David Brooks is dead wrong: There is no difference between economic and traditional conservatism

David Brooks thinks he has diagnosed the problem with Mitt Romney’s “underperforming campaign.” The culprit is not Romney’s late conversion to conservatism, Brooks writes in his column today, its that entire conservative movement has lost its “balance” between “economic” conservatives on the one hand, and “traditional” conservatives on the other.

According to Brooks, economic conservatives, “upheld freedom as their highest political value. They admired risk-takers. They worried that excessive government would create a sclerotic nation with a dependent populace.”