The Republican future

Co-author Ross Douthat says a reformed GOP can help—and win over—the “working class” | Marvin Olasky

Noel Reyes-Pitts

In Grand New Party: Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream (Doubleday, 2008), authors Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam lay out a long-term program for Republican renewal. Since the Washington cliché, "the devil's in the details," has a lot of truth to it, Douthat answered some questions about details.

Q: You want the GOP to push for tax code simplification that reduces taxes on investments and hugely expands tax credits for children. Let's have some details.

Our plan is shamelessly stolen from Ramesh Ponnuru, a senior editor at National Review, who's been proposing something along these lines for some time now. The basic idea is to keep taxes lowest on investments of all kinds—and to treat raising children, arguably the biggest and most expensive investment in the American future a family can make, as akin to starting a business or investing in a company.