Ross argues that he is not trying to bribe a narrow segment of the population to vote for the GOP. I'm not sure why "bribing" is even relevant here; partisan politics is about coalition building, GNP is a book about strategy, and at some level all such strategy will entail responding to various slices of the electoral pie. It wouldn't be a very useful book if R&R didn't try to articulate what motivates various voters and suggest that the GOP comply.

At any rate, this was never my argument. I heartily agree that the policies meant to incentivize women will be "broadly targeted in execution" rather than directed toward the few. In promoting traditional family formation and stigmatizing deviance, R&R are trying to influence the major life decisions of most people. The tax code would privilege women who opt for the life course social conservatives have set for them: heterosexual marriage and stay-at-home motherhood. Because I think the culture in which we live already pushes women into various roles as caretakers and compromisers, I'd rather the state not compound pressures toward gender conformity. But since Ross places "reactionary gender norms" in scare quotes, I guess he isn't so concerned.

Of course it is possible for a women to benefit from the R&R plan--as a child--and be penalized by the same policy--as that lesbian polygamist (?) Ross mentions. That doesn't justify the policy. Girls--again, most children--grow up to be women. Even if banning all women from the workplace somehow increased literacy rates among American children, most of us would find the ban abhorrent. I'm sure we could all come up with an invasive social engineering scheme that would lead to better outcomes along some dimension of child welfare, but we might not want children to grow up in the constrained world such a scheme demands.

Finally, just a note on Reihan's response:

Kerry suggests that the program advanced in Grand New Party is nationalist, and she is right. But my sense is that analytical nationalism is a pretty pervasive failing, from the perspective of the cosmopolitan libertarian, of pretty much the entire partisan landscape.

That's true! Most partisan politics is economically and politically nationalist to a degree I find unfortunate. And yet I can see gradation. GNP promotes a hostility toward immigration, skilled and unskilled, that I have yet to see from any administration in my lifetime. I agree that privileging Mexico over, say, Laos doesn't make a ton of sense if we're looking to maximize utility on the side of migrants themselves. Yet I didn't read anything in GNP about a Lant-Pritchett-style immigration scheme that would seek to better distribute the enormous benefits of migration among the world's poor.

As I said, I understand that this is a book about coalition building. There are pro-globalist and pro-nationalist constituencies, both of which are plausibly available to the Republican party. R&R have chosen to promote the interests of the latter.