Posted on 01/22/2016 9:54:31 AM PST by Gandalf the Mauve
Lonely-hearts reactionary David Brooks, writing this week in the New York Times, describes the angst and despair of the old Republican leadership, as it watches the Trump/Cruz nativist revolution:
"Members of the Republican governing class are like cowering freshmen at halftime of a high school football game. Some are part of the Surrender Caucus, sitting sullenly on their stools resigned to the likelihood that their team is going to get crushed. Some are thinking of jumping ship to the Trump campaign...
"Rarely has a party so passively accepted its own self-destruction."
Farther down in his piece, Brooks trumpets a call to action, wondering why his beloved party can't instantly rally voters to its cause the way just about everyone else seems able to these days:
"If MoveOn can organize, if the Tea Party can organize, if Justin Bieber can build a gigantic social media movement, why are you incapable of any collective action at all?
"What's needed is a grass-roots movement that stands for governing conservatism, built both online and through rallies, and gets behind a single candidate sometime in mid- to late February."
Brooks went on to timidly propose that that the party recognize that modern Republican voters are in a state of "trauma" and "want a government that will help the little guy."
He wondered if maybe the party leaders, in an effort to reverse their stunning fall from influence, might "actually provide concrete policy ideas to help the working class."
For most of the last four decades, the Republican Party worked pretty much exclusively for weenie aristocrats like Brooks, a tiny collection of entitled bosses whose idea of good government was income-tax cuts, deregulated workplaces and slackened obligations to the rabble.
To get what they wanted, they spent a generation whipping what Brooks calls "less-educated voters" into lathers over moronic controversies involving everything from Terri Schiavo's feeding tube to the New Black Panthers to the arrest of Kim Davis.
Those low-information voters never got Roe v. Wade repealed by their Republican leaders, never got zero-tolerance immigration policies (hell, Obama deported way more undocumented immigrants than Bush ever did), never got prayer in school or any of the other things they desperately wanted.
But they did get lower income taxes for David Brooks, a carried interest exemption for Mitt Romney, and a tax-repatriation holiday for Carly Fiorina's Hewlett-Packard and other mega-firms. None of these policies helped the bulk of the population much, but they were great for the 17 people they were actually designed to benefit.
For instance, the "less-educated voter" got less than jack for that 2004 tax repatriation holiday. In fact, the 15 biggest beneficiaries of the holiday laid off tens of thousands of jobs collectively after getting a big fat free pass from Uncle Sam.
The hilarious part about the Brooks column is the wounded, incredulous tone. Where, he asks, is the love? You know, like the old days, when the hick megachurcher and the Upper East Side Yalie were joined at the hip for the cause of a sharply-reduced top income tax rate!
"There's a silent majority of hopeful, practical, programmatic Republicans. You know who you are," Brooks bleats. "Please don't go quietly and pathetically into the night."
Back in the old days, when the Republican Party could count on the support of "less-educated voters" without having to actually give them anything, what we got all the time from people like Brooks were fatuous bromides about how anyone who was struggling lacked a work ethic and an appreciation of family structure. Government aid of any kind to help people out of economic hard times he always ripped as counterproductive and morally corrupting.
But now that he's being crapped on by a new movement of independent-minded, rebellious nativists who have no use for a moralizing, polysyllabic New Yorker like himself – now that he can hear the sharpening of the guillotines – suddenly Brooks is all in favor of government policies to help the "working class," a group of people he's presumably never met.
"Years ago," he writes, "reform conservatives were proposing a Sam's Club Republicanism, which would actually provide concrete policy ideas to help the working class, like wage subsidies, a higher earned-Income tax credit, increased child tax credits, subsidies for people who wanted to move in search of work."
He goes on: "This would be a conservatism that emphasized social mobility at the bottom, not cutting taxes at the top."
This is the author of aristocrat fan fiction classics like Bobos in Paradise suddenly advocating government policies to stimulate "social mobility at the bottom." Could this election season get any weirder?
“Members of the Republican governing class are like cowering freshmen at halftime of a high school football game. Some are part of the Surrender Caucus, sitting sullenly on their stools”
Football players sit on benches, you nitwit.
The Republican Party’s own Pajama Boi!
What we need is a meaner, more badass Republican Party willing to go after the Muslims and the American left without hesitation or doubt.
TRUMP 2016!
A desease that George H W Bush started and spread.
(I am sooooo glad that JEB has no chance to be our next POTUS — two Bushes were two too many)
Brooks is contemptible.
Yet, it won’t be long til he is on the a Trump bandwagon.
I love how little liberals actually get it.
Because Jeb & Co are failing, it must mean that Republicans are clamoring for more government handouts.
Wait? What?
Trump is ahead because Republicans are in revolt against the Surrender Caucus, so therefore the earned income tax credit must be increased, wages subsidized...
WAIT! WHAT???
Trump screams to the head of the polls because he wants to build a wall between the US and Mexico, therefore Republicans want higher top tier taxes...
Man, this would have been an awesome screed had the author not chosen to project his image onto Republicans. A lot of nails hammered, but also apparently a lot of ‘medical marijuana’ being consumed at the same time.
“Kinder, Gentler” is a recipe for getting our butts kicked again and again. The other side does not recognize any such “rules of engagement”, with their wholesale deployment of the politics of personal destruction, ad hominem attacks, invented scandals or innuendo about what “might” be a prosecutable offense. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz should be proof enough of that.
The RINOs cannot understand the contempt the American people have for them any more than they can understand the Trump Counter-Revolution.
Isn’t he the turn coat who’s backing Hillary?
Does Brooks still hyperventilate whenever he looks at the crease in Obama’s pants?
Does Brooks still hyperventilate whenever he looks at the crease in Obama’s pants?
The Donald’s suits are too rumpled to garner Brooks’ vote.
To clarify, the author is Matt Taibbi. He’s hoping to latch on with Salon when Rolling Stone goes belly up.
And along comes Cruz and Trump, the proverbial wrecking balls, threatening to destroy all that the established ones have spent so much wealth on corrupting to their purposes.
Sucks to be them. Once upon a time, the Americans gave the british the same rude awakening that these smug, smarmy scumbags are about to experience.
Since this deformed soul is on Hillary’s staff, why should we care what he says?
Mind that this is filtered through the customarily incoherent Matt Taibbi, I do think that Brooks has revealed his paternalistic view of Republican government. On the contrary, modern Republican voters want a government that leaves the little guy alone, for the most part, doesn't dictate his travel, his working conditions, his pay, his medical plan, his culture, his material possessions including his house and car, and tax the life out of him to pay for this sage guidance that he doesn't want. If by "help" Brooks means "stay the hell out of the way," then yes, but that isn't what Brooks means at all.
The current proprietors of the creaking GOPe are in favor of smaller government no matter how large they have to expand the government to effect it. That hasn't worked and it won't. Replacing empty platitudes with more and different platitudes isn't what this election is about, and Brooks, and they, seem very slow in the uptake.
What does this clown think we have now?
“the Trump/Cruz nativist revolution...”
Ummm... the second half of that “nativist” revolution was born in Canada to a Cuban father.
This is why I object to articles from RS, HuffPuff, Slate, etc. Aside from repeatedly telling us that we’re ignorant garbage, their writers are incoherent.
That’s an interesting thought, astute observation.
When it comes to ‘war’, the GOP is the ‘hard-@ssed’ (not that I think they’re changing the ridiculous ROE to WIN). During politics, it’s hold-hands, reach-across-the-aisle and sing kumbaya.
DEMS, it’s 180 on each; except they fight to WIN in politics.
Yet, knowing the folks in Congress have NEVER (ok REALLY really long time) done anything for the base; they’re (re)elected 99% of the time.
‘Plantation’ doesn’t even BEGIN to describe it, IMO...
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