Chip Taylor, who’s done a nice redesign on his blog over the past couple of days, comments on David Brooks’ latest NYT column that articulates a new organizing principle for the Republican Party:

For my money, the best organizing principle for Republicans centers on the word “reform.” Republicans can modernize the (mostly Democratic) accomplishments of the 20th century. That would mean entitlement reform, tax reform, more welfare reform, education reform, immigration reform, tort reform and on and on. In all these areas, Republicans can progressively promote change, while Democrats remain the churlish defenders of the status quo.

Now, I’ll grant that consolidation and reform can be an effective political strategy: successive British governments since 1979, from Maggie Thatcher through John Major to Tony Blair, have essentially followed a course of reforming the most counterproductive aspect of Britain’s immediate post-war policies without eliminating the essentials of the welfare state. Perhaps Republicans can follow a similar tack—although I’m unsure that playing “Democrats lite” will be popular enough with the party base over the long term. On the other hand, if the apparent Deaniac-Krugman alliance continues to pull the Democrats to the left, Republicans may get the political center all to themselves for a few years before the Dems regain their collective senses.