Righting the Right

Both books stress the costs of family breakdown to Americans of modest means -- and particularly to their children.

Here is an area where liberals could make common cause with these next-era conservatives. Douthat and Salam suggest expanding the current tax credit for children from $1,000 to $5,000. It's a relief to see conservatives willing to make a link between economic forces and family life, something their more radically free-market comrades are rarely willing to do.

Two books do not a revolution make. But they are a symptom of a healthy dissidence within the conservative movement and a sign of its instinct toward survival.

"There is emerging within the Republican Party a very interesting debate about whether we need to change our approach, or just reassert the policies we already have," Frum said in an interview.

Frum would like the heretical Republicans to come together to create their own version of the Democratic Leadership Council. The GOP sure could use something. A Pew Research Center survey released last week found that only 27 percent of Americans now identify themselves as Republican, the lowest percentage in Pew's 16 years of polling. If ever there was a moment for change agents within the nation's conservative party, this is it.

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