Free Republic

snip But drop down to ground level for a moment, and consider Ta-Nehisi's response to my post on prison reform. Here we have an issue - the design of our criminal-justice system - that's of burning concern to the African-American community. It's not an easy issue to wrestle with by any stretch: My preferred approach to reform, for instance, would marry a reduced incarceration rate to a substantial increase in the police presence on America's streets, which if implemented clumsily (as most policy shifts are) could mean fewer black men behind bars, but more tragedies like the death of Ta-Nehisi's...

Are certain conservatives setting Sarah Palin up to fail? With the recent news that conservative commentator Kathleen Parker has joined the ranks of anti-Palin conservatives George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Frum and Ross Douthat (as well as moderate-conservative David Brooks), one has to wonder how these folks will respond if McCain and Palin lose to Barack Obama and Joseph Biden on November 4. It’s likely that Parker, Will, Krauthammer, Frum, Douthat and Brooks will attempt to blame Palin for a GOP loss, arguing that she was not ready for prime time and that her supposed lack of knowledge drove away...

Writing in response to my suggestion that the McCain campaign has wanted for creativity, I think Rich Lowry makes a strong case that they've been quite tactically imaginative, and I agree with Rich that they wouldn't be where they are today if it weren't for some brilliant improvisations. What I had in mind, though, was ideological creativity - the sort of creativity, for instance, that might have provided stronger talking points for your new-minted veep nominee to trot out when the subject turns to, say, the state of the economy. The McCain camp has found exactly one good domestic-policy talking...

Grand New Party: How the Republicans Can Win the Working Class and save the American Dream By Ross Douthat and Reihan SalamDoubleday, 2008 244 Pages, US$23.95 ISBN 978-0-385-51943-4 Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam have perhaps already reached the stage among people who follow applied political science where they need no introduction, which doesn’t mean they don’t get one: Douhat /Dow-thut/ is now a senior editor at The Atlantic, for which Salam is an associate editor and also a Fellow of the New America Foundation; readers may have encountered them at the blog, The American Scene. For the purposes of this...