Reformicon (reform conservative)

“Reformicon” (reform conservative) has been used since at least 2010 in Canadian politics. The American use of “reformicon” was popularized by liberal American political commentator E. J. Dionne Jr., who wrote “The Reformicons” for Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. Dionne’s article was reprinted in The Atlantic on May 30, 2014.
 
“Reformocon” (reform conservative) means the same as “reformicon” and was popularized by conservative American political commentator Reihan Salam in May 2013. Salam wrote in Slate on February 6, 2015:
 
“For the record, most reform conservatives favor ‘reformocons’ over ‘reformicons,’ so I’ll use that spelling from here on out.”
 
   
Wikipedia: E. J. Dionne
Eugene Joseph “E. J.” Dionne, Jr. (/diːˈɒn/; born April 23, 1952) is an American journalist and political commentator, and a long-time op-ed columnist for The Washington Post. He is also a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, a University Professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture at the McCourt School of Public Policy, a Senior Research Fellow at Saint Anselm College, and an NPR, MSNBC, and PBS commentator.
 
Twitter
kristin jones
‏@_bobbilou
@YukonGale exactly. Non-reformicons want non-biased news. Cons react to not actually liberal biased media by creating korynews. Gah!
8:48 PM - 13 Jul 2010
 
Twitter
Hanse
‏@Hanse672000
#cdnpoli http://huff.to/129hKHK  There may be some real Conservatives in the mix of ReformiCONs, certainly not PM stevie ‘FUCanada’ harper
4:41 PM - 28 Jun 2013
 
Democracy: A Journal of Ideas
Issue #33, Summer 2014
The Reformicons
We all wonder if the reform conservatives can change their movement. But first, we ought to wonder if they really want to.
E.J. Dionne Jr.
(...)
Conservatism has also been deformed by flights of irrationality about Barack Obama, egged on by Frum’s conservative entertainment complex. The Reformicons are not the authors of the attacks on Obama as a socialist, a “Muslim,” a “Kenyan anti-colonialist,” or the bearer of a false birth certificate. Yet those who do launch such attacks have power in the Republican Party and their nasty inventions require much stronger resistance from a serious conservative intellectual movement.
 
In the short run, the Reformicons seem destined to let progressives down, partly because, as Salam has observed, “Conservative reformism is conservative.” This simple observation, Douthat argues, explains why the movement “(understandably) strikes many liberals as disappointing, counterproductive or woefully insufficient.”
 
The Atlantic
Are Reform Conservatives Serious?
A crop of young thinkers trying to steer the right toward the future needs to both vanquish the Tea Party and show it has more than just a marketing campaign.
E.J. DIONNE JR.MAY 30 2014, 7:00 AM ET
(...)
This article originally appeared in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, an Atlantic partner publication.
   
Real Clear Politics
The Revolt of the Nerds
By Michael Gerson - May 30, 2014
WASHINGTON – Parallel to the rise of the tea party – with less attention but more potential influence – has been a gathering movement of reform conservatives whom my colleague E.J. Dionne Jr., in an essay in the journal Democracy, dubs “Reformicons.”
(...)
In this light, “Do it for yourself” does not seem responsive or realistic. But reform conservatives, in their own reticent and wonkish way, are also manning the same barricades as some tea party activists in revolt against a complacent, centrist, business-oriented Republican Party. They are calling for a conservatism that reaches beyond small-business owners (who are genuinely concerned about regulatory burdens) to address the practical concerns of working-class and middle-class Americans, struggling to advance against swift economic and social currents.
     
Brookings
June 26, 2014
The Reformicons: A Discussion of the Reform Conservative Movement
A group of conservative thinkers and legislators are engaged in a reform conservative movement which argues that restraining government growth, while important,  is not enough. Conservatives must offer policy alternatives.  In a new collection of essays, “Room to Grow: Conservative Reforms for a Limited Government and a Thriving Middle Class,” prominent conservatives have published essays outlining policy options for health care, tax, education, regulatory, energy, and safety-net reforms.
 
On June 26, Brookings Senior Fellow William Galston hosted a discussion of the reform conservative movement with some of its most distinguished leaders. Brookings Senior Fellow E.J. Dionne offered his critique of their proposals, based on his essay in the most recent issue of Democracy, “The Reformicons.”
     
Salon
THURSDAY, JUL 31, 2014 07:45 AM EDT
Meet the right’s phony reformers: Why “reformicons” really stand for crony capitalism
The so-called GOP wonks claim to be enemies of corporate shenanigans. Read a little closer and the truth comes out
MICHAEL LIND
The so-called reformicons — a group of Republican policy wonks — have received a lot of attention recently, thanks to a New York Times essay by Sam Tanenhaus and an essay in the Atlantic by E. J. Dionne.  Writing in Vox, Ezra Klein suggested that, like the Tea Party conservatives, reformicons are sincere enemies of “crony capitalism” — that is, government favoritism toward big corporations or whole industries, of the kind that is supposed to be symbolized by the Eximbank and the TARP bailout of financial firms
 
The Wall Street Journal
‘Reformicons’ Put New Twist on Tax Debate
Young Conservatives Push GOP Presidential Candidates to Back Targeted Breaks, Not Just Broad-Based Tax-Rate Cuts
By BOB DAVIS
Feb. 3, 2015 7:48 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON—A group of young conservatives, dubbed “reformicons,” are making inroads among Republican presidential candidates by arguing the party’s traditional reliance on broad-based tax cuts, GOP orthodoxy for a generation, isn’t enough to cure middle-class woes.
 
Instead, they are calling for crafting subsidies, tax credits and other public-policy tools based on conservative philosophies and tastes to help the unemployed and other struggling middle-income households.
     
The Wall Street Journal—Washington Wire
8:52 pm ET Feb 3, 2015 ECONOMY
5 Provocative Proposals From the ‘Reformicons’
By BOB DAVIS
Reform conservatives – or reformicons, as they are sometimes known—like to think they are thinking outside the box. Some of their proposals seem archly conservative, like cutting the minimum wage, and some seem fairly left wing, like cutting corporate subsidies, as related in a WSJ story today. Their ideas are mainly marked by energy and youth and are getting a hearing among those considering presidential runs.

Here are five provocative proposals: ...
 
National Review Online—The Corner
Sorry, There Is No Huge Beef Between Reformocons and Other Conservatives
By Reihan Salam
February 3, 2015 11:53 PM
Bob Davis of the Wall Street Journal has a report on how reform conservatives are trying to influence GOP presidential candidates on taxes, and in it he reaches out to several members of the National Review family, including Ramesh Ponnuru, Yuval Levin, Michael Strain, and Robert Stein. My concern, however, is that Davis is misrepresenting exactly what these thinkers are trying to accomplish. Specifically, Davis maintains that reform conservatives are uninterested in cuts to marginal tax rates and that they prefer “targeted tax breaks,” to go by the article’s subheading.
 
Slate
FEB. 6 2015 4:36 PM
A New Kind of Republican
Is Jeb Bush a reformocon? Also, what’s a reformocon?
By Reihan Salam
(...)
On Tuesday, Bob Davis of the Wall Street Journal reported on the young “reformicons”—a term that brings to mind a hitherto unknown faction of Transformers—challenging the GOP establishment. (For the record, most reform conservatives favor “reformocons” over “reformicons,” so I’ll use that spelling from here on out.) According to Davis, the really distinctive thing about the reformocons is that they prefer middle-class tax cuts over the rate cuts for the rich favored by many supply-siders. Last summer, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne offered an extended critique in Democracy Journal. For Dionne, reform conservatism is the anti–Tea Party. Whereas the Tea Party represents (in his view) “extreme opposition to government,” reformocons are (also in his view) people that the left can do business with, if only they would acknowledge how much they have in common with Barack Obama.