Any chance that you're going to answer the substantive questions and objections leveled at you in the threads here by TPM readers? Or do you only talk to those chosen to be in the book club with you and Noam Scheiber?

Pretty ironic that you think you can reinvigorate the Republican party by making it more relevant to everyday people but that you'll only debate the finer points of your plan with a select elite.

Some of the comments have been more abusive than necessary.

But I agree with Libertine here. You've made a case that the vision you're proposing *might* be feasible in the GOP, though there are structural barriers to overcome.

But it seems to me that Obama's version of the Democratic party is ready to adopt an awful lot of your vision right now. Individual responsibility? Check. A sense of the inextricable relation between cultural (and even religious) factors and economic well-being? Check. Genuine concern with working-class lives? Check.

There are forces in our party who don't like this rhetoric. But they're nowhere near as powerful, in our coalition, as business interests are in yours.

So come to us, Ross -- come to us.

Or better yet, just keep offering this prescription to the GOP. At some point, when it becomes clear that they're explicitly rejecting a more socially conscious vision -- maybe when Huckabee loses the primary in 2012 -- the visibility of your diagnosis is going to help working-class Republicans understand why they need to jump ship.

I don't know how the authors make their living, but there are an awful lot of apologists for the rich who feed from the teats of the plutocrats.

Just look at who funds Cato, Heritage, Hoover, TNR, The NY Sun, the National Review, etc. Even some of the most prominent conservative universities (Chicago, Stanford and George Mason come to mind) are beneficiaries of this largess.

The aim of all this behind the scenes funding is to create a propaganda campaign which misleads people into thinking that their interests are allied with those of the super wealthy. This has been unusually successful over the past 40 years and the middle class is now feeling the effects.

To expect these pundits to bite the hand that feeds them is a bit unrealistic.

I suggest visiting Media Transparency and doing a search on Charles Koch, Richard Scaife, Coors, Walton, Mars, Olin, etc. You may be surprised at how often the same people show up as backers of "independent" think tanks.

There really is a "vast right wing conspiracy". Some of the pundits may be shills, while others may be useful idiots.

The GOP is the party of privilege, it has been for decades. All that changes is their skill in hiding this fact.

Just guessing, but I suspect opposition to abortion rights is the linchpin of Douthat's party loyalty. Yoked to this moral committment, he'll play the reasonable moderate Repub role on other issues until the party tires of him or he tires of an ineffectual career and exits the political sphere.

Enjoy his movie reviews, though.

Look at it this way. What Douthat is giving us is a new way to pitch economic populism.

We've always packaged populism as a defense of "working families." What Douthat is showing is that we need to get serious about the cultural dimension of this -- the importance of marriage and family stability. If voters believed that we really cared about those things, we'd have an unbeatable message.

I actually think this was tried in the 90s -- cracking down on deadbeat dads, etc. -- but the message wasn't as effective as it could have been because Bill C makes a lousy spokesman for the value of marriage and family.

Okay it's 3 PM eastern and this is getting boring. Anybody else going to post today? Maybe on some topic other than Douthat's book?

your ideas about "Individual responsibility" in the repuglitard party a laughable

if the gop wants to support the idea of individual responsibility, george bush needs to STEP UP

dick cheney, donald dumsfeld, the condiliar rice, alberto gonzalas, john ashcroft, doug fieth, kkkarl rove addington, libby

I can go on ...

so splain to me how the repuglitards support individual responsibility when these criminal fucks are still refusing to answer the questions

face it

it's a dead horse

stop beating it

It's time for the Republican Party (and the Democratic Party, for that matter) to fracture.

1. The DLC should leave the Democratic Party to the "Wellstone wing" - then they can quit worrying about being lumped in with - you know - those "liberals", and the Wellstone Democrats can quit being leashed and muzzled.

2. Moderate Republicans (your Chaffees, Spectors, etc.) oughta bolt the GOP and join up with the DLC and the Blue Dog Democrats to form a new centrist, technocratic party.

3. The social-conservative theocrats in the GOP have been manipulated by the plutocrats (I call them the "Mammonists") for years - the grassroots evangelical Christians should bolt as well (their leaders having generally thrown in their lot with the Mammonists) and form their own party. The plutocrats should have their own party as well - call it the "Prosperity Party," or something similar.

4. Small-government Libertarian Republicans should switch to their natural home - the Libertarian Party.

Then with some requisite changes to election law - IRV, proportional representation, etc. - we'd have a broader spectrum of parties (Green, Democratic, Centrist, Christian, Prosperity, Libertarian, plus the other outliers on the left and right), which would give Americans a better range of choices, level the playing field, get rid of "lesser evilism", and increase voter participation.

I'll make it really easy for you (or let me try).

The issue that separates the parties isn't ideological. As a matter of fact, the issues aren't really ideological. The traditional ideology of Anglo-Saxon based societies in fact isn't ideology, it is pragmatism - or in other words, non-ideological. Pragmatism is, by and large, rule by common sense.

The Democratic party is largely centered in this pragmatic tradition. Their interests are more centered in Anglo-Saxon Common laws ancient interests: First, what works best and cost the least; Second, what's fair; Third, what's fair but also what provides the most liberty; Fourth, what works best and cost the least.

This is pragmatism. The law gravitated towards fairness and freedom (in that order of priority) simply because that's what works best at the least cost (to the crown, initially - law enforcement requires use of coercive force and coercive force is always expensive). The law is happy to abandone these notions if something else works better. This tradition is roughly a thousand years old - so, it's pretty well sorted this out.

Anglo-American notions of liberty evolved out of the common law, and in that, over the centuries there was a growing bias towards liberty, provided it didn't compromise fairness. That is the Common Law's great contribution to the world - the notion of liberty enscounced in fairness, justice, and law. Prior to this innovation, liberty ment anarchy and 'might makes right.' Truly this was a great innovation - you can have a great deal of liberty without anarchy.

Democrats are centered in this tradition. They have a bias towards fairness/justice first, and freedom whereever it doesn't conflict with the former.

Read up on the history of the Common Law. If you only make one stop, then do hook up with Oliver Wendall Holmes "The Common Law".

Per Holmes, In our tradition, ideological questions were largely left to the judiciary. A judge would try to answer a narrow judicial question with the best practical answer. In doing this they were free to select from the market place of ideas. Judges were free to pick from any and every ideology, but only for narrow application, and only so much as it worked. If society doesn't like the judge's learned decision, it could legislate an alternative.

The result of this was tremendous innovation in civics. Really, the greatest blessing in all the history of the social sciences.

Anglo-Saxon societies are a happy and pragmatic mix, a patchwork quilt of ideas and ideologies. Each idea getting fair use where they were strong, and ignored or dormant where they were week. The result of this is that legislation, and the politics that shape it, have had traditionally muted ideological battles in Anglo-Saxon countries.

Now in Civil Code societies, judges aren't allowed to make laws. That pushed ideological decisions to the legislature. That turned politics from pragmatism to increasingly bitter ideological struggles. When global liberalism entered into crisis between the years 1914-1949, rogue ideological rule emerged, be it communism or fascism, but only in Civil Code societies. Anglo-Saxon societies muddled along through the crisis. WWII is largely a battle between the Common Law world + Russia versus Civil Code world. Today most civil code countries have adopted features of common law to stabilize their societies and their politics.

Because of pragmatism, the Democrats are happy swimmers in the stream of ideological diachotomies. This frustrates Republicans who see Democrats as flip flopping opportunists.

The Republicans are outside this tradition. Why? Because they have only one real goal: ever greater concentrations of wealth and power. In 2004, the first thing that Bush did after the election was attempt to undermine social security. Stop right there. If they had a higher priority then, they would have pursued something else. They want concentrated wealth and power.

To pursue this they have to advocate ideology. How else do you get people who aren't rich and powerful to vote for you? You have to make them forget all about the importance of the role of fairness by emphasizing, singularly, freedom. Freedom, without justice or fairness, allows for 'might makes right'.

The Republicans of late, have whipped up snazzy ideologies, borrowing heavily from 19th century and early 20th century philosophers who never had to confront the fact of the failure of ideological rule in the second and third quarters of the 20th century. But their problem is the same as those faced by Fascist, Falangist, Nationalist, and Communist, to name a few - ideological rule is not practical and defies common sense. Just because an idea is good at point A doesn't meand its good at point Z.

Sure, Ideology appears to work good from a marketing perspective; you only have to balance one idea in your head. And the one they whipped up was really good: heard the masses not o f wealth into religious corrals. The problem, when institutions fail the thing still falls apart because its not practical. Even the religious have to eat, feed, cloth, shelter their families, and they have to work to do this.

Most of the epic collapses in history result from wealth and power becoming too concentrated, then the wealthy and powerful, the only ones with money, use their influence to shirk paying taxes, then the whole thing falls apart (See Douglas C. North "Structure and Change in Economic History" pages 100-115 on the fall of the Roman Empire).

The only thing left for the Republicans is to choose pragmatism based upon a much slower gravitation towards progress - which, as I understand it, is the Tory parties role in England. Once in a while there is a time to slow down and consolidate the change that's already occurred. The problem is, most of the changes that they are resisting here and now have already been proven effective else where. Most of the first world is thriving with a mix of universal healthcare and labor unions because they make sense and those societies acknowledge a need for fairness. They don't want to repeat the first half of the 20th century.

Incidently, the Republicans are against 'judicial activism' despite the history of Judge made law in Anglo-American Common Law tradition, because they want ideological rule, and that will only occur if our institutions behave like civil code judiciaries once did and cede law making to the legislatures.

Small government, balanced budgets, and free markets seem like good ideas. If Plutocratic rule was such a good idea, Democracy would never have emerged. Failing institutions, bloated budgets, collapsing currency and economy render Republican ideology as purely theoretical pursuits.

Give me (Anglo-Saxon legal) pragmatism or give me death. In fact, that is the only choice.