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DM vs. Douthat/Salam

Also newly in print, in the election special issue of Reason (otherwise known as the November 2008 issue), is my review of Grand New Party, by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam.The boy wonders of The Atlantic make their case for “neoconservatism with a human face in action,” to which I say, “oh, hell no!”

Grand New Party belongs in the same class with David Frum’s Comeback — the neocons have been totally discredited on the international stage, so now they’re retreating to the domestic arena, blaming Republican defeats on Goldwaterites, libertarians, and Frank Meyer, while calling for federal government assistance to blue-collar families. The new neoconservatism prescribes the kind of policies that a Hillary Clinton or a Lyndon Johnson can love. Libertarians and traditional conservatives should recognize this latest strain as absolute bloody anathema. See my review in Reason for details.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, September 27th, 2008 at 11:06 pm and is filed under Books, The Left, magazines. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.

5 Comments on “DM vs. Douthat/Salam”

  1. John Says:
    September 28th, 2008 at 12:07 am

    Is that going to end up online, Dan? I don’t want to miss it.

  2. Daniel McCarthy Says:
    September 28th, 2008 at 12:25 am

    Yep, it should be on-line eventually.

  3. James Kabala Says:
    September 29th, 2008 at 4:27 pm

    Are Douthat and Salaam really neocons? Even if the word has lost all meaning other than “self-described conservative who supported the war,” which seems to have happened over the last seven years, Douthat seems to regret his support for it (which before his journalism career even began) and Salaam, as far as I know, has never made any statement on it one way or the other.

  4. Daniel McCarthy Says:
    September 30th, 2008 at 1:47 pm

    Salam is pro-war, from what I hear, and the Douthat-Salam composite, while cautiously avoiding any serious discussion of foreign-policy in GNP, takes a couple of whacks at Democrats for being “pacifists.” But in connecting Douthat and Salam to the neocons, I’m not using the term in its debased sense: the point of Douthat and Salam’s book is, in large part, to defend the domestic record of neoconservatives and build a (neo)conservative case for paternalistic (or maternalistic) government, which used to be a neocon theme before they became all-war, all the time. GNP explicitly praises “neoconservatism in action,” and credits most Republican policy successes in the ’80s and ’90s to neoconservatives.

    It’s well and good that Douthat regrets his support for the Iraq War. But what I wonder is whether he’ll make the right call on the next war. Speaking of which, Salam’s view of Iran can be inferred from this passage:

    My hope is that the post-Bush Republicans will remain very tough on national security — that is, that they will reject the new Bush-Obama “carrots-and-carrots” consensus on Iran — but that they’ll also continue in the Gatesian direction, emphasizing that resources need to match commitments.

    It’s no accident that Bill Kristol, David Frum, and David Brooks are great fans of GNP. What the book prescribes is very much in line with their vision of domestic politics, and does not conflict in the least with Kristol-Kagan foreign policy.

  5. James Kabala Says:
    October 2nd, 2008 at 12:01 pm

    Thank you. I have yet to read the book, I confess.

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