Conservatives are Irrelevant?

On CNN today, in the "Situation Room" (I'm sure the name was originally intended to make the program sound serious, but when you spend a good part of every day in the "Situation Room," doesn't it become the living room? The den maybe?), a panel of experts was discussing recent developments in the presidential race.

The panel noted that 14.4 million Democrats voted in the Super Tuesday primaries yesterday, while only 8.7 million Republicans came out to vote. Further, they pointed out that John McCain has all but secured the Republican nomination despite conservative pundits' best efforts to convince Republicans that McCain is not their man.

One of the experts offered the following analysis: "Conservatives are simply not relevant to what's happening in the United States today."

I thought I might examine that claim.

If Republicans = Conservatives, it seems odd to say they are irrelevant. After all, Republicans comprised 38% of those who voted on Super Tuesday. Certainly they were not the majority, but I was under the impression that the minority was not irrelevant in America. At least not to Democrats, right? Perhaps that's not the case when you disagree with the minority, or when the minority doesn't vote for you?

On the other hand, McCain's success in the Republican primaries despite conservative pundits' militancy against him seems to indicate either that Republican does not mean conservative or that conservatives are not heeding the advice of conservative pundits in this case.

If Republican does not mean conservative, then the CNN analyst could, but need not be, correct. It could be that there simply aren't many conservatives anymore, even among Republicans. In that case, they have become irrelevant in the sense that they are no longer a powerful political voice (although even then, the above comments about minorities still apply). However, it could also be that many conservatives simply did not vote in the Super Tuesday primaries, discouraged by the lack of a candidate that compels them. If that is true, it remains to be seen whether they will be irrelevant or not; conservatives would then be an untapped force in politics, still potent enough to affect the results of the primaries still to come, not to mention the general election.

Unless there are other plausible alternatives I have failed to consider, it seems the CNN analyst must have assumed that there are no longer many conservatives out there. He assumes that Republicans have become something other than conservatives--a new base, a different party with different priorities. These new Republicans are choosing John McCain.

What, then, are new Republicans' priorities? Are there enough new Republicans to effectively oppose the Democrats? Where will the remaining conservatives cast their voice? If the analyst was wrong, all of these questions are more irrelevant than conservatives. If he wasn't, what does the future hold for American politics?