I continue my campaign to destroy Ramesh Ponnuru's standing on the right by praising his work.
On the National Review blog yesterday, Ramesh smacked down conservatives who claim the Bush tax cuts caused revenue to rise.
And in a (subscription-only) article for the latest National Review, he makes a very smart case that attacking spending is not politically popular for Republicans.
There are other conservative writers who will criticize conservatives--Ross Douthat, Chris Caldwell come to mind--but I don't know of any writers with as orthodox conservative views as Ramesh who are nonetheless so willing to admit inconvenient realities.
(Disclosure: Ramesh kindly blurbed my book, but I asked him to because I consider him intellectually honest, rather than me calling him honest because he praised my book.)
--Jonathan Chait