Grand New Party

I feel it's likely that very few of the people reading this blog are conservative movement leaders looking for ways to orient their movement in a more humane direction that would give it a better shot at winning votes without resorting to terrible flim-flam and massive dishonesty. But in case you are out there, or maybe if you're just interested in American politics, I hope you'll read Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream by my colleagues Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam.

The book is, in essence, a call for conservatives to get real about acknowledging some of the economic problems facing the country and an attempt to develop meaningful solutions to these problems. I'm not sure how well some of these solutions will qualify as conservative, and others I don't really agree with, but on the hole I think the kind of things they're putting on the table would be a huge step in the right direction. I'm a bit skeptical that this is a realistic vision for what the Republican Party might be like, but on some level I think it makes more sense to let conservative reformers have their shot at winning their internal battles than for liberals sitting on the sidelines to just sort of speculate about the possibilities.