...In their thoughtful and important new book, Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream, young conservative journalists Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam point out that while Democrats are clueless about why cultural values can produce material suffering, Republicans fail to grasp how economics can affect cultural decline.

Liberals correctly call out conservatives, they write, for "diagnosing the working class' cultural problems and then pretending that those problems are the only ones there are."

"In reality, you can't disentangle the sociological trends that have created familial instability from the economic trends, at home and worldwide, that have increased financial insecurity for working-class voters," they continue. "Divorce and illegitimacy lead to economic disadvantage, but the reverse is also true..." LINK