David Brooks: Public disgust powers up the tea party movement

The Oregonian / The New York Times ^ | January 9, 2010 | David Brooks

[2ndDivisionVet]

The United States opens this decade in a sour mood. First, Americans are anxious about the future. Sixty-one percent of Americans believe their country is in decline, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey. Only 27 percent feel confident that their children's generation will be better off than they are.

Second, Americans have lost faith in their institutions. During the great moments of social reform, at least 60 percent of Americans trusted government to do the right thing most of the time. Now, only a quarter have that kind of trust.

The country is evenly divided about President Barack Obama, but state governments are in disrepute and confidence in Congress is at withering lows. As Frank Newport of the Gallup organization noted in his year-end wrap-up, "Americans have less faith in their elected representatives than ever before."

Third, the new administration has not galvanized a popular majority. In almost every sphere of public opinion, Americans are moving away from the administration, not toward it. The Ipsos/McClatchy organizations have been asking voters which party can do the best job of handling a range of 13 different issues. During the first year of the Obama administration, the Republicans gained ground on all 13.

The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.

The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise. The educated class supports abortion rights, so public opinion is shifting against them. The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting.(continued)

[dusttoyou]

Calling it the “educated class” does two things, it is a put down (they think) to all those not of their BA/BS level and he uses “educated” because he and all the other similars are best described as the “elitist class” (who should rightfully run the country, but which carries such a telling and negative connotation).

Educated does have such a better ring to it than does elitist. sc/

[meadsjn]

What Brooks calls the "educated class" is actually the "indoctrinated class".

I know plenty of conservatives who are educated and did not succumb to the leftist indoctrination during the process.

Leftists are primarily practitioners of sophistry. Children learn to lie as they develop language skills. If they continue to lie as they grow older, they become leftists, and dangerous to civilized society.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[GOPJ]

Let these arrogant condescending liberals (that includes YOU, David Brooks!) underestimate us at their own peril...

BINGO

[firebrand]

If he’s not in favor of the movement but he thinks it could be influential, what’s his point? To warn all his Oblimpo-supporting readers to demonize it in a hurry before its influence gets any greater?

[firebrand]

Yet he is thought of by limited-horizon New York Times readers as a "good" conservative, a "moderate" conservative.

Didn't he recently say that conservatives have trouble believing that someone like Oblimpo exists? And if so, isn't that just a disguised way of calling us racists again? They've gotten too much grief lately for calling us racists, so now we simply can't believe someone like Oblimpo exists.

[firebrand]

It helps to see him for what he is, however: a subversive of conservative movements. He is like our Dummy trolls who try to paint themselves as conservatives and then “subtly” (they think) try to undermine a particular conservative idea here on FR. Knocking down a candidate who is “not conservative enough,” for instance, which rots our movement from within and makes victory impossible.