Did the (American) conservative reformers get everything wrong? That’s the question Dave Weigel asks in a pleasingly mischievous Slate piece. You remember: all those books written by chaps such as David Frum, Ross Douthat, Reihan Salam etc warning that the GOP must change or face years in the wilderness. How do you explain the looming Republican House of Representatives, matey?
How indeed? David, Ross and Reihan each do their best with this question but, in the end, try and dodge it with arguments that can be summarised, fairly, by Dave as: “We’re not wrong. We’re just not yet right.” Their super-pamphlets:
were written with the assumption that the GOP was going to serve more time in detention—and that detention was actually necessary. If the GOP came roaring back by going further to the right, their theory went, that would prove that they didn’t understand why they governed so poorly in the first place.
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