In How to Reinvent the G.O.P., David Brooks asks “What Would Hamilton Do?” and presents “A New Conservative Platform” with more popular appeal than the anti-statist platform of the past:
By using government in limited but energetic ways, conservatives could establish credibility that would enable them to reduce the size of government where it is useless or worse — export subsidies, agricultural subsidies and the like. Then they could use that credibility to reduce the increases in entitlement spending — the giant set of programs that crowd out everything else.
Its pillars:
- The War on Islamic extremism
- Entitlement reform
- Social mobility
- Restore the integrity of our institutions
- The energy revolution
- National service
I’m not convinced.