Ross douthat why moderates

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The Taliban, explained By Sam Ellis. Facebook is quietly buying up the metaverse By Peter Kafka. Sign up for the newsletter Sign up for The Weeds Get our essential policy newsletter delivered Fridays. A lot depends on what he does and what his direct influence is. Has this election revealed that conservatives are no longer bound together by a common set of beliefs about economics, taxes, national defense, or the role of government, but merely united by a common enemy?

And what this campaign has demonstrated is that lots of people inside the party want a new message, too. The question is, can you come up with a message and an agenda that shifts Trumpism and keeps some things and loses the demagoguery and darkness?

And is their power within the GOP on a permanent decline? Religious institutions are weaker than they were 10 years ago. You have a certain amount of secularization, but then you also have something Trump has effectively exploited, which is this drift away from institutions.

This is what you saw in the primaries. The reason you have a lot of actual churchgoers sticking by him now is simply a cultural fear driven by the decline that I was just talking about.

The decline of religious practice creates more potential Trump voters, but it also creates a fear that makes people reluctantly support him as well.

Basically, the United States, if you poll people on immigration, you have about a third of the country thinks the immigration rate is too high; a third of the country thinks the current immigration rate should be maintained, and about a quarter of the country thinks the immigration rate should be increased.

And probably you get similar numbers in Europe. Both in Europe and in the Untied States, you have an effectively bipartisan consensus that higher immigration rates, including higher low-skilled immigration rates, are always good things and that any kind of immigration reform should substantially increase the immigration rate.

This has happened all over Europe. DOUTHAT: There is a sort of normal tendency, given the nature of our political coalitions, for liberals to be more likely to end up in the academy. But the worriers have reasonable points. For instance, this past week brought a new paper estimating that the Biden credit could lead more parents to leave the workforce than previous analysis suggested, counteracting some of its reductions in child poverty.

A possible compromise here would attach a work requirement to the credit for parents with kids older than 1, while offering the money free of strings to parents of infants. Donate to the newsroom now. The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc. Ross Douthat: On family policy, spend like liberals, manage like conservatives. In case you missed it.