She writes,

The authors are clear that politics, not principle, needs to drive conservative policy. Nowhere is that clearer than in the chapter by former Bush Treasury official Robert Stein on tax policy. A summary: Marginal tax rates are no longer popular because they don’t give much to the middle class. Republicans instead need to embrace redistribution and lard the tax code with special, conservative-approved handouts for said middle class—namely a giant tax credit for children, similar to that proposed by Utah Sen. Mike Lee. (The book has many more tax-credit suggestions, too.)

I think that the authors of RtG ought to reflect on such criticism rather than reject it outright. Whatever you think of each tax credit individually, they are not even compatible with one another, much less a coherent package.

Above all, they need to resolve the relationship between policy and gesturing. Their implicit assumption is that policy can serve as gesturing, and vice-versa. That is, if they propose tax credits for the middle class, middle-class voters will recognize this as a gesture toward them and respond favorably. On the other hand, when they make vague gestures in the direction of reforms of welfare programs, education, or licensing regulations, they expect those of us who are interested in policy to read into such gestures some specific proposal.

Sometimes, a particular policy becomes a widely-accepted gesture. For example, support for the minimum wage is considered to be a gesture in favor of workers. But overall, I am cynical about how much policy actually counts in voters’ decisions.

I am inclined to separate policy from gesturing. Politicians like Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama managed to make convincing gestures toward constituents who were not going to benefit from their policies. Meanwhile, as a policy proponent, the more you link your policy proposals to gesturing, the less you are able to stand on high ground.