A great debate about the future of the GOP

Brooks-Ryan Debate Reveals GOP’s Inner Struggle:

Think tank debates in aren’t usually dramatic events. So when Journalist Robert Stacy McCain tweeted that a debate at AEI between Rep. Paul Ryan and New York Times columnist David Brooks would be a “Cage Match Duel to the Death” an observer from outside the beltway might find the description hyperbolic.

The debate was ostensibly between competing conservative visions of government, the “limited government“of Rep. Ryan and AEI President Arthur Brooks, and the “limited but energetic” government of David Brooks.  Ryan argued that government should do little, and Brooks argued that government could, and should, be proactive to deal with issues such as human capital and income mobility. While there seemed to be a lot of commonality between the two on policy, there were serious divides in both tone, and underlying philosophy.

The most important potentially confrontational point for David Brooks was that the absolutist rhetoric pushed by Ryan and Arthur Brooks was contributing to the inability for the American political system to reach consensus on some of the most pressing entitlement challenges of a generation. The implications of this argument ring far beyond the confines of the AEI lecture room and could potentially rock the current consensus within conservatism if the implications were fully understood.