Ken Masugi Says Read Our Jim and Listen to Our Pete

So Ken has a very astute review of Jim et al.’s excellent analysis of the recent election.

Ken does well especially in giving telling examples of Ceaser’s incisive wit and framing of the issues.

Ken does even better by reminding us all that the Republican future depends on the key players listening to Yuval, Pete, and Henry Olsen. Notice that Ken put Pete’s name in the middle.

Jim and his co-authors want the election to be understood as a choice between the two alternatives of the Founders’ vision of limited government and the Progressive embrace of European social democracy. That, of course, is not the way the swing voters understood it. I’m sticking with my analysis—which is basically Obama combined conservatism in the precise sense when it came to defense of entitlements with progressive libertarianism on the so-called social issues. Romney didn’t raise a credible counter-attack on either front.

In those repects, being saddled with both being the author of RomneyCare and being a Mormon hurt Mitt. It didn’t help that he was an unapologetic real rich guy who made his money in a way ordinary Americans couldn’t understand as genuinely productive and unexploitive.