Writing at the Washington Free Beacon, American Enterprise Institute scholar Matthew Continetti has “some questions for the national populists.”
Continetti’s jumping-off point is Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance’s recent speech to an Intercollegiate Studies Institute conference in Alexandria, Virginia, on the “American dream,” which Continetti says “ is an infamously nebulous concept” that Vance never really defines. But Vance does, and quite clearly.
“It means if you work hard and play by the rules, you can support a middle-class family on a single wage,” is the way Vance put it. That seems like a pretty clear policy goal to me.
Continetti then attacks Vance for contrasting his version of the American dream with “the dream of Mitt Romney,” which Vance says is a dream of “private jets,” “fancy businesses,” and “a lot of money.” Continetti thinks this is an unfair attack because Romney is a devoted husband, father, and grandfather. And I agree to an extent — attacking Romney as an enemy of the nuclear family is a little odd.
But leaving aside Romney’s unwise impeachment votes, Romney is also the man who rhetorically wrote off 47% of the country and who famously claimed “corporations are people, my friend.” Corporations are absolutely not people. They have been gifted immensely powerful privileges by the government, including limited liability and eternal life. Has the government granted you eternal life? I didn’t think so. Continetti seems to forget this side of Romney’s political identity completely.
Next, Continetti attacks Vance for not explaining “how ‘breaking up the big technology oligarchy’ would help men and women like his Mamaw.”
“The idea that conservatives should use policy to further their conception of the public good is something of a truism,” Continetti writes. “Everybody thinks they are furthering the good. The question, as always, is the means we employ to that end, and whether those means actually work. Government bureaucracy and regulation, for example, are not known for their contribution to human wellbeing.”
And it is true that “government bureaucracy and regulation” don’t have a strong track record, but we don’t need more government bureaucracy and regulation to fight woke capital. We just need to take away or limit the privileges government already gives them. Maybe Facebook and Amazon should be broken up when Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos die. Maybe corporate officers and shareholders should be held personally liable when their firms borrow too much money and go bankrupt. Maybe we need more bright-line rules in antitrust law so that Big Tech companies can’t buy up all of their upstart competitors. These are the questions national populists are asking, and they are good ones.
Next, Continetti takes issue with Vance’s attack on the Democratic Party as the party of childless adults. Vance allows that “There are people, of course, for biological reasons, medical reasons, that can’t have children. … It’s important to point that out. … Let’s set them to the side.” But this caveat isn’t good enough for Continetti. Continetti calls Vance’s entire argument “insulting” and reasons that “great parents can make terrible leaders—and great leaders are often terrible parents.”
And yes, of course, that is true. But parents, including adoptive parents, do have a stake in the future that others don’t. They also bring a different attitude about their obligations toward society and society’s obligations toward them. Married parents are more likely to volunteer in their communities. They are much more likely to start saving for a house. They are much more likely to do regular favors for neighbors. Married men with children are much less likely to commit crimes, much less likely to lose their money gambling, much less likely to spend time in bars, and much more likely to go to church.
Does Continetti really not see these differences?
Next, Continetti attacks Vance for not mentioning President Joe Biden’s child tax credit or Romney’s Family Security Act. But, as I wrote earlier this week, Biden’s child tax credit includes a huge marriage penalty because it is built on an existing welfare state that already punishes marriage.
As far as Romney’s plan goes, I’m a fan. But it’s not as if Vance mentioned national populist Sen. Josh Hawley’s Parent Tax Credit plan either. It’s not as if Vance is under any obligation to cover every single Republican family affordability plan out there in every speech. He identified a policy he likes — making loans to married couples that are forgiven if they stay together and have children. That’s unique and interesting — let’s debate that along with the Hawley and the Romney plans. Let’s get this conversation going.
I can’t speak for Vance, but what I think national populists are trying to do is reorient the guiding principle of the Republican Party. Under the Romney/Ryan GOP, the goal was always higher GDP. What should our tax policy aim at? Whatever produces the highest GDP. What should our immigration policy be? Whatever maximizes GDP. Antitrust? GDP. Welfare reform? Every mother should be in the workforce, raising the GDP.
The national populists want to change all that. As Vance said, they want to create policy around the goal that “if you work hard and play by the rules, you can support a middle-class family on a single wage.” That means a tax policy that favors labor over capital, an immigration policy that favors wages over GDP growth, an antitrust policy that doesn’t mean bigger is always better, and a welfare system that prioritizes marriage over work.
That’s the goal. That’s the vision. And I hope Vance wins his race and starts moving the Republican Party in that direction.
