David Brooks Offers His Eulogy To The Republican Party

David Brooks has left the reservation.  He cannot bring himself to defend the political party of his mentor William F. Buckley.  Under Buckley's tutelage he helped to develop Young Americans For Freedom.  They had a vision of the Republican Party as the party of free enterprise.  They opposed their contemporary generation of college students who were radicalized by the Vietnam War.  Brooks has been radicalized by the efforts of GOP presidential candidates to win the votes of the most backwards looking segment of its political base.  He longs for the forward looking remnants of what was the Republican Party.  He worries that it cannot survive politically given the demographic trends that are in place.  He hopes that it can resist the reactionary elements in the GOP and return to what he believed it to be in his youth.  He fails to believe that his Party been captured by an elite group that has cultivated the reactionary forces in our society in order to gain control of the government which is the only threat to its power.