To weigh in on an ongoing debate over conservatives and domestic policy, this from Patrick Appel doesn't seem quite right:
In my experience, liberal think tanks and intellectuals dominate most domestic issues while conservative think tanks and intellectuals dominate foreign policy. ... This was made clear during the health care debate; there were certainly conservative pundits arguing against "Obamacare" but conservative health care experts were seriously outgunned.
You need to separate between the party infrastructure and actual conservative intellectuals. For instance, during the health-care debate, there were plenty of pundits arguing against "Obamacare," and conservative health-care experts thought they were crazy and wanted to talk seriously about the issues. They weren't outgunned by liberals, they were outgunned by their own compatriots!
Unfortunately, ideas don't get traction without support from the pundits who spread them around (a new policy proposal will gather dust until a Paul Krugman or a David Brooks puts it before the world in an 800-word chunk) and politicians who try to enact them. That's why, for instance, I find many debates with honest conservative intellectuals so fruitless: It's a nice conversation that has little to do with the realities of governing.
The debate over foreign policy is harder to map out; conservatives do seem to dominate that conversation, despite the fact that the standards of debate are so different; you read The Washington Post op-ed page, and it can feel like there's a contest of who can propose the most radical way to deploy U.S. military force. The feeling that liberals don't have a cohesive response comes from still unresolved disagreements that Matt Yglesias recently wrote about for TAP.
-- Tim Fernholz
