By the way, didn't you notice that the guy who wrote this Sam's Club article is essentially a leftist?
Reihan Salam wrote a similar online article earlier this year, titled "The Crisis of 'Sam's Club Republicans.'" There was a FR thread on that too. Someone dug up that Salam was with the progressive magazine The New Republic at one point.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1318675/posts?page=9#9
"He is a former reporter-researcher at The New Republic."
The New Republic was established about 90 years ago, with the mission of undoing the system of limited government.
I find it hard to believe that a fellow such as yourself who believes we are going in the wrong direction regarding trade and "globalisation" would be turning to one of those dreaded Weekly Standard neocons. I thought your guys didn't like them?
The way I look at it however, is that the author has chosen to leave his home party/movement. There are two kinds of people in that situation: converts and refugees. He's one of the latter. He hasn't really changed his worldview, to that of goverment intervention in the economy over the long haul is a net negative. Salam comes across as pretty much a pro-taxer kind of guy. In his own backhanded way, he concedes that entitlement reform might really be needed to salvage the economy, but believes his new Party should not bother with that political fight.
In other words, he's a guy who hasn't figured out that it was his way of trying to do things that made the Democrats such a lousy political party, and thinks things can be made right by doing the same things, but with the opposition party, and only minor twists or tweaks.
Salam's neo-populist article also betrays what quasi-leftists think conservatives are: right wing populists. In the view of these guys, we are not being serious if we call for a return to Originalism and the constitution in exile. That all we want is just "spoils" for our side.
So you think the job market for most American workers is wonderful. You need to talk to the workers who have been around a bit. My father in the 1950's thru the 1970's worked in a printing factory as a foreman and my mother stayed home. He made enough money to put four kids thru state college. Can you or an average family of four today with one working capable of doing this? You can if you alone can make $ 300K or more a year. The high taxes of the Dems killed that golden age, and the GOP embracing free market globalism is killing prospects of high wages and job security. Both parties is destroying the middle class.
Wow.
If this is what passes for ideas for the future over at The Weekly Standard, I'll keep looking to National Review as the "house organ" of conservative thought.
Wage subsidies? Paying people to stay home and take care of the kids? A federal income tax AND a federal sales tax? Universal mandatory health insurance? I could go on.
These aren't "conservative" policy prescriptions by any stretch of the imagination. This read like a Hilary! 2008 campaign platform. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a "moderate" (i.e. not crazy) democrat embrace many of these concepts. But a conservative republican?
Look, I'm all in favor of a "big tent" party, but this kind of thinking needs to be countered. Forcefully. I totally understand that, with the Democrat party imploding and becoming the home of batshit crazy anti-American leftards, many of the moderate Democrats are going to start migrating over to the GOP. We'll take the votes. But that doesn't mean we have to accept their liberal policy prescriptions.