A Consequential Difference

David Brooks: My thinking about the G.O.P. goes back to a brunch I had with Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D'Souza in the '80s that helps me see, in retrospect, that people in my circle were pro-conservative, while Ingraham and D'Souza and people in their circle were anti-left.  We wanted to champion Edmund Burke and Adam Smith and a Reaganite foreign policy.  They wanted to rock the establishment.  That turned out to be a consequential difference because almost all the people in my circle back then -- like David Frum and Robert Kagan -- ended up, decades later, NeverTrumpers, and almost all the people in their circle became Trumpers or went bonkers.

Bret: Right, they weren't conservatives.  They were just illiberal.

-- Bret Stephens and David Brooks, "The Party’s Over for Us. Where Do We Go Now?", New York Times (11 January 2023)