I was surprised to find no link to this on RfM, although someone should have posted it already. It's pretty gutsy to appear in Deseret News. I'm pretty surprised:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865679571/Taylor-G-Petrey-The-failures-of-Mormon-conservatism.html

Now there's some sense. Many of us have been saying this since Goldwater and Nixon. Mormonism evolved into a narcissistic, "I got mine," state of mind. I don't know if I've ever met a man as callous as my Mormon father. And my Mormon mother has all the maternal instincts of an insect. Young people with hard-hearted parents are dropping out of Mormonism in record numbers. Senile men pretend to know God's will, and it's just embarrassing anymore. They'd better change it up again, because their ship is listing.

Well, sort of gutsy. And sort of not.
They did, after all, have two (count 'em, TWO) "conservative" commentators reply to the ONE article you linked to.
Ganging up, so to speak.

Frankly, it came off to me as more of a "let's put some liberal views in, then show everyone why they're so wrong" kind of set-up. Rather than an honest attempt at an airing of multiple views.

Still, it might crack some shelves anyway...:)

But this is how the church routinely starts the process of change. It's sort of like the essays. The notion of a stone in a hat was published in one of the church essays in the early 1990s, then hinted about from time to time and finally embodied in the essays. Gradually, the church is adjusting its stance to the meet new political needs.

This article could be the same: either a trial balloon or the beginning of a slow evolutionary process. Next time, perhaps there will be two liberal articles and one conservative one. I don't think the article represents an editorial oversight.

Someone is trying to create slightly more room for the church to change its politics if it decides such change is advisable. The demographic argument may well be the reason the COB wants more options.

It probably didn't get mentioned here before because almost no one here reads the DesNews. Good essay, though.