Live from Crow's Coffee: The time for David Brooks to say "Wait a minute! This Affordable Care Act is a lot like RomneyCare--why are Republican office-holders pretending it isn't?" was 2009. The time for David Brooks to say "Wait a minute! The Federal Reserve is following Milton Friedman's economic policies--why are Republican office-holders pretending it isn't?" was 2010. Given that he has done so much to help create the problems with the Republican Party today, at least he could own his own past words, and apologize to all of us. Is David Frum that much braver than David Brooks?
: David Brooks: The Republican Party Is Producing "Leaders of Jaw-Dropping incompetence": "There is an oddity to Brooks's nostalgia...
...The Republican Party has not been a vehicle for Burkean conservatism for a long time. The Iraq War, which Brooks supported, was not exactly governed by a fear of disrupting existing institutions.... The hard question isn't whether... Brooks can lash out against... Trump and Carson, but whether he will remember this analysis when the revolutionary words are coming from more establishment mouths.... Brooks's point is that you can't say, as Mitt Romney did, that
with Obamacare fully installed, government will come to control half the economy, and we will have effectively ceased to be a free enterprise society,
and then turn around and tell your supporters that you've lost the election and it's time to accept that Obamacare is the law of the land. Either America is in an existential struggle to preserve its character, and radical means are merited, or… it's not. If you campaign based on an existential threat you can't govern as if it's just politics as usual. But while Brooks sees today that Romney's comments paved the path toward Trump, at the time Brooks and others like him saw Romney as their best hope.... Establishment Republican candidates feel they have to use revolutionary rhetoric to win over the Tea Party.... Until players like Brooks are angrier at the center of their party for indulging these tendencies than they are at the fringe... the Republican Party is going to continue to get pulled far to the right.
And if he won't own his own past words, what reason is there for the New York Times to pay him?
