Though it has only been two weeks since the presidential election, a battle for the heart and soul of the Republican party is clearly underway, representing nothing less than a defining moment regarding the future of American conservatism. Columnist David Brooks recently characterized the impending battle for the soul of the party as a looming war between reformers and traditionalists.

With the future of the GOP at stake, respective armies have taken the field of battle and are now preparing for war.

The army to which I have volunteered for enlistment represents traditional conservative thought – a fusion of Christian principles, free enterprise, limited government, fiscal responsibility, free market policies, reduced tax rates, morality in government, strong national defense, federalism and Constitutional checks and balances.

It is an army which fights to preserve what conservative Frank Meyer called “the Christian understanding of the nature and destiny of man.” Steeped in the heritage of Western civilization, it represents an army of reason operating within tradition, and it recognizes its origin as the 1787 Constitutional Convention.

It fights for our capacity for self-government and will never abandon the ideas of the American Revolution, refusing to confess, “that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.” It defends the legacies of our honored heroes Robert Taft, Russell Kirk, Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan, while lifting banners of bold colors and courageous symbols.

Evidencing a successful and battle-hardened combat force, its recent victories include presidential elections in 1980 and 1984, as well as an impressive midterm revolution in 1994. It has proved on at least three occasions that when a conservative message is properly articulated to the American people, victory with honor is attainable.

On the other end of the Republican field of battle stands a combat force representing a new reformist ideology. While its ultimate goals have never been specifically articulated, it has become highly critical and strangely suspicious of earlier Republican coalitions, particularly those involving constitutionalists and social conservatives.

Struggling to preserve the unenvious legacy of Nelson Rockefeller and sharing the mindset of aristocracy, the reformist army is a small combat force which triumphs self-professed intellect over religious faith and political victory over core principles.

It is an army of abstract analyses, rather than one of action, and it often operates as an excuse-making mechanism for past electoral failure.

Despite claiming to be a proud and prestigious force, it rallies its beleaguered troops under a plain banner of pale pastels. To confuse its opposition, it occasionally carries a big tent into battle, but the tent is seldom erected and has never been filled to capacity.

Displaying evidence of this army’s ferocity, one of its generals, David Brooks, a New York Times columnist who claims to be a Republican, foolishly described Sarah Palin as a “fatal cancer to the Republican party.” Brooks likewise argued that McCain’s defeat should be blamed on conservatives who “continue to insult the sensibilities of the educated class and the entire East and West Coasts.”

Still another reformist general, writer David Frum, has argued that values-based voters need to be jettisoned from the Republican party because “College-educated Americans have come to believe that their money is safe with Democrats – but their values are under threat from Republicans.” Frum stubbornly insists that the party must change “on issues ranging from the environment to abortion . . . toward a future that is less overtly religious, less negligent with policy and less polarizing on social issues.”

Their respective analyses represent not only the dilution of core conservative principles but also wreak of anti-Jeffersonian political elitism. By embarking on a path which leads to the abandonment of social conservatism, Brooks and Frum have demonstrated their discontentment with the very voters who have been the party’s most loyal companions since the election of Ronald Reagan.

Their musings represent a “reformed” ideology of weakness, since the surrendering of such issues will never effectively deliver the political successes they crave. Instead, their philosophy is a thought process that has resulted in decent people – like Sarah Palin – being scorned by the cultural and political elite.

Making the mistake that social conservatism is a marginal or irrelevant political subgroup could not be more self-destructive to the conservative cause, since the religious right is an energizing component of the Republican party’s conservative movement.