David Brooks Puts Donald Trump On Double-Secret Probation

Me,  yesterday:

This was not a speech that was intended for me. And although one side-effect of President Business's Mitt Romney's speech will be to give involuntary ruling-class sympathy boners to people like David Brooks, it was not intended for Mitten's fellow entitled oligarchs either.   Presumably it was intended to sweet-talk the hoi polloi into once again sacrificing their dreams of greatness for another party-approved corpse.

And as predicted and right on schedule, Mr. David Brooks in the New York Times today:

Donald Trump, the Great Betrayer

Now, at long last, the big guns are being brought to bear. Now, at long last, some major Republicans like Mitt Romney are speaking up to lay waste to Donald Trump...

Yes, thank Heaven and Calvin Coolidge that the maître d' has finally shown up to toss the vulgarians out of Mr. Brooks' Very Nice Restaurant.

But the vulgarians ain't leaving, because the show ain't over yet.  Hell, we're barely through the second half of our national Slobs Versus The Snobs marathon, which Mr. David Brooks of the New York Times seems to be blissfully unaware is one of America's most popular and enduring genre of American film, radio and teevee entertainment dating back at least to Charlie Chaplin (a good case could also be made that it dates back to The Odyssey, and that at least half of the New Testament is about scruffy outsiders finally getting over on rich, officious hypocrites.)

Of course to pull it off, every Slob Versus Snob comedy needs a wealthy, clueless stiff who can hit their marks and deliver long, windy, condescending orations about how lesser, scruffier mortals need to shape up and do as they are instructed by their economic and moral superiors.  As I wrote a couple of weeks ago after Jeb(!) ran sobbing back to his Kennebunkport tree-fort never to be seen again:

The Margaret Dumont of the 2016 Republican campaign has left the set of A Day at the Races, never to return...

So now we'll get to see what Bizarro Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Gummo and Zeppo Marx will make of of their game of anarchy in a sanitarium and at a horse race now that their favorite foil is gone for good.

And because the Comedy Gods are kind, here comes Mittens von Romney right on cue -- the most hilariously wrong delivery system for just the sort of Dean Wormer-style "You're finished at Faber!" upbraiding that no truly great Slob Versus Snob farce can do without.

And truckling along just behind Mittens, carrying his extra spats and emergency backup monocle, we find David Brooks, calling out Trump as a con man (which he most certainly is) in order to defend the last, pitiful remnants of Mr. Brooks' own corrupt snake-oil franchise.

Because for more than 20 years, Liberals have been crying in the wilderness, warning the nation that beneath its thin veneer of David Brooksian respectability, the Republican party was little more than a mob of bigots, con men, theocrats and oligarchs all united by their desire to strip the United States federal government down to the floor boards and get rich selling off the parts.

And for more than 20 years respectable Conservative frauds like David Brooks have been making a fabulous living by repackaging and reselling the same comforting lies about worry-wart hippies, Noble Whigs and Both Sides Being Equally Wrong All The Time About Everything over and over and over again to the same gullible chumps and political cowards.

And they would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for that Meddling Trump!

From Dr. Krugman in the New York Times ("Clash of Republican Con Artists"):

...
In fact, you have to wonder why, exactly, the Republican establishment is really so horrified by Mr. Trump. Yes, he’s a con man, but they all are. So why is this con job different from any other?

The answer, I’d suggest, is that the establishment’s problem with Mr. Trump isn’t the con he brings; it’s the cons he disrupts...

As I see it, then, we should actually welcome Mr. Trump’s ascent. Yes, he’s a con man, but he is also effectively acting as a whistle-blower on other people’s cons. That is, believe it or not, a step forward in these weird, troubled times.

Bingo!

Because after years of stalemate the stars have aligned to give us these three leading Republican contenders for President of the United States the bigot con man, the unhinged theocrat and the fingerpuppet of the oligarchs.  

And in the background, watching as the rising tide of Republican crazy threatens to swamp his Whig pleasure barge, we find David Brooks, practically ordering his readers to ignore what they can plainly see with their own eyes and begging Rich Daddy Mittens to use his magic plutocrat powers to make everything go back to the way it was before Donald Trump's Pandemonium Carnival rolled into town and crushed everyone else's patent medicine wagon.