Towards a Republican Recovery

Reihan Salam offers some tough love to the GOP:

In a Pew survey conducted shortly after the 2008 election, an impressive 38 percent of the electorate identified themselves as conservatives, far more than the 21 percent who called themselves liberals. Yet 51 percent of those self-described conservatives favored repealing some of the Bush tax cuts. And 24 percent of them wanted to repeal all of them. Not surprisingly, a larger share of liberals and moderates felt the same way. Note that the official GOP position has been that the Bush tax cuts should be made permanent. To put it plainly, the official Republican position—forcefully advanced by conservative media luminaries—reflects the views of just under half of the most conservative bloc of the country.

Republicans, particularly rock-ribbed Reaganites, have compromised themselves into a corner. They say they’re cutting taxes, but they never go after funding for Medicare and Medicaid and education. Instead Republicans talk about trimming or at least restraining discretionary spending.