The best example of how CPAC 2010 has failed the conservative movement is CPAC's attempt to redefine (sabotage would be a more accurate term) the potent issues of illegal immigration and border security. Whereas grass-roots conservatives and millions of 912 patriots — along with 80 percent of the American people — understand the need for border security as a precondition for immigration reform, CPAC board member Grover Norquist is busy launching a new project in support of the Obama administration's plan to grant another amnesty to 20 million illegal aliens. Neither border control nor immigration enforcement was included as a topic for any of the CPAC general sessions.

It is exceedingly odd that at the very moment everyone else is declaring the Democrats' amnesty plan dead in the water, CPAC leader Grover Norquist and a handful of Republican lobbyists are conspiring to resuscitate it. It's as though the pilots of an airplane headed to Houston decided instead to take the aircraft to Havana. But instead of a hijacking, conservatism's Beltway Politburo calls it a strategic partnership with Latino activists.

What all this tells us is that it is not only the Republican Party that is suffering an identity crisis. So is conservatism.