It's no understatement to say the Coalition is in the doldrums in Canberra and across much of the nation. But the crisis of conservatism is hardly confined to Australia. Take a close look at both Liberals here and Republicans in the US, and you note striking similarities which may explain why the conservative movement is in dire straits on both sides of the Pacific.
The Liberals and Republicans are out of power and struggling to gain traction in the opinion polls.
They are riven by factionalism that threatens to splinter them on public policy issues. And they are displaying a lack of philosophical direction.
Their centre-left opponents -- the Australian Labor Party and the US Democrats -- are in the political stratosphere and repudiating much of the so-called neo-liberal agenda of recent decades.
Take leadership. In the US, Republicans no longer control the White House or either house of congress, and they are steadily losing state offices across the land. A recent poll asked conservatives and Republicans whom they regard as their leader. Ten per cent nominated radio broadcaster Rush Limbaugh, 10 per cent said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and 9 per cent suggested former vice president Dick Cheney. None is an elected representative and all have virtually ruled out running for national office.
This does not bode well for Republicans at either next year's congressional elections or the presidential election in 2012. When the GOP was out of power in all layers of government in 1993-94 and 1976-80, a majority of conservatives still had no doubt about their leaders: veteran senator Bob Dole and former Californian governor Ronald Reagan, respectively.
In Australia, meanwhile, Liberals are out of power in Canberra and all but one of the eight states and territories. Until their election loss 19 months ago, most MPs had known only the green pastures of government under the watchful eye of John Howard. Political commentator Michelle Grattan has said they have since been like children who've lost their father.
Last week's polls, moreover, show a substantial increase in Malcolm Turnbull's disapproval rating and a majority of voters would prefer Peter Costello, who is leaving politics, or Joe Hockey, who is too inexperienced, to lead the Coalition.
Take unity: The American conservative movement that carried Ronald Reagan to landslide elections in the 1980s has dissipated into various cantankerous factions. To be sure, US conservatism has always contained different factions within it: deficit hawks and supply-siders; libertarians and social conservatives; and realists who stress the national interest and balance of power and neoconservatives who preach democracy promotion and a Pax Americana.
But from the time of the birth of modern-day conservatism in the mid 1950s until the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, these factions were always subordinated to the larger anti-Communist and anti-liberal welfare state consensus. In the past 15 years, although the GOP has dominated Washington's political agenda, conservative divisions are increasingly on show on foreign, economic and social policy.
In Australia, the divisions are not so pronounced, but they are evident most notably over border protection, emissions trading, industrial relations and the stimulus package. On each occasion, the leader reportedly planned to give bipartisan support to Labor, but the more conservative backbenchers pushed him right.
The result is confusion on any number of issues. Should a Liberal listen to John Howard or John Hewson on climate change? Should he give priority to cutting "middle class welfare", as Joe Hockey implied this week, or increasing the incentive to embrace private health insurance, as Tony Abbott believes?
Should a Republican pay attention to Steve Forbes' sermons on free trade or to Mike Huckabee's warnings about unfair Chinese trade practices? Should he derive his foreign policy from Charles Krauthammer or Henry Kissinger?
Take belief: Many US conservatives lament that their cause has lost its philosophical bearings and that after 50 years of ascendancy, the movement is suffering the kind of mental sclerosis that began to afflict Democratic liberalism decades ago. In recent years, the party of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan has become the don't-rock-the-boat party content to feed pork to different special interest groups.
And just as conspiracy theories ran amok on the left during the Bush years, right-wing pundits are peddling crackpot arguments about Barack Obama. Mitch Daniels, the Indian Republican Governor, spoke for many when he recently urged fellow Republicans to dump Reagan as a contemporary symbol. But few have any clear answers about what to do.
In Australia, as Howard often stressed, the Liberal Party is a "broad church", one capable of embracing a variety of beliefs and of implementing a range of policies depending on what the circumstances permit and what the priorities of the day demand.
Above all else, the two traditions of liberalism -- which stresses the importance of individualism and limited government -- and conservatism -- which defends order and constrains change -- are mutually reinforcing. The question is not which one is right for the party to adopt in perpetuity, but what balance is appropriate at any given time.
Centre right parties reign supreme in Canada, Western Europe and New Zealand. And Tories are odds-on favourites to win the next British elections due within 12 months.
But times are tough for conservatives in Australia and that US. The task to rejuvenate the Liberal and Republican parties is a key challenge in coming years.
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