As one of the 38 people on the planet deeply interested in “liberaltarianism” you’d think I’d really dig this post by Reihan over at the American Scene. But I can’t get past the first and second paragraph:

Upper-Middle-Reform and Lower-Middle-Reform: Almost one year ago, I fearlessly predicted that Mitt Romney would vault to frontrunner status on the strength of his (flawed) health care plan. Since I’ve so clearly been vindicated on this and so many other things … wait, I was completely wrong. But I do still think that there is a serious tension between what you might call upper-middle-reformism and lower-middle-reformism, and Ross is exactly right: the failure of Republicans to cultivate lower-middle-reformism will in all likelihood mean a Republican defeat in 2008.

Me: I hate to sound condescending because I’m a fan of Reihan’s and Ross’s and I’m generally friendly to the new generation of younger bloggers. But, I’m sorry: this is nonsense and it’s a bit representative of what one hears from the super-smart and very young these days. The idea that anyone, anywhere can spot an intellectual trend of any kind and then extrapolate out nearly two years to say that the GOP will or won’t win the presidency because of its refusal to embrace this or that advice is just absurd. Young wonky bloggers love Big Ideas. But Big Ideas are not the North Star of electoral politics, and you cannot navigate by them this far away from an election.

It may sound like crotchety David Broderism to say that two years is a lifetime in politics, but the truth is two years is many, many lifetimes in politics (and yes, I’m rounding up from just under 21 months, but you get my point).To say, before we know who the candidates are, the state of the war, the state of the economy, the national mood, how the Democratically-controlled congress governs etc etc etc that the GOP will lose in 2008 because it isn’t embracing something called lower-middle-reformism is painfully naive. If one of LBJ’s aides came in and said something like this two years before an election, the aide would catch a cowboy boot in his pie-hole.

Voters make their decisions based on all sorts of things existing outside the realm of Big Ideas. If it were otherwise the biggest influence on partisan affiliation wouldn’t be your parents’ partisan affiliation. Howard Dean’s scream, John Kerry’s “I voted for it before I voted against it,” George W. Bush’s last minute hit on his old DUI (or his unfairly high name recognition in 1998-99), Michael Dukakis not flinching at the hypothetical suggestion his wife was brutally raped and murdered, Poppa Bush’s supermarket scanner episode, Bob Dole’s Grim Reaperness, all of these things had large influences on the course of elections and they had absolutely nothing to do with Big Ideas. And I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing.