What Is The GOP’s Economic Policy?

Douthat wants specifics:

[F]or a Republican Party that’s still trying to rebuild credibility after the profound repudiation it received in 2006 and 2008, campaigning on platitudes and ideological cliches is ultimately more dangerous than taking the plunge into substance. If you don’t tell your primary voters what you really hope to do, you risk laying the groundwork for cries of 'betrayal' and intra-party civil wars once you start to govern. At the same time, if you don’t present general election voters with an agenda that actually addresses their concerns, you risk never getting the chance to govern at all.

Ross goes a little overboard in discerning real ferment among the conservative policy class – did he read Arthur Brooks' latest? – but that's understandable credentializing before telling the truth. And the truth on offer from today's GOP candidates, as gleaned from the debates, can sadly be reduced to this:

Romney has halfway embraced a plausible blueprint for Medicare reform; Jon Huntsman’s proposal for shrinking too-big-too-fail banks deserves some notice; and Rick Santorum has at least been willing to acknowledge that America might have a social mobility problem.

Given the tectonic shifts in the world this last decade, this is meager gruel.