The Douhat & Salam article was a treat. Thanks for the links. I think their ideas would lay the groundwork for a long term conservative majority, although admittedly it’s unclear if it would be a Republican one (given the tension he highlights between the “base” and “entrepreneurial/elite” Republicans on a number of important issues). While it’s unlikely that the conservative majority would empower Democrats, the pro-family economic issues they outline (wage subsidies, payroll tax-offsets for children, recognition of economic value for homemakers in qualified plans and Social Security, newborn tax credits, meaningful health care reform, etc.) would have appeal to a block voters and legislators that would probably cut across current partisan boundaries. Whether that would result in a realignment, or merely a governing coalition I don’t know. At the end of the day, the primary principle of the article is that married couples are the base of the GOP, the most reliable voting block, and need to be incentivized to make a large investment in having and raising children (our nation’s most important resource). Doing so will require recognizing that returns on labor continue to languish behind returns on capital, and, while that is not intrinsically “bad,” it must be addressed if conservatives are going to have success at the ballot box.