Yuval – I’ve come to see the distinction between the trads and the reformers as pretty forced as well, or at least that was the upshot of my column (which first appeared in the LAT this week). Contrary to the impression some readers have, I didn’t write the column as a response or rip-off of Brooks’ column, which takes a considerably different position than mine. I didn’t know he wrote it until after mine came out.
Moreover, Brooks makes a mistake Ramesh has been warning against quite forcefully: being anti-Palin doesn’t make you a reformer. Peggy Noonan is hardly a reformer in the way, say, Yuval or Ramesh are, she’s a Palin critic. That Brooks confuses one for the other says a lot more, I think, about David’s approach to these questions then it does about the state of conservatism.