James Capretta argues that Republicans need to talk about entitlement reform now. Ramesh Ponnuru argues that this would be premature. I’m sympathetic to Ramesh’s conclusion:

There is no point to Republicans’ endangering their seats for legislation, however worthy, unless they have a good shot at getting a presidential signature on it. They will get their answer in the next State of the Union address.

But, as Ramesh makes clear, this makes it all the more important that conservative presidential candidates make the political case for entitlement reform.