Conservatism is not a static ideology. It is not an ideology at all, actually, but it is especially not a static one. But ostensible conservatives today like to act as though the decision of the ages rests upon whether we want Obama in or out. Everything rides on the consequences of this election.
This is why history is left out of it. Historical icons are not left out of it, but that is a different thing altogether. For example, Newt has said that FDR was the greatest president of the 20th century, and he fancies himself cut from the Woodrow Wilsonian cloth. To both of which, well-read conservatives go arrgghhhh!
But Glenn Beck does the same thing with Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. — which is like some Obama knock-off fifty years from now having campaign rallies with big posters of Reagan and Mao. Would somebody please read a book? Real historical understanding circles the memory hole.
How we got to these particular election choices is part of a story. We need to learn how to read the story. We cannot just gesture to dead-and-gone figures whose only reason for involvement in our current debates is the fact that they mattered enough in their time for us to still know their names today.
The famous saying is that those who do not know the past are condemned to repeat it. One popular way of not knowing the past is to “like” presidents you don’t know anything about. Like Teddy Roosevelt. There’s another one who did a lot of damage, despite being a swell guy.