Clap trap

"It would begin not from the assumption that capitalism is dehumanizing, but rather from the sense that too many people do not have access to capitalism's benefits. It would start not from the presumption that traditional practices and institutions must be overcome by rational administration, but rather from the firm conviction that family, church, and civil society are the means by which human beings find fulfillment and are essential counterweights to the market. It would reject the notion that universal dependence can build solidarity, and insist instead that only self-reliance, responsibility, and discipline can build mutual respect and character in a free society. It would seek to help the poor not with an empty promise of material equality but with a fervent commitment to upward mobility."

That anyone could write and see this as a "reorientation" of American conservatism--rather than a verbatim affirmation of the policies of American liberalism and the rhetoric of American conservatism from the demise of Federalism through the rise of conservative and progressive Democracy, the Whigs, the Republicans Party, and all the way up to Barack Obama, passing Nixon and Black Capitalism, Fair Deal-ism and Square Deal-ism along the way--reveals a profound shallowness and misunderstanding of American ideological rhetoric and policy.

Find me a "welfare state" policy of the last 100 years that was not predicated on exactly this basis. Find me a mainstream (as in, appealing to both movement activists and more ideological variant Democrats and independents) conservative proposal for dismantling or reconfiguring the "welfare state" that did not deploy this rhetoric.

This is the best of "more-of-the-same-isn": "contemporaries circumstances require a profound rethinking of purpose and reorientation of policy. That is why, now more than ever, we need more of the same."