20th century

People ask me when they think grassroots conservatism will make a comeback. And now I have a simple answer for them: if David Brooks' ideas for the future of the Republican Party ever take hold at an elite level, the grassroots conservative backlash will be so ferocious to make the mid-'90s conservative takeover of the party at local level seem like a garden party by comparison. 

In his latest New York Times column, "The Coming Activist Age," Brooks predicts a coming burst of government interventionism in health care, energy, and the economy. Rather than presage an era of Democratic dominance, Brooks argues, Republicans may be well-suited to ride this wave by arguing for tempered, "patriotic" changes rather than the Democrats' radical changes. Historically, this is a model that has worked -- with Teddy Roosevelt, Benjamin Disraeli, and (unmentioned) Otto von Bismarck, conservative architect of the German welfare state.

The problem is that Brooks (and to a large degree, Bill Kristol) have been making this argument for the last decade or more. I remember when Kristol and Brooks first wrote that famous Weekly Standard piece on "national greatness conservatism" in 1997 (recapped in this WSJ op-ed) -- which argued, laugably, for large public momuments as a testament to a more patriotic, nationalist Leviathan. This argument too held up Teddy Roosevelt as a model for right-leaning government activism, and it manifested again in their enthusiasm for John McCain's TR-centric 2000 bid.

Rather than a nimble adaptation to recent Democratic victories, Brooks' latest appears to be simply recycled national greatness conservatism from the '90s.