Evan,

>>Conservatives eventually adopt liberal ideas after enough time has passed. Given this, you'd think that they would just become liberal to make things a little quicker.

One might equally assert that liberals claim ownership of successful ideas, punish mention of their failed ideas, and attribute most historical fault to conservatives ;-).

There are numerous dopey ideas espoused by liberals and quietly dropped when they fail. Communes, socialism, theoretical anarchy and rich western terrorism were all favorites of liberal ideology. But we only ever hear about racism and sexism that are apparently conserrvative traits. It would be regarded as impolitic to accuse a liberal of espousing drug-induced free sex or hijacking planes to force release of rich Spanish terrorists just because previous liberals thoughht that was cool. That would be "inappropriate". Such links are only appropriate when directed against Conservatives. How deeply that liberal dominance is entrenched in politics and the media!