Thousands of US conservatives gathered in Washington yesterday feeling betrayed by President Bush, dispirited by Republican presidential candidates and depressed by the once unthinkable: their failure to demonise Hillary Clinton. The thought of a female President Clinton once seemed a horrifying prospect, guaranteed to galvanise the Right just as her husband did in the 1990s.

But with morale among conservatives at its lowest ebb for over a decade, and the movement more fractured than at any point since the Cold War, the grassroots uprising against Mrs Clinton has so far failed to materialise. Many are now realising that the determination with which she has embarked on her quest for the Democratic nomination makes defeating her a formidable challenge.

“She’s moderated her image. She’s tougher on the War on Terror and she has not aligned herself with the antiwar Left. Some conservatives think she’s not all bad,” said Christopher Ruddy, who runs NewsMax, America’s biggest conservative online magazine.

Mr Ruddy said that Mrs Clinton could be more difficult to attack than her husband.

“She’s been clever. She’s even won big in Republican districts in up-state New York [the state she represents in the Senate].

She just doesn’t get the level of intensity of love and hate that Bill Clinton got.”

At the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, the biggest annual gathering of the American Right where the heroes are Ronald Reagan, low taxes, small government and gun rights, the pressing issue of the day for the 6,000 attending was not a Clinton restoration, but a conservative resurrection.

After a President who has indulged in a spending binge greater than under Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, and embarked on a catastrophic war in Iraq, many said conservatives were looking inward, rather than at the spectre of a candidate Clinton.

David Franke, a veteran conservative and author, said that one of the main reasons the former First Lady had not yet suffered a barrage from those on the Right was because conservatives were so dispirited.

“Bush has not governed as a conservative, and this has sown confusion in the ranks. We are too busy trying to sort ourselves out. And it is going to be hard to come up with the level of animosity [against the Clintons] as it was in the 1990s.”

Cliff Jackson, an old Clinton foe from Arkansas, believes a certain war-weariness has set in. “Some people are sick of it,” he said.

Perhaps sensing that Mrs Clinton may be getting too much of a free ride from the Right, Newt Gingrich, Mr Clinton’s nemesis in the mid1990s, issued a wake-up call to his fellow conservatives. The former House Speaker and potential Republican White House candidate, who in recent years has praised Mrs Clinton publicly, reverted to his old 1990s role as a sworn enemy by calling her a “nasty woman”.

In a clear warning to conservatives to galvanise themselves to the Clinton threat, Mr Gingrich, talking to the New York Post, said of the former President and his wife: “You can’t beat them tactically. They’re too well organised.” At the Washington conference there were signs that the antiClinton machine was stirring. Activists handed out “Stop Her Now” badges and stickers.

Morton Blackwell, a veteran conservative activist, said that if she were nominated conservatives would mobilise.

“It could get even worse for her [than it was for Bill] because she does not have the personality,” he said. He disagreed that she is a more elusive target than her husband, and said that there was a conservative army in the wings.

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