David Brooks looks at a divided Republican Party and sees two factions: the Traditionalists and the Reformers. The Traditionalists include Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, Grover Norquist (Americans for Tax Reform), Tony Perkins (Family Research Council), and Leonard Leo (Federalist Society). The Reformers are people like Peggy Noonan and David Frum and (at the moderate end, he says) David Brooks. The Traditionalists “insult the sensibilities of the educated class and the entire East and West Coasts.” The Reformers take global warming seriously and don’t hate Hispanics.

Perhaps that classification is useful for Brooks’ purpose (which is apparently to announce Brooks’ alignment with an elite class of Republican Reformers), but the current Republican rift isn’t simply between the conservative intelligentsia and the Palin-powered base in real America. To hold power, or at least remain competitive, Republicans since the Age of Reagan relied on a sometimes overlapping, sometimes conflicting alliance of (1) Wall Street/K Street interests; (2) neocons and Federalist Society zealots; (3) the religious right; and (4) traditional conservatives. Groups with money funded attacks on the Democratic opposition while the religious right, if properly motivated, could be counted on to get out the vote and win close elections.

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