The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

BREAKING: David Brooks Is a Douchebag

Posted on | June 14, 2011 | 39 Comments

This news is perhaps not shocking to regular readers of the New York Times‘ token “conservative” columnist, but if we ever needed smoking-gun proof, his column today is like RINO fingerprints covered with country-club DNA:

I’m registering a protest because for someone of my Hamiltonian/National Greatness perspective, the two parties contesting this election are unusually pathetic. Their programs are unusually unimaginative. Their policies are unusually incommensurate to the problem at hand. . . .
The Republican growth agenda — tax cuts and nothing else — is stupefyingly boring, fiscally irresponsible and politically impossible. . . .
Republican politicians don’t design policies to meet specific needs, or even to help their own working-class voters. They use policies as signaling devices — as ways to reassure the base that they are 100 percent orthodox and rigidly loyal. Republicans have taken a pragmatic policy proposal from 1980 and sanctified it as their core purity test for 2012. . . .
If there were a Hamiltonian Party, it would be offering a multifaceted reinvigoration agenda. It would grab growth ideas from all spots on the political spectrum and blend them together. Its program would be based on the essential political logic: If you want to get anything passed, you have to offer an intertwined package that smashes the Big Government vs. Small Government orthodoxies and gives everybody something they want. . . .

You can read the whole thing, which I think you will agree constitutes conclusive proof of the utter uselessness of David Brooks. From time to time, as a sort of accidental consequence of the Law of Large Numbers, Brooks will criticize liberals from a conservative perspective — the blind pig finding an acorn, as it were. Yet when push comes to shove, Brooks habitually tries to push Republicans toward a Democrat Lite agenda of Big Government. Brooks wants the GOP to reverse Phyliis Schlafly’s famous formula, so that Republicans offer voters an echo, not a choice.

The entirety of Brooksian politics — which he endeavors to cloak in the mantle of dead Founders, knowing that Alexander Hamilton is not here to defend himself against the calumny — was summarized in his 1997 Weekly Standard article, “A Return to National Greatness.”

Never was so much eloquent prose devoted to such a disastrous ideal. Brooks was, in effect, surrendering the entire size-of-government argument to liberals. To Brooks, the question is never, “How much government do we need?” — in that, he enthusiastically answers, “A lot!” — but rather, “What should the government do?” To which he answers: “Everything!”

Laying aside entirely the constitutional question of whether this Super-Sized Jumbo Government is legitimate, it is impossible to locate in Brooksianism any meaningful political argument with liberalism.

If we are going to impose punitive taxes on the rich, strangle free enterprise with regulatory bureaucracy, accept the permanence of unsustainable entitlement programs, and go further into debt to fund “investment” boondoggles — if Republicans cheerfully cede all of those premises of the liberal argument, you see — how is the GOP supposed to present itself as a credible alternative to the liberal agenda of the Democratic Party?

“Me too” is not a winning platform. It never has been and never will be, and all of Brooks’s wishfulness will not convert his policy preferences into an effective politics.

This is exactly why Brooks should be wrapped in bacon and dumped into a tank full of hungry sharks: His erudition and facile recitation of policy details lends an aura of seriousness to his arguments. He constantly rehashes the political obstacles to implementation of a limited-government agenda (which are real enough) as a way of suggesting that such an agenda is an impossibility. And if, as Brooks says, a meaningful reduction in the size, scope and expense of the federal Leviathan is a non-starter, then conservatives who argue for limited government are either naive or dishonest.

This is a perfidious accusation of bad faith, and for this baseless slander, Brooks should be loaded aboard an Air Force C-130 and air-dropped over Afghanistan without a parachute.

David Brooks is not merely a useless coward, but is in fact a treacherous villain — a pretended friend of the GOP who, Iago-like, constantly counsels the party to pursue a course of action that can only result in its own defeat. And when next the Republicans blunder into an electoral Waterloo by heeding the siren song of “National Greatness,” who will they find standing there to offer them advice on how to recover their fortunes?

Why, none other than David Brooks, who is paid a handsome salary by the New York Times to do exactly what he does twice a week: Posture as a friend of the GOP, while urging Republicans to pursue a politically implausible “me too” Democrat Lite agenda.

David Brooks should be lashed to a tree in the Alaskan wilderness as wolf-bait, or dumped naked into an alligator-infested swamp in the backwoods of Louisiana, but it is unlikely that he could ever suffer a fate as awful as he deserves. If he wishes to invoke famous characters from the American Revolution, he should stop chattering about Alexander Hamilton and instead invoke a name worthy of his labors: Benedict Arnold.

Your contributions to the David Brooks Fisking Fund are gratefully encouraged. Brooks collects something like $200,000 a year from the New York Times, and if you hit my tip jar for $20, I will be 1/10,000th closer to evening the score with that smug bastard.

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Category: David Brooks Fisking Day

Comments

  • David Brooks

    Mr. McCain, I’ll have you know that what I meant to say was—OH LOOK OVER THERE, AN OBAMA PANTSCREASE!

    *Runs Away

  • ThomasD

    Alexander Hamilton was the guy at the Constitutional convention who proposed the creation of a President-for-life with absolute veto power, no?

    Could someone please ask David Brooks why he thinks he qualifies as a ‘conservative’?

  • Anonymous

    OH LOOK OVER THERE, AN OBAMA PANTSCREASE!

    Sniff, sniff!

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    Classic McCain.

  • http://twitter.com/xRedRoverx Kristi

    Mmmmmm….. bacon……. 

  • 2 If by sea

    Good job McCain… excellent analogy and exactly what we the people need to read more of!  Keep it coming.

  • Anonymous

    Everything RSM said, plus:

    Is that what we’ve been missing – policy imaginativeness? We’ve never had more ingenious Bobos, Ivy League & transnational elites, economics majors, lawyers, computer models, green technologists, Wall Street “quants,” and Executive Directors of non-profit entities specifically created to promote “greatness” and “reinvigoration agendas.” We’ve never had more policy schools, policy experts, think tanks, and Congressional staffers.      

    Any chance that belief in “policy imagination” is part of what got in this trouble in the first place?

    I suggest less policy imagination and more old school American dynamism. Step 1: get an Air Force C-130 . . .  

  • Joe

    You keep dancing David for your Demo-pub masters, just do me a favor and stop claiming to be a voice for conservatives. 

  • The Wondering Jew

    “Preach on, Brother Stacy. . . ”

    – Wondering Jew– (Occasionally a suspiciously RINOish policy wonk, but not so far fallen that he can’t enjoy a good Fisking of David Brooks– followed preferably by a drawing and quartering of the same. . .)

  • Joe

    David:  I regards to you claiming to be a conservative, real conservatives get how funny that is.  That is like Andrew Sullivan claiming to be a heterosexual.  But unfortunately,  folks who listen to you on NPR do not have a clue that this assertion is false. 

  • Joe

    David:  I regards to you claiming to be a conservative, real conservatives get how funny that is.  That is like Andrew Sullivan claiming to be a heterosexual.  But unfortunately,  folks who listen to you on NPR do not have a clue that this assertion is false. 

  • http://lsrebellion.blogspot.com/ Old Rebel

    Brooks is a Neocon, which is nothing but the latest version of the French Revolution: The power of the state will be the force that will reconstruct society to build utopia on earth. Instead of using the language of the left, the Neocons used the language of American conservatism, perverting patriotism and loyalty into blind obedience and big government.

    Just as the Jacobins unleashed not liberty, but bloodshed and misery, the Neocons have gutted our economy and our Bill of Rights.

  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    I never was a fan of the Neocons either. All they really ever were was national security Democrats who hid their liberal qualities in a guise of patriotism in the pursuit of military contracts. I never believed you could import democracy to begin with, especially at the point of a gun. Ideological nonsense, especially when you see the kind of democracy their beneficiaries have in mind, generally European style parliamentarian democratic socialism. I don’t think we even got one barrel of oil out of Iraq either. The hell with that.

  • http://www.redstateeclectic.typepad.com AngelaTC

    Hamilton was our original central banker, too. http://mises.org/daily/3167  

  • Sfonda

    By “BREAKING”, I assume you mean: stuff that everyone who’s been paying attention already knows, but just wanted to point out for the new kids in the class.

  • TR

    I think Brooks might have been thinking Hambletonian (NJ) instead of Hamiltonian?  The former is a famous horse race for older trotters and geldings while the latter, is probably his own wishful thinking of neatly-creased pants from his college days at Hamilton College (NY).  Brooks himself except for arrogance, would have only a passing connection to one our  founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton. http://www.hamilton.edu/alumni/required-reading-for-the-2004-election-college .

  • Anonymous

    Step 1: get an Air Force C-130 . . .

    Great minds think alike!

  • http://twitter.com/sequenza21 Jerry Bowles

    You folks are going to love Mitt Romney.  And he will be the Republican nominee,  oh yes, he will.

  • Liz

    I can’t have been the only one who looked at the claims that Iraq was a war for oil and been a little impressed. It would have at least had something to do with national interest.

    No, the war for oil will be in Darfur. It has lots of it and the rebels are bending over backwards to accomodate the Western powers.

  • TR

    I’m in a New York state of mind…Nelson A Romney LOL
    http://spectator.org/archives/2011/06/14/is-mitt-romney-the-new-nelson

  • kerry anderson

    Nice job Stacy, is that the real ‘pants sniffing’ David Brooks posting here?

  • Droid-ist

    I know I often post comments in my moments of confusion. The continuing confusion with our turned Wonderland world is perhaps, the price paid for
    being only *slightly* younger than Methusaleh.

    This moment of confusion comes from the headline:[br]
    “[i]BREAKING: David Brooks Is a Douchebag[/i]”
    [br]
    combined with the first sentence of the story:[br]
    [i]This news is perhaps not shocking to regular readers of the New York Times‘ token “conservative” columnist, but if we ever needed smoking-gun proof, his column today is like RINO fingerprints covered with country-club DNA:…[/i][br]

    What new information is conveyed by the above quoted sentence *after* the first comma? Shouldn’t you just place the ending period after the word “columnist”, and be done with it?

    Consider, if *not* for the sake of brevity, than for the sake of delicacy?

    Afterall, is it *really* necessary to “rub” the fact into poor mr. brooks’ face?

    In “the olden days” of my youth, we followed the example of that young feller, Alfred the Great, and resisted poking fun at those short-changed by in so many ways by Providence.

    And remember, sir, for the sake of our shapeless “big tent”: please desist calling attention to shortcomings of our “betters”!

  • Droidist

    And note, if you’ve read his journals, he rethought that near his life’s end.

    Some say he made a recanting statement on his deathbed… I can’t xonfirm that either way, I was in Philadelphia at the time…

  • Nospam

    Hey now, woah. Let’s cool it wiht the name-calling for a second…
    Benedict Arnold fought for this country when it was still treason to England (and a hanging offense) to do so. He was one of our best generals and (before that whole “selling out West Point to the English because your ego is offended” thing) contributed materially to several victories over the English, at strong risk to his own life.
    What has David Brooks done to gain equal respect? For crying out loud, the man thought OBAMA was a good idea!

  • Anonymous

    David Brooks.
    David Frum.
    David “Andrew” Sullivan.
    David “Dave” Weigel.
    David “Rick” Moran.

    F’ the bloody lot of them, every one.

  • Anonymous

    It’s shame that practice died out……good times.

  • Anonymous

     Fuck Ace and Allah. Any candidate this douchenozzle and his compatriots like should be rejected out of hand. I don’t care how “electable” they are.

  • http://www.frumforum.com/ David Frum

    I am the biggest conservative douchebag!  You back off, Mr. Pantscrease! 

  • http://www.thepiratescove.us/ William_Teach

    Do we really have to waste perfectly good bacon on him?

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    Quoted from and Linked to at: The Night They Fisked Old Brooksy Down

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    Quoted from and Linked to at: The Night They Fisked Old Brooksy Down

  • timburns116

    Off-topic, but still about douchebags, did anyone see that Rand Paul supporters who stomp women at political rallies plea bargain!

      http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jEcgU2Qk2w73o3cC6-sQtjzWDV0w?docId=e86caa2fa63a4401a66b4f4582e26a8c

    Weird that he did not use Stacy’s eloquent she-deserved-self-defense theory?

    With regard to Brooks, at least the doctor diagnoses one ailment correctly:  we cut taxes, ended up with a massive deficit, and your answer is to cut taxes again, while claiming to be spending hawks.  You claim to be against mandates for health insurance, until Paul Ryan turns Medicare into a private insurance program with a mandate and you laud him as a hero.

    The Right is out of ideas.

  • timburns116

    “nd if, as Brooks says, a meaningful reduction in the size, scope and
    expense of the federal Leviathan is a non-starter, then conservatives
    who argue for limited government are either naive or dishonest.”

    Can I assume, Stacy, that you favor defense cuts to the “Federal Leviathan”?  Or, it is only money that goes to the poor and old which is part of the Leviathan?

  • Anonymous

    Nitwit.

  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    I favor defense cuts to the “Federal Leviathan”. Freeze all civilian employee hiring at the Pentagon, shut down most if not all European military bases and everywhere else there is not a pressing national need being met, phase out production of outmoded weapons system, and go back to closed bids for all future military contracts, which should exclude union companies. Close down most VA Hospitals and move to a system where the government pays veterans medical expenses at their own local doctors, pharmacies, and hospitals. The country would save tens of billions of dollars and we wouldn’t hurt our defense capabilities in the slightest.

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  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_5IIRJQFANQ3EDUAYEUCJK5F2ZQ Timothy Burns

    well argued, at least to your intellectual capabilities.

    Or, as an angry ass Bob Belvedere would sputter “STFU”

  • Anonymous

    Rotted Nitwit.

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