Op-ed: Creating a conservative welfare state

Matthew Continetti argues in The Evening Standard that Republicans face a Hobson's Choice if they want to win the White House and maintain their majority in the House of Representatives:

The domestic proposals that have the greatest chance of making the Republican party attractive to the "coalition of the ascendant"​--​immigrants, members of the millennial generation, single white women​--​involve far more government intervention in the economy than the GOP coalition​--​married white people, Wall Street, the Tea Party​--​will allow. And we haven't even mentioned changing the GOP approach to social issues, which would drive the Republican base of religious conservatives out of the party. Pursuing such proposals would break the coalition that puts Republicans close to a majority.

Continetti thinks the GOP should try imagining a world he calls "the conservative welfare state," in which many traditional Republican assumptions are upended:

Maybe the foremost concern of most Americans is not the top marginal income tax rate. Maybe you can't seriously lower health care costs without radically overhauling the way we pay for health care. Maybe a political party can't address adequately such middle-class concerns as school quality and transportation without using the power of government. Maybe the globalization of capital and products and labor hasn't been an unimpeachable good.

Read the entire op-ed that caught Kerri's attention. Our producer Maddy Mahon is checking to see whether Continetti can join us to explain the Catch-22 facing Republicans and how a "conservative welfare state" would play out.

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