A coupla National Review dudes, last seen thinking a whole lot about poor people

And not entirely without effect, either. In “The Freeloader Myth” Ramesh Ponnuru suggests politely to Republicans that they stop pissing on the 47 percent of the population who are so poor that they don’t have any federal income tax liability, on the grounds that, basically, it’s not nice to make fun of poor people, especially since 1) they pay a lot of other taxes, 2) it was often Republican legislation that reduced the number of people paying federal income tax, and 3) when you’re accusing President Obama of “class war” because he wants to raise taxes on the rich, it’s a little, well, rich to be wanting to raise taxes on the poor. Yeah, a little evasive and soft around the edges, but, compared to Larry Kudlow, worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.

For his part, Reihan Salam has a lot to say, a whole lot to say, actually, about a “fascinating” report by the House Budget Committee and the “landscape of inequality.” Reihan learns a lot from this report, a whole lot, reading it in conjunction with the rather “controversial” [my word, not Reihan’s] Congressional Budget Office report. Among the things Reihan learns: rich people tend to work more than poor people! Yeah! But one thing Reihan doesn’t learn, and in fact doesn’t even discuss, is what to do about the fact that over the past 30 years, those in the top 1% saw their incomes increase by 275%, while those in the bottom 20% got an 18% raise. Hey, you can’t solve all the world’s problems in one column!

Both Reihan and Ramesh are, you know, foreigners, which tends to give their conservatism a less than knee-jerk quality. But give Ramesh props, of some sort (certainly not mine), for going off on Newt Gingrich for being squishy soft on federal funding of stem cell research. Of all the bad things you could say about Newt, that is surely the least likely to be said.