...The Bush-Rove Republicans have already shifted from the broader Reagan coalition of libertarians, anticommunists, moral traditionalists and tax cutters to one that is rooted in the South and skewed towards the rural heartland. They are losing the educated elites at a fast clip, accelerated by Barack Obama’s class appeal. What some younger conservatives now want is to capitalise on this and take it one step further.

That’s the central thrust of a book just out, Grand New Party, by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam. The title is a play on America’s nickname for the Republicans, the Grand Old Party, or GOP. The authors are in their twenties, undeniably brilliant and (full disclosure) friends and colleagues at The Atlantic Monthly, the American magazine whose website hosts my blog. They are the first generation of American intellectuals to have emerged from the blogo-sphere. And so they think widely and outside some of the guard rails of the professional think tank class.... LINK