Mass immigration from (say) Indonesia or (say) Bangladesh would add a huge visibly identifiable minority to our nation.”