The economic lessons the rest of the world could teach us

Passion is not enough to change the Republican Party. Despite the Tea Party�s massive burst of energy, it looks increasingly likely that the GOP will nominate Mitt Romney, the front-runner, the guy who ran once before, the former governor who waited his turn to be the standard-bearer. This is a familiar pattern for a practical, hierarchical organization � the same one that chose George Bush senior, Robert Dole, George Bush junior and John McCain. (The Democrats, by contrast, often nominate an outsider � John Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama.)

Yet something has changed in the Republican Party. You can see it in the attacks on Romney. He is portrayed as a private-equity tycoon who buys companies, hollows them out, outsources jobs and pays 15 percent in taxes. Instead of celebrating Romney�s work as an example of how the market functions � driving out inefficiency, generating productivity and creating a lean, mean capitalist machine � the other Republican candidates are criticizing it.