It is way premature to label Christie the best Republican answer for 2016: the immediate point is that a governor with overwhelming popularity in a blue state, who has kept his credentials as a social conservative, and who has broken the grip of his state’s public employee unions, has something instructive to offer to national conservatives.

I do think Christie will eventually view the Medicaid expansion in Obamacare as a bait and switch. I will defer to his perspective on how much disaster relief aid his state needed to handle Sandy’s aftermath (I would think anyone with federalist sympathies would). But if his pragmatism about his own state is a disqualifier, it means that conservatives are in the business of shopping for purity: a luxury we don’t have in a country that gauges policies by results rather than theory. The blunt truth is that winning still requires a conservative who knows how to speak the language of the majority of Americans who don’t answer to the label.

Several responses remind me why I addressed this piece to Republicans interested in re-crafting the party's message. Not every Republican is: I do encounter conservatives who are comfortable doubling down on a theory that government at every level ought to disengage. Its a viewpoint, albeit one well beyond federalism,  and one that no Republican nominee has run on since 1964, to the tune of 39% of the vote.  Running to the right of Alabama, Georgia and Oklahoma (all of whom are expanding their pre-k programs) is no path back to victory.

As to the issue itself, there is certainly a respectable debate over what pre-school  should look like, and the middling record of the 39 preexisting versions proves that reading and cognitive skills need to be emphasized more and that parents ought to have an option of trading a pre-k ticket for vouchers to private or parochial programs, or for straightforward daycare. And I agree that the coverage range for Obama's matching money could be scaled back.  But a pro-family agenda is made not just of a safety net or pro-life policies; it requires rewarding work and nurturing children too.  

Ironically, while conservatives are lamenting Obama's efforts to play fast and loose with an appellate court ruling over the NLRB, the left is taking him to task for a more stunning development: the administration's view that it can order the killing of American citizens abroad who are linked to Al Qaeda, without the judicial review that exists even for wiretapping Americans overseas. Unfortunately, liberals and conservatives engage this White House's imperial tendencies only selectively and the absence of a united front has weakened the case, and left a presidency that masks its excesses by painting its critics as alternately fringe dwellers or partisan bullies. 

There will be more of this unless the left and right recover their instincts that the legislative branch is not just an inconvenience to be maneuvered around.  The lesson of the first four years is that Obama keeps pushing the legal edge. The disdain for congressional process during the Fast and Furious inquiry foreshadowed the cavalier use of recess appointments to stack a regulatory body; a hyper-aggressive drone campaign without congressional sanction foreshadowed the assertion of a right to kill Americans without process. This isn't about to stop.    

A few responses: to be sure, there were a combination of good reasons for Republicans to swallow the deficit reduction deal, from skittishness about the markets to the weak hand the GOP was dealt after the Bush cuts actually expired. But the fact that a Republican House and all but a few Republican senators voted to cancel 82 percent of the Bush tax cuts is a victory Democrats will pocket and brandish in future debates, especially if the economy grows even a little. 

Re the observation that voters embraced social democracy: it may simply be that most voters want some tangible return on the one third of their checks they send to Washington. The reality is that few voters process the theoretical debates that animate many conservatives; instead, they grade government on whether it works for their interests. Distressing for some of us, but hardly irrational.

Several of you make a worthwhile point: Democrats have pulled off the strategic coup of holding Republicans accountable for Obama's tepid economy. But we aid that strategy when we gloss over the shortcomings of Bush II.

Finally, Obamacare will over-promise and under-perform. It will figure more prominently in 2016 than 2012.

I am asked, sometimes caustically, sometimes sincerely, since modern conservatism is so imperfect, why I joined up. Simply put, I prefer being in a party that is having an internal coversation, rather than one that is so thoroughly confident of its path that it can’t see the flaws. Today’s liberals are entirely sure of the following: that the dominant failing in our economy is class inequality; that the Affordable Care Act will stabilize costs and distribute healthcare more fairly; that it would wreck the social compact to make wholesale changes to Medicare or Social Security; that an overarching federal vision ought to drive social policy and trump the prerogatives of states; and that our current pace of spending and size of government are in the right proportion for a fair, ambitious society. To disagree with any, much less every one of those premises, as I do, is to be a steadily vanishing breed of Democrat.  I preferred not to be extinct.

The conservative universe is in active flux on each of these broad questions, and a myriad of specific issues that arise from them. It is a debate that will strengthen the movement, and eventually, the country.

Re the notion that conservatives unite primarily around a negative theory; i.e., shrinking government, adhering to a limited reading of constitutional power: descriptively correct, but it underscores our challenge appealing to voters who are not economic libertarians and who judge policies by whether or not they will bolster opportunity and create jobs. 

As much as some conservatives cringe at the notion that taxpayers want their government to do something more than sit on the sidelines, that yearning for effective government is a reality in many middle and working class homes that we must win to stay competitive. If we think we can wish the impulse away, we run the risk of making ourselves a party that can win only in a cycle like 2010, when unemployment hovers around 10% and when Democrats are pursuing distinctly unpopular policies (like building a healthcare bureacucracy instead of focusing on jobs). 

Re the Ryan Plan, for all its virtues, a budget is too detailed to sell in a campaign environment. Even if Republicans embraced premium support for Medicare and returning discretionary domestic spending to Clinton era levels, the specifics must be animated by a compelling argument about where those policies take us.