WIKI Brooks has long been a supporter of John McCain; calling Sara Pali9n a "cancer" that she was a "joke," unlikely to ever win the Republican nomination....and that he was not a fan of her values.
March 2007 NYT: Brooks wrote that the Republican Party must distance itself from the minimal-government conservative principles of Ronald Reagan .... Brooks considers the most important purpose of a political party designed to serve the political class.
Brooks has been a frequent admirer of President Barack Obama. In an August 2009 profile of Brooks, The New Republic describes his first encounter with Obama, in the spring of 2005: "Usually when I talk to senators, while they may know a policy area better than me, they generally don’t know political philosophy better than me. I got the sense he knew both better than me. [...] I remember distinctly an image of--we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant, and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.”
Two days after Obama’s second autobiography, The Audacity of Hope, hit bookstores, Brooks published a column in The New York Times, titled "Run, Barack, Run", urging the Chicago politician to run for president.
In writing for The New York Times in January 2010, Brooks described Israel as "an astonishing success story." "Jews are a famously accomplished group," who, because they were "forced to give up farming in the Middle Ages... have been living off their wits ever since". In Brooks' view, "Israel’s technological success is the fruition of the Zionist dream. The country was not founded so stray settlers could sit among thousands of angry Palestinians in Hebron. It was founded so Jews would have a safe place to come together and create things for the world."
Brooks broke with many in the conservative movement when, in late 2003, he came out in favor of same-sex marriage. He equated the idea with traditional conservative values: "We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity.... It's going to be up to conservatives to make the important, moral case for marriage, including gay marriage."
Brooks advocates for pro-choice government regs: abortion should be legal, with parental consent for minors, during the first four or five months, and illegal afterward, except in extremely rare circumstances. (New York Times, April 22, 2002.)
(Vanity) Barack Obama and Reinhold Neibuhr, or, He Finds Your Lack of Faith Disturbing
Cheers!