During his address to the Turkish parliament, President Obama said:
I know there have been difficulties these last few years. I know that the trust that binds us has been strained, and I know that strain is shared in many places where the Muslim faith is practiced. Let me say this as clearly as I can: the United States is not at war with Islam.
Naturally, this acknowledgment of what some of us call reality proves to Matt Lewis that Obama is “apologizing” to Turks and Muslims the world over, and more than this he is supposedly “breaking the tradition of not criticizing your own country abroad.” If anyone can locate anywhere in this statement where Obama has actually criticized the United States, he should consult a doctor, because it means he can see things that do not exist. Unless Lewis would like to argue that relations with Turkey and the Islamic world as a whole have not been strained, which would be a rather unique interpretation of the last decade, he should target some other part of the speech to criticize. Unless Lewis thinks that we are at war with Islam and would actually like to stand behind this claim, perhaps he should just not speak about these matters.
This is all par for the course for Lewis, a TownHall blogger for whom there is no lame cliche or movement conservative trope that he will not happily repeat. As a good example of this, take his unusually unimaginative attack on Ross Douthat in this bloggingheads segment. Ross, you see, is “what conservatism is if you live in New York City,” the sort favored by those who attend New York cocktail parties (!), and “not part of the conservative movement.” Worst of all, he is someone whom liberals do not automatically dismiss as an idiot. Lewis’ entire criticism is an exercise in the sort of mindless pseudo-sociological analysis that now passes for a lot of intra-conservative argument, according to which anyone whose writings are of interest to people outside the confines of the movement is inherently suspect and untrustworthy. No doubt in years to come Ross will be accused by such towering giants as Lewis of “criticizing his own movement” in so-called “foreign territory” when he acknowledges other realities that movement conservatives find unpleasant, and it will make just as much sense then as his useless attack on the President’s speech in Ankara has made today.
cbh8377 
Mark Moore 
Clearly many movement conservatives lack thoughtfulness in getting past movement orthodoxy, which is in several respects not really conservative. So often movement conservatives criticize folks like Douthat and Dreher for straying from orthodoxy when they are actually articulating something closer to authentic conservatism properly understood.
That said, there is a lot of truth to this part of Lewis’ formulation. ““What conservatism is if you live in New York City,†the sort favored by those who attend New York cocktail parties.” Many right thinking conservatives have been saying this for years. In fact, this has been a criticism of the New York and DC centric “conservatism” of NR, for example, leveled by many of us paleos out here in flyover country. Douthat is not the same as the new breed of self-consciously moderate conservative bashers like Frum, Brooks, Parker and Miss McCain, but this dynamic certainly exists.
“according to which anyone whose writings are of interest to people outside the confines of the movement is inherently suspect and untrustworthy.”
Again there is much truth to this if those “outside the confines” are from the center or left. I don’t think this is just simple minded cultishness. Suspicion is warranted and this accurately captures an important dynamic. A problem with movement types is that they have never been able to tolerate (or frankly understand) criticisms from their right.