Steve Benen goes "Full Driftglass"*

In response to Our Mr. Brooks 12,857th column lamenting the exactly equal and mirror opposite failings of Both Sides, this from the "Washington Monthly"*

The ‘third force’ Brooks has been waiting for

By Steve Benen

David Brooks seems discouraged by the era of political “stagnation,” but I have good news for him.

Each party is too weak to push its own agenda and too encased by its own cocoon to agree to a hybrid. The supercommittee failed for this reason. Members of the supercommittee actually took some brave steps outside party orthodoxy (Republicans embraced progressive tax increases, Democrats flirted with spending cuts), but these were baby steps, insufficient to change the alignment.

In normal circumstances, minority parties suffer a series of electoral defeats and then they modernize. But in the era of the two moons, the parties enjoy periodic election victories they don’t deserve, which only re-enforce their worst habits.

So it’s hard to see how we get out of this, unless some third force emerges, which wedges itself into one of the two parties, or unless we have a devastating fiscal crisis — a brutal cleansing flood, after which the sun will shine again.

Brooks gets one part of this horribly wrong. Dems on the super-committee did more than “flirt with spending cuts” — they were prepared to offer massive spending cuts, including major changes to Medicare and Social Security, in order to reach a bipartisan agreement. This is exactly what Brooks wanted them to do, and for him to ignore these details misleads his readers in a rather fundamental way.

For that matter, Brooks lauds GOP members for having “embraced progressive tax increases,” but in reality, Republicans were willing to accept some new revenue so long as taxes weren’t increased on anyone, and the offer was conditional on Democrats accepting massive tax breaks that Republicans wouldn’t even try to pay for.

Is Brooks not aware of these details? If he is, why is his description so incomplete? If not, why not?
...

Because he is a liar.

A well-paid, professional liar who is completely insulated from ever facing the consequences of his lies or even any uncomfortable questions about his lies by his New York Times title, and coterie of friends and co-conspirators in the Beltway Media.

A liar.

Always has been.

Always will be.

Welcome to the club, Steve, and allow me to reiterate what I wrote one post back. That all of the ridiculously transparent "Both Sides" fairy tales spun by Conservative Apostates come from the one, basic American truth that they dare not acknowledge: that the Dirty Fucking Hippies were right about the Right all along, and that every single grudging step the Obama Administration has made in the direction of good politics and good policy has been a step away from the bullshit "Both sides do it!" Centrist cult of David Brooks, Andrew Sullivan, David Gregory, David Frum, Tom Friedman and virtually the entire Beltway Media...

...and towards the Liberals.

*(h/t reader I.R. for sending this along.)

*(Thanks, Tild. As a hangover from my last post, I'm sure I had "Stephen Vincent Benet" in my head as my fingers were doing their thing :-)

lynx