David Brooks: It's Going To Be Rubio!

In 2014, Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times cheerfully reported that the dark, scary midnight of the GOP was over and a bright new day had dawned.  By this time I had given up trying to keep track of the number of times that Mr. Brooks had assured the credulous plutocrat shut-ins who underwrite his career that his Republican Party was "sound as the pound" and they had nothing to worry about.

The big Republican accomplishment is that they have detoxified their brand. Four years ago they seemed scary and extreme to a lot of people. They no longer seem that way. The wins in purple states like North Carolina, Iowa and Colorado are clear indications that the party can at least gain a hearing among swing voters. And if the G.O.P. presents a reasonable candidate (and this year’s crop was very good), then Republicans can win anywhere. I think we’ve left the Sarah Palin phase and entered the Tom Cotton phase. 

--  David Brooks, November 5, 2014.

Fun Fact:  Today, as I linked to these inconvenient remarks by Mr. Brooks for the umpteenth time, I was amused to discover that The New York Times has, at long last, scrubbed them from their interweb site.  Correction:  It got moved here.  Thanks for the catch, Alert Readers!

Less than two years after that turned out to be utter bullshit, Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times could be found on Meet the Press calming the jangled nerves of the credulous plutocrat shut-ins who underwrite his career by assuring them that "the governing wing of the Republican Party" would soon swing into action and save them from both Donald Trump and Ted Cruz by rocketing Marco Rubio to power.

And less than two years after all of that turned out to be utter bullshit, Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times cooked up yet another way to keep the credulous plutocrat shut-ins who underwrite his career from demanding that Dean Baquet defenestrate him from the 30th floor of New York Times building for lying to them over and over again.   See, Trump winning was actually a good thing because it was definitely going to usher in a New Conservative Intellectual Renaissance -- a Conservative Intellectual Renaissance so powerful and catchy that it would sweep aside stodgy oldster political thinking and by next summer all the rock and roll kids would be dancing to it in their raves and discotheques and sock hops.

Just like in Footloose!

I wrote about it at the time and you can read the whole thing here (".....And a Doughy Pantload Shall Lead Them") if you're so inclined.  This is the key passage: 

A Renaissance on the Right 

By David Brooks

What’s bad for the gavel is good for the pen. The Republican Party is in the midst of a cataclysmic transformation. But all the political turmoil is creating a burst of intellectual creativity on the right...

And who was going to lead this Imaginary Conservative Renaissance Which Was Definitely Just Around The Corner?  A bunch of toddlers you have never heard of, and...(emphasis added)

...Other conservatives are rising to defend that order, including National Review’s Jonah Goldberg, who later this month comes out with his epic and debate-shifting book, “Suicide of the West.”

Yes, the field marshal of Mr. Brooks' New Conservative revolution was going to be the same shitbag who wrote "Liberal Fascism".

So now, less than two years after all of that turned out to be utter bullshit, where is there left for Mr. Brooks to go?  What palliating lies are there left in his mingy bag of tricks for him to offer up to the credulous plutocrat shut-ins who underwrite his career?

I'm glad you asked.

Today, a meandering and bitter David Brooks -- who made himself a very wealthy and influential man by relentlessly stooging for the Republican Party and passing himself off as deeply connect political insider and Conservative public intellectual -- declared that politics is exhausting and stupid and that everyone on Both Sides is horrible.

When conservatives attack their enemies, they do so from a position of social inferiority, so their attacks are resentful. When left attacks, it does so from a position of perceived moral superiority, so its attacks are filled with ridicule and scorn. https://t.co/MKMi4Bw4ku

— David Brooks (@nytdavidbrooks) December 13, 2019

So there you go.

And for the record, if you believe as I do that Mr. Brooks represents a particularly malignant strain of the Both Sides Do It lie, then credit The New York Times as the bio-weapons lab that cultivated him.

The down-the-middle wasteland at @nytpolitics grows, with "partisan warfare" as the defoliant. https://t.co/ILsdeteTPD Asymmetric polarization was just too much for the institution as currently led, and so 50-50 polarization has taken its place.

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) December 13, 2019

Behold, a Tip Jar...