Republican Protocol Droid

Discovers the Republican Party.

The further adventure of C3-BOBO, Human-Suburb relations…

In this Year of Our Lord 2011, Our Mr. Brooks has noticed that the Party of God seems to be doing some stuff that appears to be, um, harmful and consults his OEM Technical Manual --

The Republicans, and Rick Perry in particular, have a reasonably strong story to tell about decline. America became great, they explain, because its citizens possessed certain vigorous virtues: self-reliance, personal responsibility, industriousness and a passion for freedom.

But, over the years, government has grown and undermined these virtues. Wall Street financiers no longer have to behave prudently because they know government will bail them out. Middle-class families no longer have to practice thrift because they know they can use government to force future generations to pay for their retirements. Dads no longer have to marry the women they impregnate because government will step in and provide support.

Moreover, a growing government sucked resources away from the most productive parts of the economy — innovators, entrepreneurs and workers ...

There’s much truth to this narrative.
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-- to figure out how this can possibly be so.

Yet as great as the need is to streamline, reform and prune the state, that will not be enough to restore America’s vigorous virtues. This is where current Republican orthodoxy is necessary but insufficient.
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The United States became the wealthiest nation on earth primarily because Americans were the best educated. ...That advantage has entirely eroded over the past 30 years.
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Job creation was dismal even in the seven years before the recession, when taxes were low and Republicans ran the regulatory agencies. As economist Michael Spence has argued, nearly all of the job growth over the past 20 years has been in sectors where American workers don’t have to compete with workers overseas.
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Inequality is rising, and society is stratifying. Americans are less likely to move in search of opportunity. Social mobility has been flat for decades...

Republicans have done almost nothing to grapple with and address these deeper structural problems.

All of the failures Our Mr. Books articulates are, of course, not some weird anomalies of our political system, but actually the fundamental components of the Basic Operating System of Mr. Brooks' Conservatism, manifesting themselves more and more aggressively as it single-mindedly pursues its Prime Directive: Rolling back the 20th Century by any means necessary.

These are not glitches in your Republican Party, Mr. Brooks: these are its proudest features.

All of which Mr. Brooks knows this perfectly well but can never, ever say out loud. Because the day does is the day he will no longer have a job writing piffle like this for the New York Times.