The New Republic

Here is what James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute suggests Mitt Romney should say in response to the Fed's launching of QE3: "Like JFK and Ronald Reagan, we should cut tax rates on business and entrepreneurs and small business and the middle class." It's an old conservative refrain, and it's worked like a charm—as politics, though not as policy—for three decades. READ MORE >>

I LONG AGO GAVE UP trying to figure out who the “real” Mitt Romney is, but among the various claimants to that title is a guy who would like to index the minimum wage to inflation. I like this Mitt, because raising the minimum wage would provide a useful jolt of stimulus right now to the faltering recovery, and indexing it to inflation would keep us from waiting too long before we raised it again. READ MORE >>

It's well known that Mitt Romney is a shameless flip-flopper ready to shed any and all traces of his former moderation to win the GOP nomination. But this week we’ve seen an instance where Romney has been falsely accused of flip-flopping, yet Romney, hilariously, hasn’t protested, presumably because he has no particular interest in correcting the record. READ MORE >>

One more reason to think we're headed to some sort of economic apocalypse: Supply-siders like the Gang of Six proposal. Jonathan Chait explains the problem here: READ MORE >>

Here's something I did not expect at all: supply-siders appear at least open to supporting the Gang of Six budget. READ MORE >>

[Guest post by Matthew Zeitlin] In this exchange with Tim Pawlenty, conservative economist Larry Kudlow points out that failure to raise the debt ceiling means economic disaster, and that it will be impossible to get the Senate to pass an ambitious “cut, cap and balance” plan. In light of these facts, would Pawlenty still back a debt ceiling hike? Pawlenty responds that the best strategy is to “draw some lines in the sand”: READ MORE >>

David Frum is going through an interesting process as a conservative apostate. He used to be a conservative in good standing. Then he hit upon the idea that the Republican Party needed, primarily for tactical reasons, to reposition itself in the center in order to be politically competitive. (I think Frum's view on this is overstated, by the way.) This has increasingly alienated Frum from conservative figures and institutions he once trusted. READ MORE >>

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I got into this a bit on CNBC last night (see below), but I figured I'd continue the debate off-camera, where I could have the final word. READ MORE >>