Crom, Strong On His Mountain

I was thinking that a spin around "The Land of The Lost" might be a nice change of pace. Tease a few Sleestaks. Ride a few dinosaurs. Sort of like a trip to the Creationist Museum, as scripted by Norman Spinrad and produced by Sid and Marty Krofft.

But given that my gas gauge's wee sword is beknighting the "E" lightly on its shoulder, TLoTL will have to wait. Instead, I believe I have just enough juice for a quick trip to last decade of the 20th Century, and since so many people seem to have completely forgotten who did what and said what about whom before January, 2009, it amounts to pretty much the same thing.

So, as a small Zappadan gift to future historians trying to piece together exactly when and how we lost our minds, put the top down, crank up some cheery, mid-90s bubble gum

(Not Safe for Work) and tear off for a little tour through the days when a stone-crazy GOP base was animated by a blinding, psychotic hatred of the Democratic President: a hatred which we know beyond a doubt was being manufactured and belt-fed into the "Both Sides Do It" Villager media machine by ultra-rightwing billionaires and their paid stooges.

Through the Olden Days when anyone who alleged that the Right was running a, massive, well-organized, knives-out smear campaign were dismissed out-of-hand as a loony Lefty Clinton-lover.

A time (the Both Sides Do It" brigade always forgets to mention) when Keith Olbermann was doing sports on ESPN and MSNBC was barely out of the gate (and featured programs like The Contributors with [no kidding] Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham)...but Rush Limbaugh was entering his second decade as the de facto leader of the GOP, and had been feted as "The Majority Maker" --

Rush Limbaugh Saluted As a `Majority Maker'

The Washington Post
December 11, 1994

House Republican newcomers made Rush Limbaugh an honorary class member tonight, a symbol of their gratitude for conservative talk-radio hosts who championed their campaigns.

Limbaugh was presented a "Majority Makers" pin, the emblem of the newcomers who have given their party majority status in the House for the first time in 40 years. Six GOP women in the class added their own special thanks, presenting Limbaugh with a plaque that said: "Rush was right." And Rep.-elect Barbara Cubin (R-Wyo.) added: "There's not a femiNazi among us."

Limbaugh, who was greeted with whoops and hollers from the newcomers, was one of the featured speakers at the closing dinner...

-- by the Party of God.

A time when America's relative peace and prosperity could not dissuade the Party of God that the Existential Peril posed by a bad Arkansas land deal and Bill Clinton's Penis was worse than nine Hitlers.

A time when David Brooks worked cheek-by-jowl with Bloody Bill Kristol at the Conservative "Weekly Standard"...

Here, then, is Our Mr. Brooks in his very own words, doing the writing that scored him a permanent seat on "The News Hour" and "Meet the Press" and a lifetime gig at the New York times...*

Mr. Brooks on that damned GOP Base (which Our Modern Mr. Brooks 2.0 now routinely dismisses as lound and annoying, but ultimately an irrelevant abberation which will be brought to heel by the Serious Leaders of the Conservative Movement) from January, 1999:

DAVID BROOKS: I'm not sure. I think in part it is the sense that every time they try to pull back the grassroots, the famous base hits them, and that's what happened over the weekend. They tried to pull back a quick and easy get out and just the massive calls came in.

...

DAVID BROOKS: Let's not overstate their rationalism - rationale of what's going on here - it's a head-heart problem. In their head they know it's a lost cause; in their heart they still don't like the guy.

...

Mr. Brooks on the nobility and historic importance of impeaching Bill Clinton (from January, 1999):

DAVID BROOKS: I think we are too close. I'm not sure you can step back and say what is the first blush look. I mean, if you look at the way public opinion has shifted, in the very beginning Bill Clinton did that famous poll with Dick Morris. Would the public have affected perjury, and the Dick Morris poll showed no. You do the polls today. Did Clinton commit perjury? Most people say yes. I think in the 70's a lot of people say yes. Should he be removed from office? No. But there has been a shift in public opinion dragged along by this process, but if I could just pick up on one thing about the dullness of the day, I think there was a kernel of romance in the day, a kernel that will be nurtured by the Republican Party. This is a party that is emotionally spent, that is very exhausted by its failure of the past several years. This is a great lost cause. They're going to be able to say to themselves we fought for honesty, we fought for justice against the polls, against everything else. You know, you look to the 2000 Republican Convention. Henry Hyde mounts the podium. You can say the place going bananas. You can see this magnifying into an event, an important event in Republican Party history.

JIM LEHRER: No matter what the result is?

DAVID BROOKS: Even more if it's negative. Even if they go down in defeat in 2000. They stood for principle against the polls. That's the way movements are built based on this kind of lost cause.

...

Mr. Brooks on the dazzling competence of George W. Bush (January, 2001):

Competent Conservatives, Reactionary Liberals

JAN 15, 2001, VOL. 6, NO. 17 • BY DAVID BROOKS

We seem to be entering a period of competent conservatism and reactionary liberalism. George W. Bush has put together a cabinet long on management experience and practical skills. But liberal commentators and activists, their imaginations aflame, seem to be caught in a time warp, back in the days when Norman Lear still had hair.

...

We could be in for a series of confrontations in which the two parties don't just hold different views, but live in different centuries.

Bush really has been able to mold an administration in his own image. He is our first president with an MBA, and it's clear that he brings an MBA mentality to the job. There are almost no academics at the top of this administration, but there are plenty of administrators, reflecting a Bush belief that intellectuals are people you can hire; executives are people you can trust. Like Bush, this is a conservative administration, but it is not doctrinaire. It has a chief of staff who supported Hillary Clinton's health care plan, a Treasury secretary who supported higher gas taxes and spurned the supply siders, and a secretary of state who opposed rolling back Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. These are not orthodox conservative positions.

...

Mr. Brooks on those Loony Liberals (February, 2001):

Bush, as Advertised

FEB 5, 2001, VOL. 6, NO. 20 • BY DAVID BROOKS

What on earth has gotten into the liberals and the media? Perhaps affected by some sort of post-Palm Beach stress disorder, reporters and activists on the left have depicted George W. Bush as the leader of some sort of arch-conservative jihad. They've portrayed his tax plan as dangerously radical, some of his nominees as Confederacy-loving loons, and his voucher plan as a menace to the future of public education. To put it bluntly, this is all deranged. You get the impression that the left has actually started believing its own direct-mail fund-raising letters

Over the past few weeks, George W. Bush has made it abundantly clear that he is who he has been telling us he is. From his first campaign speech in Iowa, through his national convention in Philadelphia, up to his inaugural address in Washington, Bush has been consistent: He has portrayed himself as an inclusive, not-particularly ideological compassionate conservative. He admires the nurturing caregiver rather than the rugged individualist or the entrepreneurial wealth creator. He prides himself on his ability to work across party lines. He has shown in a thousand and one ways that while he values responsibility and discipline, he is not a culture warrior.

Many in the media and on the left seem to regard all this as some sort of show, as a slick and palatable front designed to mask the right-wing bogeyman underneath. But now President Bush is translating his campaign into policy proposals, and it is clear that he has been straight-forward with the American people.

...

Mr. Brooks on the GOP's bright, tolerant, broad-minded future (August, 2000):

Pabulum with a Purpose

Beneath the much-mocked superficiality of the Philadelphia convention is a serious effort to transform the GOP

AUG 14, 2000, VOL. 5, NO. 45 • BY DAVID BROOKS

The Philadelphia convention, in other words, was unlike any other in party history. The Democratic view of it is that the Republicans built a Potemkin image of multicultural inclusiveness to mask what is still a white, intolerant party. And it's true that the convention program did not reflect the party as it really exists. The GOP is not intolerant; still, normal party gatherings don't look and feel like this. But the more generous interpretation is that the televised show represented the party of George W. Bush's aspirations. In other words, he's trying to transform the party to make it fit the happy multi-hued image that we saw up on stage.

And if that's true, then this convention was not just a big puddle of pabulum. It was a substantive political act disguised as pabulum. It was an effort to reengineer the party as ambitious as Bill Clinton's earlier effort to transform the Democratic party.

...

Mr. Brooks on why the Bush Tax Cuts are perfectly reasonable and easily affordable (March, 2001):

Yes, There Is a New Economy

Thanks to once-in-a lifetime productivity gains, Bush's plans are easily affordable
MAR 19, 2001, VOL. 6, NO. 26 • BY DAVID BROOKS

This year's tax and budget debate really comes down to one essential question: Is the money going to be there? The Congressional Budget Office projects surpluses of about $ 5.6 trillion over the next 10 years. The Republicans insist that those projections are conservative, so the government can afford to return $ 1.6 trillion to the taxpayers and still have money left over for Social Security, Medicare, and an $ 800 billion contingency fund. The Democrats cry that projections are notoriously inaccurate, that the tax cuts will blow a hole in the budget, and that the Bush administration's risky scheme (which sailed through the House last week) would cast us back into the days of piling debt.

The funny thing is that all of two months ago, the leading Democratic economists, in Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, were rapturous about the state of the economy and its prospects over the next several years. "Over the last eight years the American economy has transformed itself so radically that many believe we have created a New Economy," the Clinton team enthused, describing an economy filled with "virtuous circles" and positive "feedback loops."

And the Clinton economists were not just playing politics. For the truth is that over the past several months, while Wall Street and the general public have grown jittery over the state of things, leading lights in the economic profession have grown increasingly enthusiastic about the underlying strength of the U.S. economy. The key to their enthusiasm is productivity.

...

Mr. Brooks on BDSM.

No kidding (May, 2000):

The New Upper Class

How conservatives won the culture war, and lost the peace
MAY 8, 2000, VOL. 5, NO. 32 • BY DAVID BROOKS

If you'd like to be tortured with dignity and humiliated with respect, you really ought to check out the Internet newsletter of the Arizona Power Exchange, an S&M group headquartered in Phoenix. The organization offers a full array of services to what is now genteelly known as the leather community. For example, on August 3, according to last summer's newsletter, there was a discussion and humiliation session. On August 6, at 7 P.M., there was a workshop on caning. The next night, the Bondage Sadomasochism Personal Growth and Support Group met with Master Lawrence, while on August 10, Carla helped lead a discussion on high-heel and foot worship. All of these meetings were to be conducted with the maturity embodied in the organization's mission statement: "Treating the S&M, B&D and D&S experience with acceptance, caring, dignity and respect." Dignity and respect are important when you're tied up on the ground worshipping someone's boot.

The organization, which goes by the acronym APEX, has a seven-member board of directors, a long list of officers and administrators, and a web page staff to design the Internet site, which is more demure than you'd expect from your average Rotary Club. APEX sponsors charity drives. There's a special support group for submissives who are too shy to vocalize the sort of submission they like. There's a seminar on S&M and the law. There are 12-step meetings for sadists and masochists recovering from substance abuse. Finally, there are outreach efforts to build coalitions with other bondage and domination groups nationwide.
...

Mr. Brooks on wealth and class-envy among the Villagers (May, 1996):

...

The Titled Class has always resented and secretly envied the Monied Class. But for journalists, writers, and politicos, the pain now is acute. Until recently, a person who went into, say, the media understood that he or she would forever live a middle-class life. But now one need only look at Cokie Roberts or David Gergen to see that vast wealth is possible. Once it becomes plausible to imagine yourself pulling in $ 800,000 a year, the lack of that money begins to hurt.

...

Consider the situation of our composite editor. He's earning $ 110,000 a year as a top editor at, say, Time magazine. His wife, whom he met while they were studying at the Yale drama school, is a program officer at a boutique foundation that offers scholarships to Brooklyn high-school students. She makes $ 65,000. In their wildest imagining they never dreamed they'd someday pull in $ 175,000 a year.

...

When a Titleholder with a household income of $ 175,000 a year enters a room filled with Monied persons who earn $ 1.75 million a year, a few social rules will be observed. First, everyone will act as if money does not exist. Everyone, including the Titled person near bankruptcy, will pretend it is possible to jet off to Paris for a weekend and the only barrier is finding the time. Everyone will praise the Marais district, and it will not be mentioned that the Monied person has an apartment in the Marais, while the Titled person stayed in a one-star hotel somewhere in the suburbs. The Titled person will notice that the Monied Class spends a lot of time planning and talking about vacations, whereas all the Titled person wants to talk about is work.

These conversations between those who are Titled and those with Money are fraught with peril. For example, a person who has made $ 10 million in the garbage-collection business has to defer in conversation to an editor at Esquire. On the other hand, an editor at Esquire has to defer to a person who has made $ 300 million in the garbage-collection business. A TV producer who went to Yale and Oxford is higher than an apartment-building owner who went to SUNY-Binghamton but lower than the owner of a hot restaurant who went to Brooklyn Community College. You've got to be sensitive to the invisible social hierarchies.

And at the back of the Titled person's mind there is the doubt: Do they really like me, or am I just another form of servant, one who provides amusement or publicity instead of making the beds? The sad fact is, the rich tend not to think this way. The millionaires think it would be neat to be a think-tank fellow and appear on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Look at Mortimer Zuckerman, who owns the New York Daily News, the Atlantic, U.S. News & World Report, and a goodly chunk of Manhattan. He'll drive out to Fort Lee, New Jersey, so he can do a taping for the cable channel CNBC. It's not enough to have more money than most countries. He wants to be a pundit.

I don't know about Zuckerman, but most people in the Monied Class who fantasize about becoming a public intellectual can't actually fathom what it would be like to make less than $ 300,000 a year.

...

Mr. Brooks on that young, up-and-comer Grover Norquist and his pals (August, 1996):

UP FROM LIBERTARIANISM

12:00 AM, AUG 19, 1996 • BY DAVID BROOKS

In 1995, the Republicans were filled with libertarian fervor. Activist Grover Norquist, who was whitehot during the first months of the Congress, explained that the Republican majority had been elected by the "Leave Us Alone" coalition -- by people who simply wanted government off their backs. Norquist was quoted in a Washington Post profile saying that the sight of the executive branch buildings in Washington made him "physically ill. . . . Neo-American fascism, stuff that looks like Albert Speer designed it."

The Cato Institute was the most prominent think tank, with its experts testifying 16 times on Capitol Hill in the first month of the 104th Congress. Speaker Gingrich declared that his party would show "how to end programs, not just create them." The New Majority's Zeitgeist became so libertarian that mainstream Republicans emerged as aggressive opponents of . . . the FBI. For if Washington were incapable of running a good program, its law enforcement inevitably had to be overbearing and oppressive.

There was a positive hunger in those days for a budget train wreck; the fax machines spit out declarations from activist groups topped with slogans like " No Compromise." The Republicans were gambling that when they shut down the government, most Americans would discover they didn't mind. "Have you missed it?" Phil Gramm asked on This Week with David Brinkley during last winter's federal shutdown.

It turns out that Americans don't wake up angry because the Commerce Department exists. The shutdown gamble lost.

...

Mr. Brooks on Newt Gingrich (October, 1996):

WHAT HAPPENED TO NEWT GINGRICH?
12:00 AM, OCT 21, 1996 • BY DAVID BROOKS

The longer you watch Newt Gingrich, the less you know about him. He creates a striking first impression as the self-declared Man of Destiny, but over time the clarity of that self-made Newt dissolves, and a humbler, more modest, and more enigmatic Gingrich drifts into view. If you formed your impression of Newt Gingrich at the dawn of the 104th Congress, when the magazine covers were rife with his caricature, it is likely that everything you know about Gingrich is wrong.

The leaders of the conservative movement have now fallen out of love with the speaker, and he with them. "Movement conservatives are wonderfully critical in a way that bears almost no relationship with political reality," Gingrich says now. "It seems to make them feel good."

..."He's randomly conservative," says a senior congressional Republican. "He has no conservative instincts," says another House member. "He's conservative, but not in any conventional sense," says a longtime colleague. "I knew a lot of people were going to get their heart broken with him. He believes in what is expedient," a movement leader tells his friends. Paul Weyrich was willing to wrap up the anti-Gingrich view on the record in Rolling Stone: "Newt's a brilliant fellow who is very able to excite people and motivate them, but he believes in very little, so most of his views are negotiable. Newt creates scenarios for himself, and he becomes morally certain that they are going to play out. Then when it doesn't happen, he goes into a blue funk."

...

But if the Republicans keep the House, then Gingrich will come back, for there is no untruer truism than Fitzgerald's claim that there are no second acts in American lives. Gingrich will have natural advantages. A reelected President Clinton will want to pass some legislation, and given the fractiousness of the Democratic party, he will have to rely often on a legislative strategist of Gingrich's caliber. The public will see Gingrich's constructive side. And while some conservatives may doubt his loyalty to conservative principle, Gingrich is far more ideologically rooted than Bill Clinton. His pull on legislation will be substantial.

Then in 1998, if historical trends hold true, the Republicans will gain seats in the House, and Gingrich will see his stature enhanced. At that point it will be possible to see his speakership lasting a long time (assuming he ignores his silly pledge to termlimit himself). The odd thing for a self- described revolutionary is that Gingrich does worst when time is compressed, when a lot of things happen at once. At such moments, his passions come to the surface, his desire for conflict seems angriest, his brain is at its most hyperactive, and his skin is thinnest. Gingrich does best when time stretches out, over the long haul (as in the struggle to gain the majority). In those circumstances, Gingrich's ability to see more broadly and imagine farther serves him well. And his ability to keep his focus on a distant goal while other people are distracted by temporary phenomena comes to the fore. If Gingrich survives this election, he will be able slowly to rebuild, and he will have the opportunity to dominate the coming era.

And, finally and most exquisitely, Mr. Brooks on why Centrism is ultimately empty and absurd (Oct, 1995):

THE LAND BEYOND LEFT AND RIGHT
OCT 2, 1995, VOL. 1, NO. 03 • BY DAVID BROOKS


This is a time of such profound change that we need a dynamic center, that is not in the middle of what is left and right, but is way beyond it.

-- Bill Clinton

On September 1 in the Year of Our Lord 199_, I undertook a journey to the Land Beyond Left and Right. It was a long voyage, for I had to navigate past the Scylla of liberalism and the Charybdis of conservatism; steer" around what E. J. Dionne has called the False Choices; and traverse what Bill Bradley refers to as the To Familiar Ruts.

At each turn the Tired Old Libels [sp?] sang to me in the seductive voice of the Siren, and I could have been sucked back, as an editorial in the Democratic Leadership Council's magazine warned, into "the ideological and interest group battles of the Industrial Era." But at long last I crossed the meridian into a new, post-Cold War/Information Age/Global Economy era that requires fresh approaches and new thinking.

I docked at the Land Beyond Left and Right and was confronted with a fan of roadways, all of them marked, "To the Center." The sun was shining, and everybody was sitting around watching Ken Bode's Washington Week in Review.

...those who have taken up permanent residence in the Land Beyond are tied to no one. They sometimes call on those still clinging to the Tired Old Labels to repudiate their allies, but they themselves never have to repudiate anyone. They categorize others while remaining uncategorized.

...

The visitor can forgive himself for wondering if he hasn't discovered utopia: a place where bright, open-minded people can be seen discussing issues in civil tones. The Land Beyond has the Sparkle of freshness, as old conventions are shed, and people look for new ideas to go with a new era.

But on the second day in this land, clouds appear. Questions nag. For example, why is it always Democrats who argue that labels don't matter anymore? When Oliver North called him a liberal, Mario Cuomo protested, " don't like your labels. I don't buy shoes that way." Barbara Mikulski wrote in the "Washington Post" that the words liberal and conservative "have become cliches . . . with little meaning." A cynic might conclude that what these liberals are really trying to move beyond is the number 43 -- the percentage of Americans who vote for liberal presidential candidates.

But even among the intellectuals, Beyondists are likely to have liberal pedigrees. Sometimes they seem loosely akin to the non-aligned bloc in the Cold War, loudly nonaligned, yet somehow usually siding with one side.

...

Conservatives, by contrast, seem to be quite happy with the conservative label. They embrace it. It seems coherent and meaningful to them. Republican candidates call themselves conservatives, even if the label doesn't really apply. It may be that the effort to move beyond labels has less to do with the exhaustion of ideologies than it does with the exhaution of liberalism.

But the peace in the Land Beyond is darkened by a deeper anxiety. The Beyondists have gone past the old creeds, but it is not clear whether those beliefs have been replaced by anything else.

...

The central problem with Beyondists and centrists is that they misunderstand the way ideas are developed. The policy gabfests that Bill Clinton so loves are based on the premise that such meetings exist for people of good will to come together and solve problems There are two flaws in this sentiment. The first has to do with the phrase "come together." The second has to do with the word "problems."

"Coming together" was big in the 1960s. Songs, speakers, and pamphlets were perpetually urging people to do it. It was at the heart of the utopianism of the New Left: Conflict is not inevitable; different views are reconcilable; most conflicts can be hammered out with co-operation and better communication These premises, of course, were the basis of the New Left's approach to the Cold War.

...

Things are often irreconcilable; that is a sad reality. Liberals promote one set of virtues, a lot of them having to do with compassion. Conservatives promote another set of virtues, a lot of them having to do with achievement. And the champions of these two "ideologies" spend their time struggling to give greater weight to their own constellation of virtues. The labels "liberal" and "conservative" have survived at least a half century of charges that they are obsolete. They have done so because they represent two worldviews that are not compatible.

Not every issue in America is polarized -- most Americans occupy a middle ground on abortion and racial matters, and foreign policy disputes are for the moment unformed -- but the struggle between left and right reflects something profound. It isn't over how to solve a plumbing problem. It's a long competition between virtues.

And it is a healthy competition. Some Soviets, and some Western neoconservatives such as Jean-Francois Revel, thought that the democracies would lose the Cold War because they were always tearing themselves apart with internal disputes between right and left. But as it transpired, these internal disputes allowed the West to remain dynamic and creative. Another species may think more acutely in an atmosphere of friendship and cooperation, but for most people, a good motivation to argue well is to humiliate the sons of bitches on the other side.

Debates are not dominated by the loosely tethered individuals who declare themselves above the partisan fray. They are dominated by people who are self-conscious about their premises and firm in their conclusions, who nail their theses to a door.

...

The Beyondists have several disadvantages when they enter the battle of ideas. In the first place, they always start from square one. Their boast, echoing President Clinton, is that we are in an unprecedented age demanding new thinking. This was the song of the modernists about a hundred years ago too. But as the history of modernism shows, while "it is exhilarating to begin anew, "fresh" ideas have a way of failing. The ones that work have been tested over time.

People with definite creeds don't have to reinvent the wheel. Conservatives and liberals inherit intellectual traditions; they can learn from lines of thinkers who shared their basic precepts." Conservatives go around wearing Adam Smith neckties. They cite Burke or Jefferson or Aquinas. More recently, Milton Friedman, Lionel Trilling, James Burnham, and others did some heavy lifting; it's not necessary for today's conservatives to do it all over again. Beyondists have to start from scratch.

The labeled have an even greater advantage over the labelless. Liberals and conservatives join movements. A free marketeer can go anywhere in the world and have dinner with somebody from the local free market think tank -- in London, Jerusalem, Capetown. Domestically, conservative and liberal magazines form their own communities. Conferences and bulletin boards, parties and dinners reinforce the bonds. "

It is this web of friendships that gives a creed its dynamism. People gossip, people talk. Look at the newsletters put out by the CATO Institute or the American Enterprise Institute; there will be photos of politicians and think tankers and academics standing in happy conversational klatches, clutching cocktail glasses against their stomachs. That's a political movement in action.

...

Movements nurture the young. They offer mundane things like job opportunities, but they also impart education and give their members a sense of higher purpose. In the war of ideas, battalions do well. Each foot soldier makes an unconscious deal: He dispossesses himself of the privilege of being uncategorizable and completely autonomous, and in exchange he gets a place in the larger movement.

The Beyondists are above the compromise that membership in a movement entails, as they are beyond partisan politics. In short they are above the fray. At their worst, they seem like Kevin Phillips -- solitary complainers who inveigh against a world that will not live up to their standards. At their best they are acute observers, but observers only.

So one leaves the Land Beyond Left and Right remembering what the 19th-century journalist Walter Bagehot said of the post-ideological politicians of his own day: "They are betwixt and between, and make distinctions which no one heeds; they live in a debatable land, which each party attacks and neither defends. . . . They must endure the tedium of inaction, and bear the constant sense of irritating helplessness.

Though they are the best of rulers for the world, they are the last persons to be likely to rule."

There is, of course, much, much more, including a large body of Iraq War cheerleading and anti-Liberal slander which has already been well documented elsewhere. But this is bile-infused bit of Brooksian wisdom from 1995 is my favorite --

...why is it always Democrats who argue that labels don't matter anymore? ...A cynic might conclude that what these liberals are really trying to move beyond is the number 43 -- the percentage of Americans who vote for liberal presidential candidates.

But even among the intellectuals, Beyondists are likely to have liberal pedigrees. Sometimes they seem loosely akin to the non-aligned bloc in the Cold War, loudly nonaligned, yet somehow usually siding with one side.
...

Conservatives, by contrast, seem to be quite happy with the conservative label. They embrace it. It seems coherent and meaningful to them. Republican candidates call themselves conservatives, even if the label doesn't really apply. It may be that the effort to move beyond labels has less to do with the exhaustion of ideologies than it does with the exhaution of liberalism.

-- because one can so clearly trace the arc of Mr. Brooks' craven and highly successful campaign of booklicking and position-switching from then until now.

While the black helicopter wingnuts were feeling their oats, demagogues like Falwell and Roberstson were ascendant, Limbaugh was packing 'em in to mid-day "Rush Room" rage-fests, and the Gingrich Hate Machine was mowing down weak-kneed opposition by the use of Conservative lies and slander on a scale no one had dreamed possible...Mr. Brooks was perfectly happy to be partisan warrior.

While George W. Bush was busy bankrupting the country, shredding the Constitution and and lying us a catastrophic war...Mr. Brooks was delighting to sing his praises, carry his water and excoriate his critics.

When it all blew up in his face -- just like those awful Dirty Hippies said it would -- instead of being consigned to the outer media darkness for his really spectacular record of being wrong about everything -- Mr. Brooks suddenly discovered a hidden stash of "Both Sides Do It"-ism, turning himself almost overnight into a modest, pure-at-heart Neihburian Centrist, which a cynic might conclude is nothing but a shameless attempt to try move beyond his long and unctuous support for the Party of God and the 43rd President of the United States.

Didn't slow him down one iota.

Mr. Brooks stuck his finger in the wind, calculated where he could re-pot his career in a way that would meet three important things:

1. Let him skip right on past the inconvenient fact that Liberals were right all along.
2. Let him slip out of the nut house that his Conservatism had become with no professional blowback. And,
3. Let him remain snuggly-close to the rich and powerful.

And so virtually overnight Mr. Reasonable Conservative became Mr. Centrist -- a heavyweight champion of the Big Lie at the heart of our corrupt media -- one that that he now promotes so single-mindedly -- and gets away with so completely -- that yours truly has been moved over the years to pen several hundred posts on the subject.

Then Mr. Brooks did what Mr. Brooks always does: attached himself tapeworm-like to the Next Big Thing. Which, this time around, was Barack Obama.

Mash notes were written. Public plights of troth were made. VIP/All-Access passes were issued, and Our Mr. Brooks was dutifully escorted past the hordes of Dirty Hippies to the head of the line.

More mash notes. More public paeans. And for awhile it was like the good, giggly old days with Dubya.

But it couldn't last.

Because the bylaws of the Big Centrist Lie to which Mr. Brooks had lashed himself would not permit it to last. Because -- as the Rules of Centrism clearly state -- fault for anything and everything must always, always, always be allote in equal measure to the Left and the Right. And so when President Obama finally had to split with the Centrist Punditocracy and take public note of the fact that, no matter how post-partisan he acted, no matter how lavish his compromises, and no matter how many Republican ideas he tried to enact, the GOP had dedicated itself to fanatically opposing anything and everything that his Administration proposes...the Rules of Centrism required that Our Mr. Brooks burst into loudly, blubbery, public tears and break up with him on the grounds of insufficient capitulation to lunatics and economic terrorists.

In the end, it is clear that Mr. Brooks is completely hollow. He believes in nothing but his own professional advancement (and that the Dirty Hippies are secretly to blame for everything even if he can't prove it) and so, like Captain Renault in "Casablanca", he goes "with the wind".

And right now, the prevailing wind blows from the Center.

Over in the Better Universe, such banality, naked opportunism and hackishness would have gotten Mr. Brooks laughed out of town years ago, but we live in this Universe.

And in this Universe there is a Club.

And you are not in it.

So, rather than being shown the door, Crom remains strong on his Mountain by doing once more what he has always done before: attaching himself tapeworm-like to the Next Big Thing.

Which, this time around, appears to be a cyborg that clearly needs to be programmed to pass a Turing Test before it can be safely turned loose among actual reporters.


* (Some of which are a little truncated due to the archival procedures at "The Weekly".)