MONEY TALKS, BULLSHIT WALKS. As I've observed before, conservatives vacillate between delusions of grandeur and delusions of persecution, depending on their psychological need at any given moment. These days, with Obama's poll numbers down, they're on the peppy side of the mood swing, and think they can do anything. At Ricochet, Peter Robinson:

Here on Ricochet the other day, Conor Friedersdorf asked, in effect, What would it take? What would those behind the mosque at ground zero have to do to demonstrate good faith? An arresting question. If the organizers of “Cordoba House” would publish the following brief manifesto, I’ve decided, I would welcome them to lower Manhattan. Heck. I’d contribute a hundred bucks to their construction fund.

Robinson then supplies a script for the mosquers to mouth, including much shit-eating and a declaration that "we will accept no Saudi funding whatsoever" (which, oddly, does not include an invitation to the Bush Family to do likewise).

Josh Treviño has been tweeting his own demands: "In exchange for the "Ground Zero mosque," Cordoba/ASMA could cover the legal bills of the Christian evangelists arrested in Dearborn... In exchange for the "Ground Zero mosque," Cordoba/ASMA could advocate for religious liberty in Saudi Arabia..."

They're acting as if they have anything to say about it. But Mike Bloomberg wants the mosque -- and, as one may observe by watching, Bloomberg gets what he wants, unless the complicating factor (as with the West Side Stadium project) is money.

And money isn't in it this time. No conservative group is going to make a serious counter-offer for the space. And none will ever be made. Because all their righteous yelling about those damn Mooslims isn't meant to stop the project -- it's meant to exploit it, so that their honky base will know that whenever White Christian America was under attack by liberals, conservatives were there, standing athwart everything crying, "Restricted!"

Whatever happens, one side will feel outrage and another will feel vindication. But in the end the disposition of the mosque, like so many of our allegedly moral issues, will be settled by money. Conservatives think they deserve a seat at the table, but it's covered with green felt and they simply don't have the chips.