David Brooks on New York Times
I may be earnest, but I’m not an idiot. I know there is little chance that today’s partisan players are going to adopt this kind of incremental goo-goo approach. It’s more likely that today’s majority party is going to adopt a different strategy, which you might call Kill the Wounded.
It’s more likely that today’s Democrats are going to tell themselves something like this:
“We live at a unique moment. Our opponents, the Republicans, are divided, confused and bleeding. This is not the time to allow them to rebuild their reputation with a series of modest accomplishments. This is the time to kick them when they are down, to win back the House and end the current version of the Republican Party.
“First, we change the narrative. The president ran in 2008 against Washington dysfunction, casting blame on both parties. Over the years, he has migrated to a different narrative: The Republicans are crazy. Washington could be working fine, but the Republicans are crazy.
. . . he should raise a series of wedge issues meant to divide Southerners from Midwesterners, the Tea Party/Talk Radio base from the less ideological corporate and managerial class.
“He’s already started with a perfectly designed gun control package, inviting a long battle with the N.R.A. over background checks and magazine clips. That will divide the gun lobby from suburbanites. Then he can re-introduce Bush’s comprehensive immigration reform. That will divide the anti-immigration groups from the business groups (conventional wisdom underestimates how hard it is going to be for Republicans to back comprehensive reforms).
“Then he could invite a series of confrontations with Republicans over things like the debt ceiling — make them look like wackos willing to endanger the entire global economy. Along the way, he could highlight women’s issues, social mobility issues (student loans, community college funding) and pick fights on compassion issues, (hurricane relief) — promoting any small, popular spending programs that Republicans will oppose.
For four years now, President Obama has stood up for sanity as teh crazy went nuts. The right thought they were winning and many on the left called him naive for not getting crazy back. No matter how hard either side egged him on - the man maintained his pragmatism.
Now the ruthless side of that strategy is leaving folks like Brooks dissembling before our very eyes.
Please excuse me while I enjoy the moment.
~ Smartypants
David Brooks, denial comes before acceptance. Have your tantrum. Stomp your feet. Accept that trickle down have failed everybody. Become a Democrat like every thinking person not driven by bigotry or being cheap.
~ Tickerage on Huff Post
David Brooks is a splendid hack, quack, crackpot propagandist.
Brooks redefines putz.
~ huffingtonsurferdude on Huff Post
President Obama sure is diabolical in the way he exposes Republicans for what they are by making them say things. I never even saw his lips move.
Seriously, though, the Republican Party and their pundits are running out of things and people to blame for what they bring on themselves.
~ Magnaturd on Huff Post
Brooks has a wish and a prayer, but mainly a fantasy. He fantasizes that Obama will forego any progress in the name of future assistance and cooperation beyond Obama's term. That, is desperation.
~ EverybodyHasone on Huff Post
OMG I can't stop laughing! David Brooks teaches course called "Humility" at Yale and uses his own work in the class! bit.ly/W98Is3
— Lizz Winstead (@lizzwinstead) January 15, 2013
David Brooks Now Totally Pathological
The radicalization of the GOP has placed unbearable strain on those few moderates torn between their positions and their attachment to party. Many moderate conservatives have simply broken off from the party, at least in its current incarnation, and are hoping or working to build a sane alternative. Those who remain must escape into progressively more baroque fantasies.
The prevalent expression of this psychological pain is the belief that President Obama is largely or entirely responsible for Republican extremism. It’s a bizarre but understandable way to reconcile conflicting emotions — somewhat akin to blaming your husband’s infidelity entirely on his mistress.
. . . This is all Obama’s fault because it makes Republicans “look like whackos willing to endanger the entire global economy.” Brooks displays an almost surreal lack of interest in the underlying reality that Republicans actually are whackos willing to endanger the entire global economy. It is his responsibility to conceal this reality from America.
~ Jonathan Chait on NY Mag
It seems to me that the press is starting to comprehend the sheer craziness of the Republican party and are working on their various stages of grief caused by the realization that they're centrist, bipartisan, moderate utopia will not happen because of it. Right now, they seem to be in a "please, save them from themselves, Obama" phase with nasty looks thrown at his way for not doing so. Maybe in a week, a month, a season, whatever, they'll finally achieve full acceptance and stop pretending the Republicans have anything of value to provide other than comic relief.
~ Tecumseh on NY Mag
You have evolved into a writer with such an odd perspective Mr. Brooks...forecasting the demise of the Republican House majority, but somehow thinking it is only because the Democrats aren't noble enough to rescue the sane half of the Republican party from the asylum they willingly checked themselves into?
Why not use some of the precious real estate the NYT gives you to start cajoling the real Republican party to step out of the cuckoo's nest before the electoral cat comes along and devours all the birds? Right now you just seem to be arguing for more ballast in a sinking ship...
~ The Liberalizer on NYT
Please, David, Stop! You're killing me. I was giggling uncontrollably with the line about Obama "inviting confrontations" with the GOP about the debt ceiling. But I was hopelessly ROTFLMFAO when I read that Obama's plan is to "make the GOP look like wackos willing to endanger the entire global economy."
David, this material is golden. Did you write it or hire the Letterman writers? You wrote it yourself? Then, Please, please, quit that Times job and do that HBO Comedy Special. Go on Colbert, Stewart, Marc Maron's WTF.
I know you're teaching a course on humility at Yale. But the one thing you are humble about is your comic genius.
~ Upper West on Daily Kos
Sinclair Lewis already wrote David's biography
George Babbitt.
~ freelunch on Daily Kos
How DARE Obama force Repubs to reveal just how morally bankrupt, moronic, ridiculous and radical they are! It's entrapment, I says, ENTRAPMENT! He's violating the unwritten rule that only Dems can be mocked and Repubs must be revered. RONNIE! Whaaa!
~ kovie on Daily Kos
(Brooks) commonly attempts to build a glass house, but tends to make an insanely complex mess of everything, misidentifying stuff and putting it together in ways that would stump Escher and Rube Goldberg, before even laying the foundation. And then he keeps bumping his nose on the walls and saying, "Who put that there?"
~ filkertom on Daily Kos
Next week - Brooks carefully analyzes the Mind Tricks of the Jedi Master Obama as he lures the Republican leadership into mind-boggling idiocy.
~ louisev on Daily Kos
