Free Republic

Once upon a time, David Brooks was considered the house conservative at the New York Times.  But in his April 21 New York Times column, he put President Donald J. Trump on a list of "strong men" that includes Turkey's Recep Erdoğan and North Korea's Kim Jong-un.  Mr. Brooks noted that Erdoğan has "dismantle[d] democratic institutions and replace[d] them with majoritarian dictatorship."  The Times columnist went on to assert: "While running for office, Donald Trump violated every norm of statesmanship built up over these many centuries[.]"  Mr. Brooks, however, does not elaborate, explain, or elucidate the nature of the alleged violations. But when it comes...

In a ridiculous discussion that sounded as though it belonged in a forum of a left-wing website, the panel on Sunday’s Meet the Press bemoaned how the country’s attitude towards women cost Hillary Clinton the White House. Moderator Chuck Todd read from the recent NYT column of Nicholas Kristof, who described Clinton’s idea of Trump voters as “I don’t agree with him, I’m not sure I really approve of him, but he looks like somebody who’s been president before.” Paraphrasing Clinton, Todd suggested that “she believed misogyny played a much larger role in this than it’s been analyzed by many...

There is a line worth noting in David Brooks's column today: "The Republican plan will fuel cynicism. It's being pushed through in an elitist, anti-democratic, middle of the night rush. It seems purposely designed to fail." Quietly, the idea that the House bill is designed to fail is percolating around Washington. I've heard it from a half-dozen people now. The law's construction is shoddy. The outreach has been nonexistent. The hypocritical, hyper-accelerated process is baffling. Nothing about it makes sense. But if you flip the intention — if you assume Republican leaders want to see a repeal-and-replace bill die in...

Some theories are so stupid that you can tell at the outset that elites will embrace them: Amy Cuddy's thesis of "power poses" is one of these. Launched in an academic paper in 2010, the theory that stance=success picked up a celebrated following. "A bigger boost came when David Brooks, The New York Times columnist and author of books like The Social Animal, about the everyday uses of psychology, visited the Harvard Decision Science Laboratory, where Cuddy is a researcher," Tom Bartlett wrote in The Chronicle Review on December 9, 2016. "He described in a column how the power-poses experiment...

Imagine New York Times "conservative" columnist David Brooks decked out in a Maquis beret as part of the Ivory Tower resistance movement against the evil TrumpenReich. He runs out into the street to stop traffic, including emergency vehicles, while screaming vehement rhetoric to mobilize mass opposition to the fascistic dictatorship of President Donald Trump. Yeah it sounds hilariously absurd, but what makes it even funnier is that Brooks is dead serious. It is part of his Valentine's Day delusion in which he envisions several kinds of resistance movements that could counter Trump.

Full Title: David Brooks On Travel Ban: "We Have Offended The World"; "I'm Not Sure If It's Illegal, But It's Extremely Stupid" PBS News: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, .... Transcript, via PBS NewsHour: DAVID BROOKS: .... (snip) On the larger issue of the travel ban, our friend Charles Krauthammer of The Washington Post I think put it pretty well. I’m not sure it’s illegal, but it’s extremely stupid. I’m a little uncomfortable with the idea of judges overruling presidents on national security matters. Nonetheless, so...

David Brooks: the ostensibly conservative New York Times columnist, TV pundit, bestselling author and lecture-circuit thought leader, defines everything that’s wrong with allowing  the country’s elite to select our candidates/leaders. From Brooks’ November 11, 2016 NYT column: Finally, it seems important to be humbled and taught by this horrific election result. Trump’s main problem in governing is not going to be some fascistic ideology; his main problem is going to be his own attention span, ignorance and incompetence. If he’s left to bloviate while others are left to run the country and push through infrastructure plans, maybe things won’t be...

National Public Radio likes to think it's about civility (not rudeness) and real news (not fake news). But when it comes to Donald Trump, on Friday night NPR became the promoter of a rude and disparaging joke on All Things Considered. Washington Post columnist and NPR contributor E. J. Dionne passed along a joke from unfunny leftist Andy Borowitz in The New Yorker: that Trump's picks were so contrary to the government's mission that next he would name Mexican drug kingpin "El Chapo" to run the DEA. DIONNE: Well, I think you've got Trump naming a lot of people who...

Columnist David Brooks is the house "conservative" of the New York Times which means he is currently busy consoling his fellow liberals over Donald Trump's election victory. Brooks, in his column today titled The View From Trump Tower but which could more accurately be labeled "The View From Ivory Tower," describes texting people "off the ledge." Ironically it is Brooks himself who leaps off that ledge at the end of his column due to his extreme Trump Derangement Syndrome.

In his Friday column, New York Times columnist David Brooks speculates about a new political dichotomy and writes that President-elect Donald Trump will “resign or be impeached within a year.” From Brooks’ column: Finally, it seems important to be humbled and taught by this horrific election result. Trump’s main problem in governing is not going to be some fascistic ideology; his main problem is going to be his own attention span, ignorance and incompetence. If he’s left to bloviate while others are left to run the country and push through infrastructure plans, maybe things won’t be disastrous.

Brooks said the less educated and non-college educated whites are going to vote for Donald Trump no matter what. He added, "people are just going with their gene pool." "Basically, less educated or high school-educated whites are going to Trump," Brooks told host Judy Woodruff. "It doesn't matter what the guy does. And college-educated going to Clinton."

WARNING! David Brooks has admitted that he lives in a wealthy bubble and to rectify that he plans to break out of his New York Times cocoon and travel down the Heart of Darkness to mix with the hoi polloi. What caused Brooks to issue his bubble admission was the rise of Donald Trump whom he had previously discounted. So before getting down from his high horse to possibly mix with the peasants at your neighborhood sports bar Brooks, with a massive chip on his shoulder, declares his moral superiority:

David Brooks, the fake conservative half of public broadcasting on Friday – the one day they pretend to let conservatives on the taxpayer-funded airwaves – forecast on Friday's All Things Considered on NPR that Donald Trump has done one positive thing – destroyed the “dying husk” of obsolete Reaganism in the Republican Party. Naturally, his liberal radio counterpart E.J. Dionne agreed, hoping for a more liberal, domesticated GOP.

On Friday's regular "Shields and Brooks" segment on the PBS NewsHour, pretend conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks slammed the North Carolina bathroom law -- which tries to protect women and girls from men intruding into women's restrooms in state buildings -- as he declared that the law is "so bad now I have to praise Donald Trump" for the GOP candidate's criticism of the law on NBC's Today show. He went on to complain that the Republican party "should have moved on" from "1980s socially conservative culture war politics," and concluded by lauding "moderate" Trump as "not stuck...

Even morons don’t slap their paws on a hot stove twice, but then the GOP Establishment would have to work pretty hard to rise to the level of “morons.” Exhibit A in the case against the cloistered, sheltered Ruling Class is the latest column from mainstream media conservative catamite David Brooks. I’d link to it, but I don’t want to send traffic to the hateful New York Times. Just Google “David Brooks smug clueless jerk” and it should pop right up. Brooks opposes Trump for all the wrong reasons. He thinks Trump is low class, which Trump is, but that’s...

History is a long record of men like him temporarily rising, stretching back to biblical times. Psalm 73 describes them: “Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence. … They scoff, and speak with malice; with arrogance they threaten oppression. Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth. Therefore their people turn to them and drink up waters in abundance.” And yet their success is fragile: “Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin. How suddenly they are destroyed.” The psalmist reminds us that the proper thing...

Whatever you think of Donald Trump, is it fair to play the full Nazi card against him? David Brooks--the fellow who was so impressed by the crease in Obama's pants--apparently thinks so. On today's Meet the Press, commenting on images of Trump supporters at a rally responding to his request to raise their right hands to pledge to vote for him, Brooks said "if we're going to get Trump, we might as well get the Nuremberg rallies to go with it." Have a look at the photos below and compare the Trump rally to a real Nuremberg rally. Really, Chuck...

If you give Obama a pass when he is dishonest or breaks the rules, because he seems like a good man, or is at least better than those guys; if you argue he had to change the law himself because Congress is dysfunctional and Republicans are unreasonable; if you lambast Bush for starting a war, but give Hillary a pass for both Iraq and Libya; then you are adopting one set of rules for your tribe and another set of rules for everyone else. That shows a lack of respect for people who disagree with you. They notice. They resent...

If you read The New York Times "conservative" columnist David Brooks, you might better grasp the chasm between true and phony conservatives, between Reagan conservatives and establishment Republicans. In his piece "I Miss Barack Obama," Brooks unwittingly humiliates himself in his latest paean to the president, just as when he revealed his perverse attraction to Obama's "perfectly creased pant." Let me just share Brooks' words rather than trying to characterize them, for he does much more damage to his own credibility than I could. He writes, "As this primary season has gone along, a strange sensation has come over me:...

It is the love that dares speak its name over and over and over again. Yes, the New York Times "house" conservative David Brooks has returned to loudly proclaiming his eternal love for Barack Obama. His love letter in the form of a paean disguised as a column might sound very familiar since his declaration that "the Obama administration has been remarkably scandal-free" is almost word for word the same blind love he professed last May. First let us show the most recent love burst from Brooks followed by his earlier profession of blind love. However, a warning. Cupid's obvious influence on...