At a talk a couple nights ago hosted at the New School’s Tischman Auditorium, Marco Roth, editor at Large for n+1, introduced both Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat as voices that he and people like him rarely hear, and as potentially controversial contributors. A less charitable mind would have thought that Roth simply wheeled two Republican quasi-intellectuals out to be hissed at by an activist student body.

There were some uneasy laughs (mostly from the panel itself), and the occasional cold silence from the audience, but many more genuine moments of connection over the course of the night. The event was, undoubtedly a success if it is to be measured in the terms Roth chose; as an opportunity for liberals to get to know the opinions of some conservatives and to identify possible areas of common ground.

That should not be how the success of Douthat and Salam’s project is measured. As explained in the title of their shared work, Douthat and Salam aren’t merely interested in bringing their somewhat heterodox conservative philosophy to liberal universities; they also want their recommendations to be enacted on a party-wide scale so that the GOP can win again.

Though I have not read the book itself, I have followed both Douthat (a New York Times columnist) and Salam (a regular contributor to The American Scene) online.  Both of them are intelligent, reasonable, and approachable guys. Both of them are also on the outside of the Republican tent, trying to talk their way in. Douthat admitted during the evening that both of them would have been dubbed “Squishy Centrists” by Republican fixture Rush Limbaugh.

Douthat said that if he could peg government as a percentage of GDP he would keep it as it is now. Salam, as a social libertarian, could be considered to be even more of an outsider figure. Salam has openly backed aggressive prison reform, both on prudential and humanitarian grounds, something that would send the average Republican into an apoplectic fit.

On some level, the fervent opposition to these two seems both mean-spirited and ill advised. Neither of them seemed out of what a reasonable person would call the mainstream of center-right thought. The only two incidents of the evening that might have caused temperatures to rise were resolved almost amiably. In a discussion over race issues in the Republican party, former Chairman Lee Atwater’s infamous racist outburst comment was brought up. Both of the speakers made clear that not only had their party previously apologized for its Southern Strategy, but that trying to elicit further mea culpas was a pointless distraction from actual policy questions.

The other incident involved a point blank question about apologies for opposition to gay marriage. Both Douthat and Salam made clear that bigotry was a factor in at least some of the opposition to marriage equality, and that was unacceptable. Though Douthat and Salam openly disagree about the issue (Salam says it is an obvious question of equal rights while Douthat opposes it on religious grounds), both of them made it clear that they condemned bigotry. Even Douthat’s hemming and hawing revealed a great deal of intellectual honesty as he skirted around the issue.

Both of them reminded me of the Rockefeller Republicans that have largely become extinct throughout the Northeast. That extinct brand of GOP-er offered similar policy goals as the Democrats, but promised a little bit less hubris and a lot more efficiency, and claimed that their decisions were founded on different first principles. Salam and Douthat can be seen in this tradition. Indeed, Douthat and Salam both presented this view of America: That it is a country with a government built by smart liberals and should be occasionally governed by smart conservatives. They’ll find it incredibly difficult to convince the Republican party of the wisdom of this vision. If Conor Friederdorf’s informal survey of the GOP is anything to go by, the battle will be an uphill one. They should also ask Lincoln Chafee how it’s going.