Friday, March 17, 2017

For Sale: Imaginary Republican Party. Never Used.*



Conservative David Brooks of The New York Times is baffled that the Conservative congress and Conservative president insist on behaving like Conservatives.

...
The Trump health care and budget plans will be harsh on the poor, which we expected. But they’ll also be harsh on the working class, which we didn’t.

We’re ending up with the worst of the new guard Trumpian populists and the old guard Republican libertarians. We’re building walls to close off the world while also shifting wealth from the poor to the rich.

When these two plans fail, which seems very likely, there’s going to be a holy war between the White House and Capitol Hill. I don’t have high hopes for what’s going to emerge from that war, but it would be nice if the people who voted for Trump got economic support, not punishment.
...
For the record, Mr. Brooks' royal "we" -- "The Trump health care and budget plans will be harsh on the poor, which we expected. But they’ll also be harsh on the working class, which we didn’t." -- does not include anyone who was actually paying attention to what the Republican Party has been saying and doing for the last 30 years.  

This Is the Ending Conservatives Always Wanted
You can draw a straight line from Reaganomics to Trump's budget.

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There is an increased stirring among allegedly respectable conservatives to separate themselves from the president* and his more manic supporters in the Congress and out in the country. To hell with them. Like Haman, they're dancing on a gallows they spent years devising. This budget represents the diamond-hard reality behind all those lofty pronouncements from oil-sodden think tanks, all those learned disquisitions in little, startlingly advertising-free magazines, all those earnest young graduates of prestige universities who dedicated their intellects to putting an educated gloss on greed and ignorance, and ideological camouflage on retrograde policies that should have died with Calvin Coolidge—or perhaps Louis XVI.

This is it, right here, this budget. This is the beau ideal of movement conservative governance. This is the logical, dystopian end of Reaganism, and Gingrichism, and Tea Partyism, and all the other Isms that movement conservatism has inflicted upon the political commonwealth. This is the vast, noxious swamp into which all those tributaries of modern conservative thought have emptied themselves. People die in there, swallowed up in deep sinkholes of empowered bigotry and class anger.
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Mr. Brooks' party spent 30 year and billions of dollars methodically building a political base of heartless, clueless, bigoted idiots who would gladly belly-flop their entire family into an active volcano if Limbaugh and Hannity told them it would make Libtards cry.  And who would curse Obummer and Killery with their dying breath as the lava turned their loved ones to pyroclastic ash.

And now that the Conservative congress and Conservative president are using the Conservative base that Mr. David Brooks helped to build to enact the Conservative policies that Conservatives have always openly lusted after, how fucking dare he act surprised.

*(h/t Ernest Hemingway)

11 comments:

Lit3Bolt said...

Shorter David Brooks:

"Where did these Nazis come from?" asks man who has spent his entire life enabling Nazis.

trgahan said...

One thing Brooks et al. will never admit is a Republican can't win a national election running without taping into white resentment. Trump won because his "populist (can we stop pretending it was now?)" platform included a Muslim Ban and Border Wall...not in spite of it.

This is what the interviewed/polled "economically anxious white working class" mean when they say they voted for him because he "isn't PC" and Democrats spend too much time with "identity politics." Look at the demographic make up of both parties and tell me who is actually pebbling "identity politics."

bowtiejack said...

It bears restating that conservatism ["Conservatives seek to preserve institutions like religion, monarchy and the social hierarchy as they are. . . " - Wikipedia] is actually rule by aristocracy. The winners in the Obstetrics Ward Sweepstakes are, by god, entitled to what they were handed.

What really upset St. Edmund Burke was that the Frenchies with their Revolution were cutting the heads off aristocrats. You don't want a thing like that getting started.

Interestingly, the ethos of the ruling elite in China is this same sort of conservative dynamic. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/Murder_lucky_hotel

Neo Tuxedo said...

This is it, right here, this budget. This is the beau ideal of movement conservative governance. This is the logical, dystopian end of Reaganism, and Gingrichism, and Tea Partyism, and all the other Isms that movement conservatism has inflicted upon the political commonwealth.

I saw that paragraph when Brother Charles posted it, and like the rest of the post, it reminded me (as so much about today's GOTP does) of that one quote from Paul Ryan's favorite author:

"You have destroyed all that which you held to be evil and achieved all that which you held to be good. Why, then, do you shrink in horror from the sight of the world around you? That world is not the product of your sins, it is the product and the image of your virtues. It is your moral ideal brought into reality in its full and final perfection."

I've said it before, as have others, even on this self blog, but it cannot (in my considered opinion) be said enough times until one of those times leads to them accepting its meaning and acting accordingly.

Skeptic Rising said...

Brooks (et al) are only surprised that Trump's "budget" fucks over "teh Working Class" as well as the poors. His scribbling seems to imply that since he (they) are not surprised that the budget is harsh (that is to say, deadly) to the poor, that it's okay. After all, they are only the poor and therefore not deserving. The surprise is that the budget is also harsh (that is to say, deadly) to the Working Class, who Brooks seems to think are not poor since they have a job or two, and hence rich and thus should not be harshed.

You are right, DG, this budget is the naked manifestation of everything the John Birch Society and Jim Crow's Traveling Medicine Show have been drooling for for 50 years. Up until now, they kept it wrapped in swaddling clothes so that the corrupt, writhing pustulence would not be visible to the mercifully oblivious masses.

But now, they no longer have hide it, they no longer have to pretend respect and sympathy for the undeserving.

mjaroneski said...

I thought that the working class were the poor.

dinthebeast said...

Speaking of budgets, and who it was who actually did stuff to help Appalachia:

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-more-mundane-savagery-of-donald.html

-Doug in Oakland

Dr.BDH said...

Totally agree, except that there aren't any Conservatives in the Republican Party, haven't been since around 1970. There are Authoritarians and Christianists and Libertarians and Federalists and Secessionists and the grab bag of Deplorables Hillary delineated, but there are no real Conservatives. Let's agree to call them Pseudo-conservatives so we don't get into arguments with those who know the history of political conservatism and know those Conservatives would rather drink bile and eat maggots that associate with the modern Republican Party.

john_m_burt said...

In a healthy political biosphere, conservatives and progressives have complementary functions like the hull and sails of a ship. What was supposed to be the conservative party has, alas, been taken over by people who think the sails exist only for nefarious purposes such as shredding the hull on rocks or worse yet bringing it into some weird foreign harbor, and are determined to burn them away.

jim said...

Perhaps just as The Moustache Of Understanding gave us the Friedman Unit, Brooks can give a grateful humanity the legacy of an absolute unit of plausible deniability failure, the Bobo. For example, in Brooks' writing, the functional lifespan of conservatism by definition contains an infinite number of Bobos, whereas the influence & shelf-life of successful left-wing policy initiatives is circa one microBobo.

Unknown said...

Bobo,you keep using the word 'populist' when referring to Il Douche. I do not think you know what the word means. A grifter, lying about helping the populi, when his intent is to flay them is not a populist.