"Of course, we can keep repeating our old lines all the same, just the way Tip O'Neil kept exhorting the American middle class to show more gratitude to the New Deal. But politicians who talk that way soon sound old, tired, and cranky. I wish somebody at the ... GOP presidential debate at the Reagan Library had said: 'Ronald Reagan was a great leader and a great president because he addressed the problems of his time. But we have very different problems - and we need very different answers. Here are mine.'"
"Look at America's public-policy problems, look at voting trends, and it's inescapably obvious that the Republican Party needs to evolve. We need to put free-market health-care reform, not tax cuts, at the core of our economic message. Between 2000 and 2006, the amount that employers paid for labor rose substantially. Employees got none of that money; all of it was absorbed by rising health-care costs."
"We need to modulate our social conservativism (not jettison - modulate). The GOP will remain a predominantly conservative party and a predominantly pro-life party. But especially on gay-rights issues, the under-30 generation has arrived at a new consensus. Our party seems to be running to govern a country that no longer exists."
"We need an environmental message. You don't have to accept Al Gore's predictions of imminent gloom to accept that it cannot be healthy to pump gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."
- David Frum, former economic speechwriter for President George W. Bush
Nice.
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