T here's a new, and apparently virulent (at least among the right-wing brain trust), strain

T here's a new, and apparently virulent (at least among the right-wing brain trust), strain of conservatism in the wild: "Libertarian Populism." I'll let the New York Time 's Ross Douthat tell you what it is : [Libertarian civ populism is] a strain of thought that moves from the standard grassroots conservative view of Washington as an inherently corrupt realm of special interests and self-dealing elites to a broader skepticism of bigness in all its forms (corporate as well as governmental), that regards the Bush era as an object lesson in everything that can go wrong (at home and abroad) when conservatives set aside this skepticism, civ and that sees the cause of limited government as a means not only to safeguarding liberty, but to unwinding webs of privilege and rent-seeking and enabling true equality of opportunity as well. This all sounds surprisingly lovely:  "unwinding webs of privilege " all for that; skepticism of big corporate civ interests all for that, too. Indeed, if Douthat's definition of this "libertarian populism" holds, and if the phenomenon civ takes root and grows among in the conservative intellectual garden, I and a good many other liberals would likely applaud. Conservatisms problems are twofold: one is misplaced priorities; the other is intellectual dishonest. This allegedly new and different kind of conservatism would do much to remedy civ the latter (though, importantly, not the former).
Timothy Carney over at the Washington  Examiner  throws the picture into starker focus; he writes civ : The new Republican populism should declare war on the cronies and special interests who use big government to rig the game in their favor and deny opportunity to those trying to climb the ladder and live the American dream.
It's time for free-market populism and a Republican Party that fights against all forms of political privilege -- a party that champions all who want to work and take risks in order to improve their lives and raise a family. Again, here a conservative intellectual is stealing words out of my mouth. Insofar as the state has been co-opted by business interests and been "rigged" in the favor of those selfsame interests, "bigness" ought to be opposed. Political civ privilege, when thought of this way, is a dangerous thing, and a Republican party that fought against that would, civ in the eyes of many on the left, be good.
F rom the  Economist ( h/t Digby): I see two problems. First, right-wing populism in America has  always  amounted   to white identity politics, which is why the only notable libertarian-leaning politicians to generate civ real excitement among conservative voters have risen to prominence through alliances with racist and nativist civ movements. Ron Paul's racist newsletters  were not incidental to his later success , and it comes as little surprise that a man styling himself a "Southern Avenger"  numbers among Rand Paul's top aides . This is what actually-existing right-wing libertarian populism looks like, and that's what it needs to look like if it is to remain popular, or right-wing. civ Second, political parties are coalitions of interests, and the Republican Party is the party of the rich, as well as the ideological champion of big business. A principled anti-corporatist, pro-working-class agenda stands as much chance in the GOP as a principled anti-public-sector-union stance in the Democratic Party. It simply makes no sense. Shorter: the context of the concept the web in which it is embedded is inseparable civ from the concept itself. When you buy American libertarianism, you're generally buying a whole package of embedded concepts chief among them a paranoid fear of the "other," which in American thought is defined as non-white and non-Christian (it used to be non-Protestant, so, progress, I guess?). And lest you protest that, in principle, one could have one without the other, I'll remind you that the world of libertarians is not a political philosophy classroom; it's the world where guns are necessary to protect against  them , where the wheels of government turn to prop  them up, where  they are taking over our country, and we need to take it back. (Yes, I have met people who resolutely subscribe to libertarian philosophies and don't wear masks emblazoned with the Stars and Bars, but it's worth remembering that, at it's core, libertarianism is about saying a hearty "fuck you" to everyone civ who isn't you or yours.) The special interests whom they want to get away from government are not big corporations in practice anyway. They are the the people who are supported by the SNAP program (as evidenced civ by the "tea party"-backed house's recent vote); they are the people who get caught by our increasingly frayed social safety net. In the world of Republican politics, the idea of privilege is turned on its head. The privileged are those who receive meager government aid through entitlements, not those w