In Grand New Party, Douthat and Salam criticize both political parties for forgetting the American working class and letting politics take precedence over solving problems. Yet the authors don’t stop there; instead, they quickly move beyond the usual partisan bickering to offer well-crafted answers to problems facing American culture and the economy. Though both authors write from a conservative perspective, they effectively criticize both parties and provide a sound defense for their conservative beliefs and principles.

 

The authors claim identifying and courting working class voters is essential to each major political party if they hope to win elections. They then set out to explain how Republicans can stay true to conservative principles and win back America’s working class by tackling “the threats to working-class prosperity and to the broader American Dream.”   Quoting Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, the authors note the Republican Party needs to focus on being the “the party of Sam’s Club” instead of the “party of the country club.” When defining the “working class,” the authors state this is not a class of poor farmers and factory workers as the Democrats so often categorize it, but a relatively affluent class that could typically be found in administrative, vocational and IT jobs. 

 

The book is divided into two main sections. The first half examines American political history dating back to Roosevelt’s New Deal and continuing to the present day.  The authors examine how each political party has, at times, captured a winning majority of the country and subsequently lost it. 

 

Starting with FDR, the authors make a good case that one of the chief reasons he was able to build and hold together such a strong political coalition was that his policies, while fiscally liberal, were also overwhelmingly socially conservative. While admitting that the New Deal’s attempts “at centralized planning and relentless scapegoating of business may have actually worsened the Depression,” the authors also explain that many of the New Deal’s policies were designed to strengthen the traditional family. This was primarily done through homeownership programs and welfare payments that rewarded families for having children and encouraged wives to stay home. These policies promoting traditional values and economic security (albeit at the great cost of increasing government dependency) were what ultimately built one of the most successful political alliances in American history.

 

This political alliance was not broken until conservatives used several issues to woo blue collar Americans away from the Democratic Party including crime, tax cuts, cultural issues and foreign policy in 1968. Since Nixon’s first victory, the American political landscape has been a seesaw battle, and the authors detail the battles both political parties have waged to capture the American working class.   

 

Throughout the first half of the book the authors assail Democrats for naiveté in their policies and beliefs that have shown a complete lack of understanding about the issues that matter most to conservatives. They write:

 

Ironically, it was Clinton himself – hailed, briefly, as the Saint George to Reagan’s dragon – who did as much as any politician to make the 1990’s a conservative era. His first-term incompetence, in particular, accomplished what Reagan’s genius couldn’t bring about – the end of Democratic dominance in the Congress…He reminded working-class voters why they had deserted the Democratic Party in the first place – by proposing vast new entitlement programs (or having his wife propose them for him, which was itself an example, to many people, of feminist overreach), promoting lifestyle-liberal pet causes like gays in the military, and generally aping the lack of discipline and overattention to detail that had undone Jimmy Carter, with a dash of baby-boomer entitlement thrown in. He didn’t throw over neoliberalism entirely, but he hewed to it on issues – NAFTA, in particular – that were calculated to alienate precisely those Perot voters he needed to strengthen his majority.

 

But Douthat and Salam also have plenty to say about the Republican shortcomings, giving the book a refreshingly objective take on politics. They write about the costly and obsessive hatred Republicans showed toward Clinton. They state:

 

Yet just as liberals had hated Nixon, practically to the point of derangement, so many conservatives loathed Clinton. Looking back, this seems difficult to believe – not that the Right opposed Clinton, or even despised him, but that they let their feelings play such havoc with their political good sense.

 

What was the high price conservatives, and America, paid for Republicans’ petty political rivalry? Possibly a chance to reform Social Security with private accounts. The authors explain:

 

The small-government Right lost an opportunity as well, one that hasn’t reappeared since. Years afterward, in 2005, it was revealed that Clinton had been seriously considering pushing Social Security reform in the waning years of his second term, with a proposal that might have included some form of private accounts. A bipartisan compromise that moved the welfare state rightward might have gelled if the Right hadn’t spent two years trying, fruitlessly, to wrap a noose around Boy Clinton’s neck.

 

Such a compromise, though, would have required the Right to work with Clinton, which conservatives could never seem to resign themselves to doing…After feuding with radicals for the better part of a generation, one would have expected conservatives to appreciate rivals who were open to compromises with the Right, who thought the free market was a great thing and who were happy to deregulate industry and streamline government, who could accept welfare reform and chatter about private Social Security accounts. 

 

As a conservative, I found this assessment both disheartening and discouraging but hardly surprising. Political partisanship has kept the two major political parties from reaching reasonable compromises on several such issues over the years. Still, the authors did a great job at praising and criticizing both political parties for past decisions and policies.

 

In the second half of the book, the authors discuss the current climate of American society and policies they believe can adequately address the economic insecurity and stagnation facing us. They begin by rattling off, at near breakneck speed, a series of statistics examining the relationship between conservatives’ social and economic philosophy. Using numerous studies and empirical data, the authors convincingly demonstrate that the American working class is predominantly culturally conservative not just due to religious conviction and fervor, but because it also makes good economic sense. The authors write:

 

Given the impact of familial dissolution on the working class’s prospects, then, the oft-heard talking point that social conservatism represents an attempt to distract working-class voters from their “real” concerns dramatically misses the point. Indeed, social conservatism, with its emphasis on stable, traditional families, is a perfectly rational response to the economic consequences of atomization. Liberal pundits get a great deal of mileage out of the fact that the so-called Red states, in spite of their piety and social conservatism, have higher rates of divorce, teen pregnancy, and out-of-wedlock births than their Blue counterparts. But this isn’t evidence of Red American hypocrisy, or stupidity; rather, it’s evidence that lower-income Americans (Red states are generally poorer than Blue states) have been adversely affected by the dislocations and disarray that followed the Sexual Revolution, and have responded by embracing a conservative politics that promises to shore up the institutions that provide stability and support – their families, their churches, and their neighborhoods.

 

Later they add:

 

In reality, you can’t disentangle the sociological trends that have created familial instability from the economic trends, at home and worldwide, that have increased financial insecurity for working-class voters. 

 

In the last few chapters the authors discuss specific policy solutions to a variety of problems facing American society today, including proposed solutions to immigration, education, crime, taxes and economic growth. I was immensely impressed by all of their ideas and wondered why Republican politicians haven’t run on these policies. The books’ ideas and plans are all backed up by hard statistics and common sense. In some areas they represent compromises between the positions of the Right and the Left but still represent a vast improvement over the current status. In other areas they are simply conservative principles applied to twenty-first century problems (hmm, I wonder why that sounds familiar).

 

One such issue they discuss at length is health care. In typical form, they take one step back so they can later take two steps forward. For instance, surprisingly for conservative authors, they begin by complimenting the French health care system. Douthat and Salam write, “There’s no question that the average French family receives a higher quality of care than the average American family.” They back this seemingly heretical statement by pointing out that the French rates of death from heart disease and diabetes “are far lower” and “the same goes for infant mortality.”  They add, “Better still, the French can choose any doctor or specialist – more choice than your average insured American gets from an HMO.” 

 

So what’s not to like? The authors point out that adopting such a program in the United States is not feasible or practical. Why? Because France can only afford this type of insurance because of one simple fact: French doctors make less than a third of their American counterparts. In addition, the authors write:

 

In France you never have to worry about paying for medical care. Apart from modest copayments, the government spicks up every tab. This means that health-care consumers are almost completely insulated from the cost of medical services. As a result, costs are rising at a rapid clip, despite price controls and stingy government reimbursements for medical services.

 

So what do Douthat and Salam propose? After pointing out that four-fifths of medical costs can be attributed to one-fifth of the patients, they advocate a “politically safe” solution that Bill Frist first proposed while the Senate Majority Leader that would make it cheaper for employers to provide coverage to their employees. They write:

 

Under a federal reinsurance program, the government would step in as soon as costs exceed a certain level: If a cancer patients spends more than $50,000, for example, the government would take on some share of any additional expenditures…This means all Americans – not just the employees of a particular company – would share the burden of paying for health care for the unlucky few. As a result, employers would no longer fear hiring an employee who has a daughter with a chronic illness, and insurance companies would have less reason to discriminate against high-risk patients. This would be a particular boon to small businesses and old industrial companies like General Motors, which have been crippled by the health-care costs generated by aging and ailing retired workers. 

 

To discourage insurance companies from running up costs, Douthat and Salam recommend that the government only pay a certain percentage above the “catastrophic level,” suggesting 75 percent. Obviously, Douthat and Salam go into far more detail in their book, but that is the basic outline of their plan. In similar fashion the authors attack a variety of dilemmas facing American society throughout the last few chapters, making it a policy wonk’s dream. 

 

In Grand New Party, readers are introduced to two young, smart conservative writers. Douthat and Salam are not afraid to think out of the box, which makes the book all the more refreshing and attractive. The authors effectively claim that to win elections, capturing the votes of the American working class is a necessity and then quickly go on to explain how the Republican Party can do just that. Here’s hoping policy makers in the party are listening.