A recent poll indicates that, at present, those identifying themselves as conservatives outnumber liberals by more than 10 percentage points. That's not so surprising. What is surprising is that, for the first time in many years, conservatives outnumber moderates by 4 percentage points.

I can't get too excited about this, though, and not because I'm not solidly conservative in my own views. What we're observing, I believe, is just the latest finger-out-the-window knee-jerk reaction of an electorate that operates basically on one priniciple: What's in it for me? Mr. Obama looked like a really oh-boy neat choice a year ago - for whatever reason - and so the fickle folk marched to the polls, somehow convinced that all his impossible promises would be kept, and put in office the most unqualified man to serve as President in my lifetime.

Now, when it looks like he's going to "fix health care" at the expense of everything else - tax and premium increases, overworked medical professionals, and growing government involvement in our lives - and when his track record in such areas as hiring staff and advisors, meddling in the economy, keeping the country safe from terror, and facing down the would-be nuclear bullies of the world makes us feel not quite so safe and not quite so secure, people are having second thoughts (Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, to be fair, are also helping to tip the balance of the electorate away from the politics of equivocation, bribery, and government-grabs).

But it's the President who isn't making things better for us. And he's a liberal. So swing the pendulum the other way and put your hopes on - whom?

An ill-informed, self-absorbed, materialistic electorate, with a fading sense of history, is nothing to cheer about. If there was ever a time for serious political conversation at the grass roots level about the nature and limits of government, the meaning of the common weal, and the practice of politics without corruption, this is it. But who will engage those conversations? Who will take it upon himself to talk some sense into his neighbor about the larger issues of liberty, political responsibility, national leadership, and morality?

If not you and I, who?

T. M. Moore