"I feel confident this is a very reasonable and conservative argument."
But by attacking conservative arguments on arms, it also alters the terms of debate in Washington.
In doing so it confounded certain conservative legal arguments and expectations.
Opponents of affirmative action don't buy conservative arguments that racial balancing is acceptable.
According to the conservative argument, international labor standards leave developing nations with a diminished export economy.
They say that notion has been fostered by the conservative argument for adoption as an alternative to abortion.
It's not just the administrators and student groups on campus who view conservative arguments as beneath contempt.
But an imaginative union leadership could turn the conservative argument on its head.
Most people would condemn this as a dystopia because of conservative religious or "moral" arguments.
Yet liberals have never been able to counter the conservative argument that inequality promotes the welfare of all.