Divining the Future of the G.O.P. (5 Letters)
03/31/2007
NY Times
Published: March 31, 2007
To the Editor:
In “No U-Turns” (column, March 29), David Brooks argues that Reagan-Goldwater small-government conservatism is outmoded in today’s society. He writes, “The Republican Party, which still talks as if government were the biggest threat to choice, has lost touch with independent voters.”
The Republicans have certainly lost touch with independent voters, precisely because they have abandoned their commitment to limited government. It wasn’t just Iraq and scandal that brought about the Republican defeat in the 2006 midterm elections. It was a belief that the party had abandoned its basic principles.
If swing voters had wanted needless foreign interventions, huge increases in domestic spending, the first new entitlement program since the Great Society and a federal takeover of education, why wouldn’t they have voted for Democrats?
Big government doesn’t work, whether run by liberals or conservatives. In the wake of the government’s failure to deal with Hurricane Katrina, the Walter Reed mess, and potential Social Security and Medicare bankruptcy, does Mr. Brooks believe that big government can fix health care, the economy and even our families?
Michael Tanner
Washington, March 29, 2007
The writer is the director of health and welfare studies, Cato Institute.
•
To the Editor:
David Brooks tells us what could have been. George W. Bush had it right in the 2000 campaign when he argued for “compassionate conservatism,” which accurately captured the mood of the country.
But instead of being true to his campaign promises, Mr. Bush allowed the country to be hijacked by the neocons in the Republican Party, with disastrous results: a significant lowering of America’s economic and moral values worldwide. And just maybe the opposite of the neocons’ intended results — a permanent Democratic majority.
Garth Bishop
Los Angeles, March 29, 2007
•
To the Editor:
David Brooks says that Republicans have lost touch with independent voters and attributes this loss of confidence to the party’s “liberty vs. power” approach. He advises a “security leads to freedom” paradigm.
But this change will not convince many voters, because without a sense of equality, there can be neither security nor freedom.
The electorate understands that the G.O.P. cannot meet its need for equality, economic and civil, because it represents the economically privileged at the expense of the majority.
The Bush policies have eroded the middle class’s sense of equality. As this becomes more obvious, the Republicans’ popularity will sink further. The question now is: Can the Democratic Party return to its New Deal roots?
Thomas M. Stephens
Columbus, Ohio, March 30, 2007
•
To the Editor:
I agree that Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater should not be the Republican Party’s models for future leadership. The party should return to the way it was before 1964, the year it decided to sacrifice credibility with the country’s moderates to court the right wing.
It should look to examples of Republican leadership like Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower. These two presidents were men of strength, decency and integrity, qualities sorely lacking in our current Republican hierarchy.
Donald Isler
Irvington, N.Y., March 29, 2007
•
To the Editor:
David Brooks’s abandonment of the right’s antistatism is something that I have long anticipated from a commentator who writes with consistent honesty and acuity.
While there is room for disagreement about whether the burden of the state addressed by Senator Barry Goldwater and President Ronald Reagan was the problem Mr. Brooks alleges it was, he seems to have arrived in the liberal camp with his acknowledgment that liberty may be meaningless when it is not enabled by personal and economic security and good health.
Edward Bristow
New York, March 29, 2007
The writer is a professor of history at Fordham University.