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Peter Ferrara takes on Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam today on the main site; I review their book, Grand New Party, in the July/August issue of the print magazine. I agree with most of Ferrara's criticisms, especially his argument with their treatment of welfare reform (I discuss it a little bit here, but don't really get into it in the review). But I differ with him on the expanded child tax credit. These tax cuts do help families keep their hard-earned money and therefore should not be described as a subsidy or bribery, unless all tax cuts are bribery. (Ferrara doesn't actually use the word "bribery," but the implication of buying political support is close.) Second, while it's true that this tax cut won't have much of a supply-side or pro-growth effect, capital investment isn't the only behavior conservatives should want to incentivize. Finally, the point is to broaden the constituency for a conservative governing coalition. Empowering that coalition by protecting the paychecks of working families and promoting affordable family formation will make it easier to enact the purer supply-side policies that Ferrara and I would prefer.