David Brooks claims today that “continual tax cuts can no longer be the centerpiece of Republican economic policy” due to the fiscal gap:

Supply-side economics had a good run, but continual tax cuts can no longer be the centerpiece of Republican economic policy. The demographics have changed. The U.S. is an aging society. We have made expensive promises to our seniors. We can’t keep those promises at the current tax levels, let alone at reduced ones. As David Frum writes in “Comeback,” his indispensable new book: “In the face of such a huge fiscal gap, the days of broad, across-the-board, middle-class tax cutting are over.”

As a result, he claims “Republican economic policies are shifting” and “Republicans are adjusting their priorities to win back the anxious middle class.”

While there are a few encouraging signs of movement away from a near-exclusive focus on tax cuts, as he notes, Brooks never addresses the elephant in the room — the fact that almost all of the Republican presidential candidates claim that tax cuts increase revenue (a claim that even Bush administration economists disavow). As a result, it’s hard to imagine the GOP acknowledging the inevitable tradeoff between tax cuts and closing the long-run fiscal gap any time soon.