I'm an enormous fan of E.J. Dionne, and can only imagine how difficult it must be to come up with two original theses for the op-ed page every week. But his column today seems to me a major stretch. His point is that conservative orthodoxy is in a state of collapse. His evidence is that, "In Tuesday's Republican presidential debate in South Carolina, every leading candidate declared independence from some piece of dogma or another"--Giuliani on abortion, Huckabee on taxes, McCain on torture, Romney on education. As Dionne explains, Republicans "know in their guts that their old axioms don't work anymore because their constituencies are breaking up." Perhaps. But the idea that the heresies (most of them minor) on display in South Carolina somehow represent the GOP candidates' efforts to rethink party ideology seems, well, wrong. For the most part, they're exactly what they appear to be: The candidates' efforts to deal with (and, wherever possible, minimize) their inconvenient political baggage. As Dionne notes, Huckabee may have raised taxes as governor of Arkansas, but he still pitches himself as a fiscal conservative who cut taxes "94 times." Giuliani has only embraced his pro-choice past because his earlier efforts to finesse it away were such an abject failure. As for Romney, he defended a federal role in education because he was specifically asked whether, in light of his many convenient ideological conversions (on abortion, gay rights, etc.), he'd had any conversions that might hurt him with the base. Defending No Child Left Behind seemed a better bet than admitting that he's a shameless, flip-flopping opportunist. Really, the only candidate who proudly defended his apostasy was McCain on torture. Far from being characterized by the kind of freethinking, let's-reinvent-the-party spirit Dionne seems to describe, the GOP primary has thus far been a race to the right on almost every issue: McCain suddenly recognizing the advantages of tax cuts for the rich, Romney reeducating himself on fetal rights, and of course everyone (with the exception of fringe candidate Ron Paul) embracing a war that, while ever-more unpopular with the public at large, is still a rallying cry for the GOP base. Moreover, even these bows to conservative orthodoxy haven't been enough. The GOP search for a "true conservative" to enter the race is ongoing, and has become so desperate that it's fixated on Fred Thompson, a formerly pro-choice, pro-campaign finance reform, Howard-Baker-style moderate who's had the good fortune to play a conservative on television for several years. So, yes, there were some heresies presented in the South Carolina debate. But it's not because the GOP is suddenly open to heresy; it's because, search as it might, the only minimally plausible candidates it can find happen to be former heretics. --Christopher Orr