Voters recognize the difference between real conservatism and more Beltway hollowness

I immediately had suspicions about Room to Grow from the the instant I discovered Peter Wehner was involved. That guy makes my teeth grind.

It's a blueprint for a concept du jour called "reform conservatism."

In her latest WSJ column, Kimberly Strassel demonstrates that the Dave Brat victory makes clear that this little movement or whatever it is is longer on "reform" than it is "conservatism."

Mr. Brat's victory is surely awkward for a new wing of the conservative movement that has taken to arguing that the whole free-market, supply-side, Reaganesque agenda is passé. Humbly declaring themselves the "reform" conservative moment, this group has made some waves with their manifesto "Room to Grow"—including introductions by former Bush speechwriter Pete Wehner and National Affairs Editor Yuval Levin. "Room to Grow" has some interesting ideas, all overshadowed by the book's central premise: That conservatives need to embrace government to better endear themselves to the "middle class."

The authors are clear that politics, not principle, needs to drive conservative policy. Nowhere is that clearer than in the chapter by former Bush Treasury official Robert Stein on tax policy. A summary: Marginal tax rates are no longer popular because they don't give much to the middle class. Republicans instead need to embrace redistribution and lard the tax code with special, conservative-approved handouts for said middle class—namely a giant tax credit for children, similar to that proposed by Utah Sen. Mike Lee. (The book has many more tax-credit suggestions, too.)

Absent from the chapter is any recognition of why Reagan, and the party, embraced tax cuts. It's this thing called "economics." Cutting taxes on capital—and cutting high marginal rates—spurs investment, which grows the economy, which benefits everyone, including the middle class. The good politics follows. The middle-class beneficiaries of Reagan's economic boom showed their own appreciation by signing up for a conservative political realignment that lasted decades.

This emphasis on "helping the middle class" was one of the many things that irritated me about Mitt Romney.  Hell, the Most Equal Comrade uses that kind of rhetoric.

The principles of economic freedom are not situational.  You don't tweak them in order to target particular people who, at a given point in time, happen to be in a particular income bracket.  They apply to everyone, from muckety-mucks to those with nothing.  And, as Strassel says in the money line of of her piece when addressing the sniffing way "reformers" speak of 1979, "Good economic policy doesn't have a sell-by date."