One D. Brooks

David Brooks is one of the favorite targets of this blog and attacks on his writing make up a signifcant portion of all my posts. So far I have had to be content with scorning Brooks and all his works from a far, but now the "liberal's conservative" is coming to my neighborhood

. I'll have more on David Brook's appearance at it develops.

Speaking of Mr. Brooks, the NY Times Magazine ran an essay by him onthe future of the Republican party titled "Reinventing the GOP"

. Brooks doesn't do a bad job recognizing the mess that the Republicans are in. He notes that the American Right is running out of useful, relevant ideas and is becoming unprincipled and undisciplined. Brooks goes on to layout a program for a largely unobjectionable progressive conservative agenda which I would love to see the other side embrace. The problem is that Brooks views the Bush Administration as an ally of progressive conservatism rather than an obstacle to it and the main cause for the the problems with conservatism that he identifies. It was George W. Bush after all who oversaw the collapse of the GOP's values, who has cynically made political calculations the basis for his policy decisions and has refused to stand up to special interests even once in the name of "conservative values" (Bush has never vetoed a single bill and has even href="http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry022102.shtml"> signed legislation which he believed to be unconstitutiona

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