We had a fun conversation recently.

The economic debate between the traditional, or supply-side, right, and what's been called the New Right, is getting more and more heated and acrimonious.

You can debate how long it's been: since the first election of Donald Trump in 2016; since 2008 when conservatives started thinking about the lessons of the Bush Presidency; or maybe even since 2006 when Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam published their "Party of Sam's Club" article, which would become their seminal book "Grand New Party," which would go on to shape, at least indirectly, almost all of these debates.

Reading that 2006 article is one of the original things that got your correspondent, then living in France, interested in US domestic policy.

Two things have given the debate a special renewed intensity in recent months.

The biggest one, obviously, is that one JD Vance, one of the most prominent promoter of these kinds of ideas in the US Senate, has been selected as the Republican Party's nominee for Vice President of the United States.

But another one has been the pugnacious style of Oren Cass. We have to give credit to Cass, as we do every policy entrepreneur: we can't think of anybody in the think tank world who punches so far above his weight. American Compass's budget is roughly $1.5 million, which makes it a very small fish in the world of Washington think tanks. The reason for this is obvious: it's a lot easier to find big donors and big corporate sponsors when you're promoting tax cuts and libertarian economics than if you are promoting the kind of social-democratic (or social-democratic-adjacent?) ideas that Cass is promoting.

So what do you do when you're in Cass's position? Well, the way you make an impact as a very small fish in a pond with some very big sharks is by getting people to talk about you, and the way you do that is by picking fights. Cass's pugnacious style, on X and elsewhere, has gotten him, his group, and his ideas noticed.

It also fits with Cass's temperament: your correspondent can still remember a heated discussion with Cass about the galactically-significant question of whether driver's licenses should be awarded purely on the basis of competence or whether there should be a minimum age requirement.

In any case, it's really astonishing how much Cass has accomplished with so little. He has become a key voice in the conversation on the right.

So much so that the supply-side world has developed what must be accurately termed a fixation on him. We have written about this. Groups linked to Grover Norquist will send interns to hand out flyers outside his events. They will commission polls (not cheap!) for the explicit purpose of being able to call American Compass proposals unpopular. In our experience, Cass's name often comes up unprompted in discussions with more libertarian-leaning conservatives. It's really quite striking.

For example, in a recent conversation with a top Washington lobbyist with longstanding ties to the world of supply-side activists, we asked him what supply-siders' top goals were for the upcoming 2025 tax fight, in the event of a Trump-Vance victory.

Our interlocutor started reeling off long-standing supply-side fantasies such as corporate tax cuts, capital gains tax cuts, and so on.

We cut him off: “I mean, realistically.”

Without missing a beat, our interlocutor answered: “Stop Oren Cass.”

“That's it? Stop Oren Cass?”

“Yeah. Stop Oren Cass.”

We thought that was a very telling little moment.

We asked Cass for comment, and he snarked: “Maybe there's a different Oren Cass? They keep saying this one isn't getting anywhere and isn't worth thinking about.”

We also asked Norquist, who told us through a spokesman: “Cass isn't a conservative. The American Compass agenda is at direct odds with a unified Republican party focused on making the Trump tax cuts permanent and further reducing the burden on taxpayers. Cass is at odds with the past, present and future of the GOP.” (You will note that's not a denial.)

So yes, it looks like there's going to be a big tax fight in 2025, and in part, that tax fight will be a fight for the soul of the GOP.

Which is good. We should have that fight.

As we recently wrote in our pompously-titled PolicySphere Manifesto, one reason why we started this site is because we think “The Oren Cass fans and the Grover Norquist fans are going to have to find some way to work together. Because otherwise we get the Green New Deal, open borders, and trans kiddos.”

And hopefully we can help keep that fight fair.

SEE ALSO: PolicySphere Manifesto →

The post was edited to correct attribution and to note that interns did not "picket" Cass's event that time.