Book Review: Grand New Party

I am surprised that no one here at TNR has written about Ross and Reihan’s recent effort Grand New Party, so I’ll take the first stab. First of all, go buy the book. But for some quick summaries, try here and here where Ross writes:

Grand New Party … is a book that spends a great deal of time arguing against two powerful narratives of recent American political history - one left-wing, and one right-wing. The left-wing narrative …holds that the migration of working-class voters … from the Roosevelt majority into the Reagan-Gingrich-Bush coalition has been driven by the GOP's ability to essentially trick these voters into casting their ballots based on symbolic culture-war issues, rather than on their economic concerns… The right-wing narrative, meanwhile, holds that the rise of the modern Republican majority represented a triumph of Barry Goldwater's purist small-government message, which failed in 1964 because the country wasn't ready for it, succeeded in 1980 when the country was ready for it, and could provide the basis for an enduring GOP today if Republicans are bold enough to stand, and run, on rock-ribbed Reaganite principle.

Against these two (often mutually-reinforcing) narratives, we argue that the left misunderstands the working class's present situation, and the right misunderstands its own history. ... This defense of the GOP broadly, and social conservatism specifically, coexists in the book with an argument that conservatives have achieved their greatest successes, both politically and on policy matters, when they've stood for a limited-government pragmatism rather than a small-government purism, and for efforts to reform and restrain the welfare state rather than frontal assaults that seek to abolish it outright.

I was particularly struck by the last paragraph quoted above, since it reminded me of a speech the Governor of California gave to CPAC in 1977:

If there is any political viewpoint in this world which is free from slavish adherence to abstraction, it is American conservatism. …Conservatism is the antithesis of the kind of ideological fanaticism that has brought so much horror and destruction to the world. The common sense and common decency of ordinary men and women, working out their own lives in their own way—this is the heart of American conservatism today. Conservative wisdom and principles are derived from willingness to learn, not just from what is going on now, but from what has happened before. …

The New Republican Party I envision will not be, and cannot, be one limited to the country club-big business image that, for reasons both fair and unfair, it is burdened with today. The New Republican Party I am speaking about is going to have room for the man and the woman in the factories, for the farmer, for the cop on the beat and the millions of Americans who may never have thought of joining our party before, but whose interests coincide with those represented by principled Republicanism. If we are to attract more working men and women of this country, we will do so not by simply “making room” for them, but by making certain they have a say in what goes on in the party. The Democratic Party turned its back on the majority of social conservatives during the 1960s. The New Republican Party of the late ’70s and ’80s must welcome them, seek them out, enlist them, not only as rank-and-file members but as leaders and as candidates.

It is unclear if Ross and Reihan had this particular Reagan speech in my mind when they wrote their book (it is not cited), but clearly Reagan shared their commitments to both pragmatism-over-purity and a desire to bring socially conservative working class Democrats into a ‘new’ Republican majority. Many have criticized GNP claiming the book advocates for “growing government” and in this interview, Matt Yglesias even claims the book argues for the GOP to “move in a non-libertarian direction.” But Reihan has none of it insisting that they are looking for an agenda that can appeal to both social conservatives and free market conservatives (Reihan calls them the ‘populist’ and ‘libertarian’ minded bases of the party). Ross insists they are not looking for “a Bush third term” but that they both believe Bush had the right strategy but just didn’t do “enough intellectual spade work” to properly meld the two groups.

I don’t think that spadework was done in this book. Among other things R&R call for the hiring (I presume on a federal level) of hundreds of thousands of new police officers, funding for green collar jobs, high-tech infrastructure for the Great Plains. All of these initiatives unnecessarily grow the size of the federal government. Their embrace of the employer based system for delivering health care is also disappointing, as is their embrace of Medicaid ‘reform’ that “expands eligibility while cracking down on overspending.” Congress has proved time and again they are incapable of ‘cracking down on overspending.’ Relying on Medicaid and Medicare for any part of the health care system is a road to Paul Krugman nirvana of 28% of GDP going to federal revenue. Reagan’s biggest regret is that he failed to rein in domestic spending. Like Reagan, R&R are far too trusting of Congress’ capacity for fiscal restraint.

In their Atlantic interview Reihan also says they are looking to “reframe American social model to make it more flexible and responsive” to a disruptive modern forces that “undermine the well being of American families.” Instead of expanding government to meet this goal, the GOP needs to do a better job of explaining how removing certain policies could help the working class. R&R identify some candidates for the chopping block including zoning laws, FICA taxes, and direct funding for four year colleges (R&R would rather see the cash go to students). But the GOP needs to go further, and for all John McCain’s faults, his health care plan is an excellent step in this direction (the actual plan, not McCain’s skill at explaining it).

A fascinating recent New York Times Magazine piece on how fertility rates varied across the developed world succinctly captured the choice out country faces when it comes to how we will choose to protect families and maintain our dynamic economy:

“There’s much less flexibility in the European system,” Haub says. “In Europe, both the society and the job market are more rigid.” There may be little state subsidy for child care in the U.S., and there is certainly nothing like the warm governmental nest that Norway feathers for fledgling families, but the American system seems to make up for it in other ways. As Hans-Peter Kohler of the University of Pennsylvania writes: “In general, women are deterred from having children when the economic cost — in the form of lower lifetime wages — is too high. Compared to other high-income countries, this cost is diminished by an American labor market that allows more flexible work hours and makes it easier to leave and then re-enter the labor force.” An American woman might choose to suspend her career for three or five years to raise a family, expecting to be able to resume working; that happens far less easily in Europe. So there would seem to be two models for achieving higher fertility: the neosocialist Scandinavian system and the laissez-faire American one .

So if we do not want to look like France in 10 years, the GOP needs to be pressing for laws that make it easier for parents to get in and out of the work force. Moving to a pateint centered health care model, eliminating restrictions on domestic energy production, realizing that labor unions have no place in a modern economy, eliminating the capital gains tax, rolling back alternative energy mandates that drive up the cost of energy and ensuring costly new carbon taxes are not adopted are just some of the policies a GNP ought to pursue.