Jeff Jacoby, the Boston Globe’s resident conservative, doesn’t usually get it. Most of his columns - reality-based disconnects of Heritage Foundation fantasies and talking-point drafts for the Limbaugh crowd - leave the thoughtful reader either slackjawed or in stitches. But on Wednesday he actually got it, and perhaps the only thing that rendered readers slackjawed this time around was how “it” could take so damn long to occur.

Mr. Jacoby, it seems, just discovered that present-day, self-ballyhooed conservatives - specifically, those in Congress and the White House - aren’t … well, conservative. In what must have been a etymological epiphany, it came to Jacoby that “conservative” comes from “conserve,” as in to fiscally conserve, and his lads in power aren’t doing anything of the sort.

I don’t know if it was his keen, investigative skills or the endless stream of kids-in-the-candy-store headlines for five years that tipped him off, but whichever it was, he’s hot on the story. And just plain hot. He feels betrayed.

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