Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

...which is — surprise! — dead set against any deviation from the tax-cuts-for-the-rich agenda. Definitely worth reading. But my question is, did Republican reformers like Douthat really think there was any chance?.... After all, what is the modern GOP? A simple model that accounts for just about everything you see is that it’s an engine designed to harness white resentment on behalf of higher incomes for the donor class....

To a very casual observer, it may look as if this movement infrastructure engages in actual policy analysis and discussion, but that’s only a show put on for the media. Can you even imagine being unsure how a Heritage Foundation study on any significant issue will come out? The truth is that the right’s policy ideas haven’t changed in decades. Paul Ryan’s innovative idea on Medicare — let’s replace it with vouchers! — is the same proposal Newt Gingrich offered in 1995.

So why are we seeing a crackup of this system now? It’s not because events have called the orthodoxy into question; that has never mattered in the past. On the contrary, failed predictions have never caused even the slightest change in claims: the same people who predicted that Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax hike would kill jobs and that Obamacare would be an economic disaster are making confident predictions about the salutary effects of tax cuts now. The problem, instead, seems to be demography — an increasingly diverse population means that the party needs to go beyond white resentment, but the resentful whites are having none of it. Oh, and the base never cared about the ideology....

The Democratic party is a... coalition of interest groups... [and] the party does in fact try to serve the interests of these groups... it’s not the kind of immense exercise in bait-and-switch that the GOP has become. And it can respond to a changing country by changing itself.... Oh, and... pluralism... means that there’s nothing like the right’s unchallengeable orthodoxy, which in turn means that sometimes analysis and evidence can matter....

The reformist hope was, I guess, that the donor class itself would realize the need to soften the party’s ideology in the face of a changing society. But the right-wing rich... surround themselves with people telling them that if only they say the usual things louder... they can reestablish the old order. Remember, it took five presidential defeats — 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944, and the shocker in 1948 — before the old GOP accepted the legitimacy of the New Deal...

Ross Douthat: #NeverReformConservatism at the Wall Street Journal: "The Wall Street Journal editorial page has risen to the defense of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s...

...relatively muted response to Trumpism.... The Journal... [takes this] approach: Trumpism too shall pass... and... the important thing is... to refuse any aid and comfort to all those deviationists and splittists who think that the party might not have exactly the right economic agenda for the voters and the times. To #NeverTrump conservatives, then, the Journal offers at best an eyeroll at their passion; the important thing, now and always, is to be #NeverReformConservatism. Do I exaggerate? Let’s work our way through the editorial, which defends the House Speaker against ‘a cast of conservative intellectuals who don’t like Mr. Ryan because he continues to believe in the Ronald Reagan-Jack Kemp vision of a tax-reforming, free-market GOP that focuses on economic growth.’... But Ryan is too smart for our machinations....

This is... ripely delusional.... Ryan has to appear neutral because Trump is threatening riots?... Ryan shouldn’t risk any kind of rupture because if Trump is the nominee a Republican civil war might cost the G.O.P. the House? Trump as the nominee is itself the thing that might cost the GOP the House! Ryan should stand ready to ‘steer’ a President Trump away from ‘his worst instincts’?... What does it say about the Journal’s editorial page... that it wants the heir of Kemp and Reagan to keep his options open and his hands undirtied with #neverTrumpism, just in case he might get the chance to help an illiberal race-baiting violence-abetting war crimes-endorsing demagogue pass, I dunno, the biggest supply-side tax cut in the history of the Laffer Curve? What it says is that the Journal has its eyes on the real enemy here. Say what you will about Trump’s protectionist ‘Bush lied, people died’ white identity politics, at least he didn’t endorse a larger child tax credit.... Then, finally, we have this....

Whatever happens, Mr. Ryan and his political allies will have to limit the policy and political damage. That means preserving a vision of the GOP as a pro-growth, reform party that is inclusive and meets the challenges of the current era. Mr. Ryan knows how to do that better than his critics do.

In other words: Do nothing, change nothing, and hope Trump simply does his destructive work and passes on.... The best that can be said of this ‘strategy’ is that it aspires to follow the fourth path for G.O.P. elites that David Frum (if I may quote a splittist even more defective in his interpretation of Reaganism than the reform conservatives) laid out.... It redefines ‘political victory’ to just mean ‘what we have, we hold,’ and treats the presidency ‘as one of those things that is good to have but not a must-have, especially if obtaining it requires uncomfortable change.’ Better to reign in the House, in this theory, than to ever compromise your way to something more.... But even that gives the Journal’s vision too much credit, because a ‘do nothing/change nothing/let Trump stomp around’ approach isn’t even a good strategy for holding the House of Representatives, let alone the Senate (and farewell and adieu to the Supreme Court, farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain).... It’s only a good strategy if your primary obsession isn’t the actual fate of conservatism, but your own power and influence within whatever rump remains...

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/krugman/2016/03/30/the-pathos-of-republican-reformers/