It seems the anti-establishment right's new philosophical paradigm is to present the ideologically attractive yet knowably unworkable as merely a victim of insufficient "self-knowledge, substance and strategic thinking." Thus somehow the unworkable really could be workable--a creative end run around reality, more than a bit like textbook Marxists insisting that Sino-Soviet economic policies could have worked, had it not been for the economic policies of the Soviet Union and Red China.
As Exhibts A-Z in a singular sentence, there's this from Ross Douthat's column today:
There might indeed be a "libertarian populist" agenda that could help Republicans woo the middle class--but not if, as in Rand Paul’s budget proposals, its centerpiece is just another sweeping tax cut for the rich.
But of course the centerpiece of Rand Paul's proposal is far more than that. Its core transcends the usual pseudoconservative simplicity of sweeping tax cuts for the rich ("a low flat tax for individuals and corporations") by soaring to a revolutionary nihilism that would wreck the middle class while obstructing the poor's path to it: an "opt-out" for Social Security; an arbitrarily devastating balanced budget in five years; the departmental obliteration of Commerce, HUD, Education and Energy; and the block-granting of all federal "welfare programs"--"e.g. Medicaid, SCHIP, food stamps, and child nutrition."
In other words, Rand Paul's proposal would indeed be peachy, were it not for Rand Paul's proposal.
Ross, it won't work. Give it up. Scratch it. "Libertarian populism" is just an internal contradiction which you can turn inside out or plop upside down or stand on its head, but a contradiction it will remain. The vast American Middle will not opt for gutting itself--simple as that. You can gussy up its essential nihilism all you want, but libertarian populism is both antithetical to authentic conservatism and profoundly, politically unrealistic. There's your "self-knowledge."