In a New York Times column on the forthcoming struggle for the shrunken soul of the GOP between “reformers” and “traditionalists,” David Brooks threw out the line that reformers “tend to be intrigued by the way David Cameron has modernized the British Conservative Party.”
This instantly became conventional wisdom. That was partly because it fit the ideological needs of GOP “reformers” very conveniently. But it must also be said that the ground had been well prepared for it. Michael Gerson of the Washington Post op-ed page had visited London in March 2008 as the guest of (jointly) Tim Montgomerie’s influential Tory website www.conservativehome.com and the Centre for Social Justice, headed by former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith. Gerson returned critical of the Tories’ weakness on foreign policy and “life” issues, but his overall response was enthusiastic: He had seen “the reincarnation of compassionate conservatism” in Tory social policy, praise be, and he duly cited Cameron and Smith as the very models of a moderate conservatism that the GOP might imitate.
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