David Brooks: Clinton for President

His long and very interesting New York Times article offers what he calls a new agenda for the Republican Party, which uses an energetic activist government to create opportunities for ordinary people, energize and empower minority communities, foster individual initiative, end corporate welfare, give incentives for new energy alternatives and create a national service program.

The only problem is that it's not new. It's Clintonism. Essentially, Brooks wants the Republicans to become the DLC.

Well, if the right wing party in this country wants to move to the left sufficiently to embrace the views of the DLC, a center-left organization, that's fine with me. I'd love the center of gravity in the U.S. to shift dramatically to the left. Among other things, it would open up a space for discussion of liberal policies that have been viewed as out of the mainstream for years.

Nevertheless, I strongly suspect that a lot of people in the Republican Party are going to be ideologically allergic to what Brooks is advocating. Apparently he has Tom Delay and Grover Norquist confused with reasonable people.