Marco Rubio and the real beginning of 2016

Ponnuru notes the resemblance between the broad vision outlined by Rubio and that advanced by conservative reformers. What I’m looking forward to, however, is a robust contest of ideas, in which all GOP presidential aspirants are expected to offer policy proposals that (at a bare minimum) address the post-Obamacare future of America’s health system; the human capital deficits that have their roots in family breakdown, and which have in many cases been exacerbated by dysfunctional schools and colleges; and the sources of long-term unemployment and underemployment, from regulatory accumulation to a fragile, boom-and-bust financial system addicted to excessive debt. You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned tax reform. Though I consider taxation very important, and it relates to all of the areas I’ve identified, Republican presidential contenders have in recent years tended to treat tax policy, and in particular tax rates, as the sum total of domestic policy. This represents a huge lost opportunity. The right now faces a liberal coalition that is intellectually exhausted. Having achieved the goal of near-universal coverage, the chief domestic priorities of the center-left are raising the federal minimum wage and expanding access to preschool, ideally in a way that will expand unionized public employment. There are center-left thinkers who are open to the idea that public services should be designed to benefit those who use them more than those who provide them, but they’ve been marginalized within the liberal coalition as left-liberalism has reasserted itself intellectually and politically. And so the right is where the action is — the only question is whether conservatives are up to the task.