The War of Ideas

"I think it is fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time," Barack Obama recently told a Nevada editorial board. The Senator took some notable, if not quite accurate, grief from Hillary Clinton over that: she said he was expressing support for Republican ideas (clearly, he wasn't). But what did he actually mean? People — and not just Republicans — have been calling the GOP the party of ideas for nearly 30 years, since Ronald Reagan transformed the mushy, defensive conservatism of his party into a sleek ideological message celebrating...