If Republicans seriously want to foil Biden's statist plans, they're going to need better leaders than yay-hoos like these

 So President Biden is going to Pittsburgh today to unveil yet another exercise in redistribution and central planning on steroids:

President Joe Biden will unveil a $2.25 trillion U.S. infrastructure plan Wednesday -- paid for by steep tax hikes on businesses-- that his administration said will prove the most sweeping since investments in the 1960s space program.

The four-part, eight-year plan dedicates $620 billion for transportation, including a doubling in federal funding for public transit. It would provide $650 billion for initiatives tied to improving quality of life at home, like clean water and high-speed broadband. There’s $580 billion for strengthening American manufacturing -- some $180 billion of which goes to what’s billed as the biggest non-defense research and development program on record -- and $400 billion to address improved care for the elderly and people with disabilities.

Biden’s plan would increase the corporate income tax to 28% from 21%, and set a 21% minimum tax on global corporate earnings. The White House said tax increases will be “fully paying for the investments in this plan over the next 15 years.”

Granted, implementation is no sure thing: 

What is really going on is that many Democrats are hoping to use Biden's presidency to "jam" into law a variety of Democratic agenda items old and new. Their vast ambitions are hampered by the fact that they have a very narrow majority in the House -- so narrow that Democrats are trying to grab a seat in Iowa that has already been certified by state election officials -- and the Senate is tied, 50-50. American voters have not given Democrats the kind of dominant majorities needed to "transform" the country.

But preventing even the partial success of this agenda requires an opposition party able to articulate a consistent body of principles and not clever marketing aimed at "the working class," a strategy that smacks of industrial policy and protectionism, not the free-market economics that ought to be front and center: 

On a flight Tuesday from Indianapolis to Fort Wayne, Ind., two leaders in the House Republican conference discussed a memo that argues that their party's future demands they "embrace our new coalition" because "President Trump's gift didn’t come with a receipt."

Why it matters: The document, titled "Cementing GOP as the Working Class Party," leaves no doubt that Republicans — at least in the House of Representatives — will be doubling down on Donald Trump for the foreseeable future.

The two leaders would be Kevin McCarthy, he of the changing of his tune from shouting into the telephone as the Capitol was under siege on January 6 to the Very Stable Genius, "Do you know who the f--- you're talking to?" to making the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago for an audience with that same VSG, and Jim Banks, whose district includes Fort Wayne and who is proud of the fact that he objected to the certification of Joe Biden's victory. This memo is full of language disparaging corporate donors and Wall Street.

It's pandering of the rankest sort. It's pitting classes of Americans against each other. 

Isn't the point of conservatism supposed to be that it's universally applicable? That it works for people in small heartland towns, suburbs and coastal metropolises? That it's impervious to shifting trends?

Why aren't the tree pillars 

1.) Free market economics: A good or a service is worth what buyer and seller agree that it is worth.  Period.  No other entity - certainly not government - has any business being involved in reaching that agreement.  Therefore, public-policy inquiries that concern themselves with macro-level phenomenon such as wealth inequality or “fair” wages are not only pointless but tyrannical by definition.

2.) The understanding that Western civilization is a unique blessing to the world: Both the Greco-Roman tradition from which the West has distilled the political structure of a representative democracy and the above-mentioned free-market economy, and the Judeo-Christian tradition from which it acquired an accurate understanding of the Creator’s nature and humankind’s proper relationship to the creator are the two most significant avenues of advancement our species has ever discovered.  (And much falls under this point that needs serious discussion at this time, such as the fact that there are only two genders, male and female, and that their is no fluidity between them, and that the family structure of a husband, wife and children thereof is the overwhelmingly normal one and the one most conducive to a happy and prosperous society.)

3.) A foreign policy based on what history tells us about human nature:  Evil is real and always with us.  A nation-state seeking a righteous world(such as the United States of America) should only form close alliances with other nations that have demonstrated a track record of common values.  Regimes that are clearly tyrannical and / or expansionist should never be appeased.  Indeed, foreign policy should be guided by thinking on how to at least eventually remove such regimes as problems on the world stage.

still the lodestar for the party seeking to roll back statism?

But McCarthy and Banks seem determined to double down on the GOP's status as the stupid party.

Whether leadership can be wrested from such types is not at all certain. At the least, it's a daunting task, given how large Trump still looms over it. But whether done inside the party or some new vehicle for promulgating actual conservatism, it's going to fall to those who still understand that it is the only viable road forward to see if  actual conservatism can be tried.