President Obama is trying to force nuns to pay for birth control and the new Republican speaker just approved a trillion-dollar spending bill laden with earmarks and an inexplicable boost in the number of low-skilled foreign guest workers.

Donald Trump — campaigning on the ethanol mandate, more eminent domain, a Supreme Court appointment for his radical pro-abortion sister and standard misogyny — is leading the national polls.

It's easy for a conservative to despair at all this. But Christmas is a season of hope, and if one looks back at 2015, it's not hard to find glimmers of cheer for conservatives.

For 157 days of 2015, the Export-Import Bank of the United States — a corporate-welfare agency created by Franklin Roosevelt and wielded by Obama as a tool of environmental and industrial policy — was in liquidation. Ex-Im was forbidden in those months from approving new subsidies to the foreign customers of U.S. goods.

The economic gains from pausing Ex-Im's distortions were small, because Ex-Im is small. And ultimately, free enterprise lost this year's battle to big business — Congress revived Ex-Im in December. But the progress was unmistakable.

In the Bush era, only a couple of dozen House Republicans would typically vote against Ex-Im, and the Senate would reauthorize the agency by voice vote. In 2015, Senate Republicans opposed Ex-Im 31-24, and nearly half of the House Republicans voted against it as well. Both chambers' committee chairmen, the new House speaker and both chambers' majority leaders opposed Ex-Im. Eventually, every serious Republican presidential candidate came to oppose Ex-Im, too.

After 2015's show of free-market strength, it's not a stretch to hope that Ex-Im will be dead by 2020 if a Republican wins the White House in 2016.

More broadly, the rising tide against Ex-Im exemplified a nascent Republican move away from corporate welfare. Marco Rubio led the fight to block an insurer bailout through Obamacare. Ted Cruz is leading in Iowa polls while unambiguously pledging to kill the ethanol mandate. Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina and most of the rest of the field also feel compelled to inveigh against corporate welfare, even if they don't oppose it in every specific instance. There's a long way for the party to go, but they're at least marching in the right direction, because they're no longer always marching to K Street's tune.

President Obama deserves some praise in 2015, too. Since his budget early in the year, Obama has trained his sights on one of the most pernicious forms of crony capitalism: extraneous occupational licensing provisions that keep people — disproportionately women and minorities — from starting their own businesses.

Defenders often claim these regulations are necessary to protect consumers, when mostly they protect large, established businesses from competition. In July, the White House issued a report finding many of the requirements superfluous and "that licensing requirements raise the price of goods and services, restrict employment opportunities" and more.

Obama also moved forward on much-needed criminal-justice reform. With White House backing, Congress has advanced legislation to roll back mandatory minimums and lessen drug sentencing.

On both business deregulation and criminal justice reform there are miles to go, but aided by Obama's leadership both parties are moving in the right direction.

A final note: If you're a conservative who's feeling oppressed — by the Republican establishment, by Obama's power grabs or by the prevailing liberal media bias — I encourage you to take a step back and look at the state of the Republican Party.

Almost any analysis of the early primaries or the national polls will note that "establishment support" is split between Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio and John Kasich.

Think about that. Six and a half years ago, Marco Rubio was considered the insurgent enemy of the Republican establishment. The National Republican Senatorial Committee was funding his moderate primary opponent Charlie Crist. Former Majority Leader Bob Dole, the GOP standard-bearer in 1996, actually donated to Crist after Crist quit the party.

Now Rubio is the highest-polling "establishment" candidate. Has he become more establishment? Only slightly. Mostly, the establishment has been forced to cede more governance of the party to the Tea Party base. Heck, conservatives threw out the House speaker and installed the more-conservative Paul Ryan.

Dole, Trent Lott and other GOP grayhairs now on K Street will complain about the "lunatics running the asylum." They're really upset that the conservatives, rather than the donor class and the lobbyists, are increasingly running the Republican Party.

Dole, Lott, subsidized exporters and ethanol executives will have all the material blessings they need at Christmas. But conservatives will have a much stronger hold on the soul of the Republican Party than they did just 10 years ago, and that's something they can be happy about.

Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner's senior political columnist, can be contacted at tcarney@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.