Let’s start with domestic reform. What needs to be done? Ramesh Ponnuru, echoing though not quoting President Obama, says we have a healthcare spending problem. We’re throwing an inordinate share of our national wealth into health care, with distinctly unimpressive results. What does Ross say? RyanCare!
…[T]he fact that the party is now generally united behind a premium-support reform to Medicare is not a small thing or a pointless detour, but a major breakthrough for sound right-of-center policymaking …. The fact that they chose substance instead [instead of something stupid like ObamaCare]— rallying around first the Ryan plan and then its more plausible Ryan-Wyden variation — is a good thing, a necessary thing, and a step that was to crucial to conservative credibility in spending debates to come.
When it comes to foreign affairs, Ross is a bit more abrupt, telling us not what he favors, but what he doesn’t, most particularly, well, realism:
There’s a version of realism that really doesn’t have a home in the post-Reagan Republican Party — one that tends to put its faith in Davos bromides rather than American sovereignty, that regards Israel as the source of almost every Middle Eastern problem, that’s allergic to the language of American exceptionalism, and that’s basically left-of-center on most non-foreign policy questions and culturally alienated from the religious conservatism that lies at the heart of the G.O.P. coalition.
Afterwords
Ross launches this fusillade in defense of Rand Paul, who, apparently, is not as dumb as Colin Powell. Rand has been dancing around quite a bit, after first saying that we could live with a nuclear Iran and that we should cut off foreign aid to Israel, but it’s still not clear that’s he’s selling out to the Republican establishment entirely, though those right-wing digestive juices are powerful, and poor Rand is right in the belly of the beast. The fact that Ross is willing to cut Rand a little slack is the one encouraging thing about the piece.
