David Brooks Admits Defeat, For Now

Dumber than rocks, MS.
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You still relentlessly refuse to discuss that elephant standing over your right shoulder.
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That sack you are holding, and that his trunk is in, is labeled:
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HATE

Yeah, well, so what? Not many people care about this. This is kinda like your Palin post, except no lipstick.
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Why didn't you include this link in your post?
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/us/politics/11south.html?hp
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This says more about the decline and fall of the Republican party than David Brooks does.

Bitter.

Second, there is considerable room for middle ground.
Ha!

I think you're being simplistic.

The Dems have been helped by the fact that most newly elected Dems in the last couple of election cycles have been centrists, with little appetite for idealogy.

The GOP on the other hand is firmly controlled by the hardcore elements in their party, where how you do things is just as important as the end result.

Also, younger voters as a whole do not care about the Repugs socially conservative agenda.

I'd say the new model of the Repub party will eventually be someone like Tim Pawlenty, who verbally expresss himself to be a social conservative but in actuality doesn't pursue a legislative agenda that focuses heavily at all on his "values".

Most Americans dislike idealogy and are results oriented, which is more in keeping with the current philosophy of more and more Dems in Congress.

Seriously though, I think that the analysis is right, but you and other Republicans are still stuck with this bad habit of avoiding the hate problem.
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I've said it a million times on this blog, and will probably say it a million more until some of you get the message:
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Conservatism does not need to be conflated with hatred. It's time you addressed it.
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You might find that your party will have a much brighter future!

Thanks for the canny political analysis, MS. Like the old Colt 45 ad with Billy Dee Williams says, "It works every time": http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1739251,00.html

Yeah, so what? Why didn't you post this link?
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/us/politics/11south.html?hp
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It tells more about the decline and fall of the Republican party than David Brooks does. It's the demography, stupid.
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The Republican brand can sell as successfully as a Ford Excursion can with gas prices @$4.00 per gallon.
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You got anything else to write about, MS?

Mmmmmm, David Brooks' tears taste sweet.
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But seriously:
Think back to 2003 or 2005, when Democrats were in dissarray. They were healed less by any new policy paper than by repeated Republican catastrophes.
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What are you talking about? Do you remember the Blue Dogs vs. the rest of the Democrats? The DNC vs. the DLC? The clusterf--k of the Kerry campaign, where the central theme was "anyone but Bush"?
What about the people, even now, saying that the Dem Congress daren't enact a progressive agenda for fear of slurs from the right?
The Dems haven't healed and reformed into a GOP style monolith. They're still busy finding their @sses with two index fingers.
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Second, there is considerable room for middle ground.
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Show me. Show me where there is middle ground between the far right and anyone else.

test

This link is better at explain the decline and fall of the Republican brand than David Brooks. It's the demography

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/us/politics/11south.html?hp

BTW, MS:
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Would you and your compatriots kindly stop trying to euphemize the issue? I mean, whatever coat of paint you put on a Baby Ruth, it's still a Baby Ruth*!
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"Traditionalist" my eye, MS. Call it what it is!
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*refernced to the pool scene in Caddyshack

Read this link

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/us/politics/11south.html?hp

Doody.

I think this link explains more about waning republican influence
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/us/politics/11south.html?hp

As long as Newt Gingrich is held as a "serious" person by the republican party they have little hope.
No matter which side prevails, or if they find "middle ground", they just aren't serious anymore.
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It will be Democratic success NOT failure that will allow for a republican resurgence.
Just as in 2000. Times were so good that the people could be distracted by the trivial.

I think the article in the Times today on "The South a waning hold on politics" does not bode well for the Republicans

The link keeps kicking me out. Sorry folks.

MS -- I can't help laugh out loud at your description of the AEI and other think tanks as the "brain trusts" of the GOP.
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These guys all share the same brain. They're so narrow minded their scratch pads are only an inch wide.
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If life gets better for Americans in an Obama adminstration, what will the GOP have to offer? Not much.

Think back to 2003 or 2005, when Democrats were in dissarray.
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There is absolutely no comparison.
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The Dems were very close (ie, w/n a few hundred votes) of winning both the 00 and 04 presidential elections. And they had popular ideas, such as increasing the minimum wage and expanding health insurance.
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There are no ideas in the Republican Party. The 27 percenters fund and staff their movement. I hope Crist or Pawlenty or someone manages to step up, because the national GOP is a vast wasteland.

"All this intraparty squabbling will be history if and when the Democrats start making mistakes." Honestly, I'm not a writer hater, but that is pretty astonishingly wrong. No, it won't. If the Democrats make mistakes, will the Dobson/Limbaugh/Hannity wing support a pro-choice candidate? If the Democrats make mistakes, will Mike Huckabee fly the U.S. Chamber of Commerce flag? You're just flat-out wrong on this. McCain wanted to pick Lieberman or Ridge. It's not that he didn't. He couldn't, Michael. He couldn't. That hasn't changed, and it won't even if the Democrats make mistakes.

Sure the GOP could wait around for the Dems to make mistakes, but the scale of the mistakes would have to be enormous in order to sway public opinion for toward Republicans. The GOP has set the bar so low after eight years of Bush that the most basic competence will seem messianic in comparison.

The other question is what issues do Republicans have that the majority of the electorate really cares about? To put it metaphorically, Republicans are arguing over how to improve the 8-track tape, but the country has moved on to DRM free downloads.

PNNTO:
I am already seeing such a massive difference between the 2000 changeover and the this one there is no comparison. To wit:
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I remember a meeting in March of last year, in which we had an important client, and representatives from two of our departments. The meeting was about tasks the client gave each of our groups.
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We presented our product first, after having met 6 previous deadlines. Aferward, the other group made it's presentation on it's project. The difference was astounding. The atmosphere was tense, and the client had hard questions for the leader of that group. This guy then threw up his hands and said "Maybe you should find someone else to do it".
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My supervisor made a diving save (eventually to no avail, unfortunately) pointing out that our group had met these deadlines and indeed could handle the project given the other group.
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The atmosphere changed from one of hostility and recrimination to one of freewheeling brainstorming, honest criticism, push and pull, and eventually, a repudiation of the other teams' claim that it could not be done.
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My point is that the 2000 and 2008 takovers offer similar contrasts, and it's not all just Bush's blame.
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The GOP itself isn't going to solve this by just pitching him overboard and steam along on the same course. They are going to have to start looking hard at that elephant in the room and doing something about it.
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There is nothing wrong with conservatism, but there is a problem with hate!

This narrative happens to be mostly bogus at this point.

The problem in a nutshell.

The degree to which "Bush deviated from the Reagan Republican vision in spending, regulation and in empire," is the degree to which such a vision never existed in the first place. It took a Democrat to balance the budget because only Democrats are honest about the fact that government spending isn't free.

More than at anytime in the last twenty years its become clear that the Palin wing of the Republicans are responding to a caricature developed during the Reagan years but made obsolete by the Clintons.
I refer of course to the image of young Black men getting paid not to work. Such creatures may not be a factor in the real economy but they loom very large in the fevered imaginations of Palin fans. It's not by accident that 'redistribution' and 'socialist' were the demons weilded by the McCain campaign in the final days. They knew exactly what wellspring they were tapping and if they weren't sure, then Joe the Plumber was there to remind them.

I worry that there isn't a comfortable place for non-bigotted, sane Republicans to roost, but when David Frum is offered up as an example of a "reform" voice, I realize my concern is misplaced. Such people deserve their discomfort.

Paul Dirks wrote: "More than at anytime in the last twenty years its become clear that the Palin wing of the Republicans are responding to a caricature developed during the Reagan years but made obsolete by the Clintons."

Churchillian in its prose.

PNNTO:
I am already seeing such a m@ssive difference between the 2000 changeover and the this one there is no comparison. To wit:
.
I remember a meeting in March of last year, in which we had an important client, and representatives from two of our departments. The meeting was about tasks the client gave each of our groups.
.
We presented our product first, after having met 6 previous deadlines. Aferward, the other group made it's presentation on it's project. The difference was astounding. The atmosphere was tense, and the client had hard questions for the leader of that group. This guy then threw up his hands and said "Maybe you should find someone else to do it".
.
My supervisor made a diving save (eventually to no avail, unfortunately!) pointing out that our group had met these deadlines and indeed could handle the project given the other group.
.
The atmosphere changed from one of hostility and recrimination to one of freewheeling brainstorming, honest criticism, push and pull, and eventually, a repudiation of the other teams' claim that it could not be done.
.
My point is that the 2000 and 2008 takovers offer similar contrasts, and it's not all just Bush's fault.
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The GOP itself isn't going to solve this by just pitching Bush overboard and steam along on the same course. They are going to have to start looking hard at that elephant in the room and doing something about it.
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There is nothing wrong with conservatism, but there is a problem with h@te!