The Republican Party: Split to survive

'Flags of Remembrance' as a memorial honouring 9/11 victims in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA (EPA)

Drip regular David Brooks is at it again, telling off Republicans for being all extremist and counselling moderates - that is, people like him - to form a new alliance within the GOP. All parties are coalitions, Brook says, and if the Republicans are ever going to be a party of government again they need a new deal with America.

But he adds: "It’s probably futile to try to change current Republicans. It’s smarter to build a new wing of the Republican Party, one that can compete in the Northeast, the mid-Atlantic states, in the upper Midwest and along the West Coast. It’s smarter to build a new division that is different the way the Westin is different than the Sheraton."

This bunch, Brooks says, would abandon the unbending opposition to government in all its forms that was championed by Ronald Reagan. It would be less obsessed with the idea that government is encroaching on every aspect of American life.

"The second G.O.P. wouldn’t be based on the Encroachment Story. It would be based on the idea that America is being hit simultaneously by two crises, which you might call the Mancur Olson crisis and the Charles Murray crisis.", Brooks writes.

"Olson argued that nations decline because their aging institutions get bloated and sclerotic and retard national dynamism. Murray argues that America is coming apart, dividing into two nations — one with high education levels, stable families and good opportunities and the other with low education levels, unstable families and bad opportunities."