An honest conservative - moron or oxymoron?

Rick Perlstein has written on the difficulty, or perhaps the impossibility of finding an honest conservative in this article picked up by TomPaine.com. He quotes Brad DeLong, an economics professor from the U.S.

He's writing about the Bush administration and its supporters, but the sentiments work just as well for Harper's (neo)Conservatives:

"...[t]he question of "honest conservatism"—the understandable, if problematic, quest of liberals to find a conservative worthy of intellectual respect."

...[DeLong] quotes the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek who speaks of "a witty formula of life under a hard Communist regime: Of the three features—personal honesty, sincere support of the regime and intelligence—it was possible to combine only two, never all three. If one was honest and supportive, one was not very bright; if one was bright and supportive, one was not honest; if one was honest and bright, one was not supportive."

"...[S]incere conservative supporters are not bright. Bright conservative supporters are not honest. Bright and honest conservatives are not supporters...."