As President Obama stakes out a gun safety position previously held by Ronald Reagan, and endorsed as constitutional by Antonin Scalia, today's loudest conservative voices are comparing the Reagan/Scalia/Obama position to Hitler and threatening responses that go as far as impeachment, nullification, violent resistance and secession. It's all rather head-spinning, to say the least.

But the elite US media treats it as perfectly normal. And in one sense they're right: for decades now, it's been the norm for conservatives to switch gears and reinvent themselves in crazy ways, rather than deal soberly with the policy failures their previous lock-step thinking has created.

The Tea Party brand of so-called "constitutional conservatism" was born out of the ashes of the George W Bush brand of so-called "compassionate conservatism", which in turn was born out of the ashes of the Newt Gingrich/Dick Armey brand of "impeach Clinton conservatism", which in turn was born out of the ashes of... well, you get the idea.

For a political philosophy that supposedly worships eternal values, hallowed traditions and continuity, rather than abrupt change, conservatism of late seems to tear through costume changes like a drag queen on steroids.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/20132371127714836.html