Free Republic

On Friday's PBS NewsHour, both "conservative" David Brooks and liberal Mark Shields thought this was a tough, tight election for Barack Obama. Shields said "it becomes a race about disqualifying, a campaign about disqualifying your opponent. And that's not attractive or appealing. It's not hope and change. It's blood and guts." But Brooks really felt Obama's pain: "So the president is obviously going to try. He is going to have. And to some extent, you have to feel sorry for him. This is in large degree not his fault. Things are happening way beyond his control. I don't believe a...

It might have sounded quite reasonable to David Brooks and his tight  circle of media friends but to most of the rest of us, using the term "ESPN Masculinity" to describe President Obama is just flat out hilarious. Brooks performs a comedy encore at the end of The ESPN Man story in the New York Times with his psychobabble description of Obama's "manliness." These supposed traits listed by Brooks are the reasons why he claims Obama remains somewhat popular despite a lousy economy. First, let us go right to the ESPN Man money quote: Normally, presidents look weak during periods...

Censorship: The pressure on Rush Limbaugh's advertisers is from a group that meets regularly with the White House and runs an Obama Super-PAC funded by unions. The group Media Matters acts like a lobbyist but is not registered as one. It operates in the shadows, outside congressional oversight and unaccountable to voters. This makes its collusion with the White House in the heat of a presidential race a serious matter worthy of investigation. Targeting Limbaugh, a staunch Republican, is no coincidence. If the Obama campaign can silence him, it can knock out the party's most powerful voice for firing up...

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Silver doesn’t quite go so far as to say that it makes a brokered convention or a late-breaking establishment candidate likely, but I’m willing to go that far. There’s just no way the Republican establishment lets Gingrich become their nominee. As Andrew Sullivan pointed out today, you’re already seeing the anti-Gingrich mobilization among conservative thought leaders: Here’s George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Brooks, Ross Douthat, Tom Coburn and Ann Coulter, just for starters. There’s this Politico story about all the Washington Republicans who hate Gingrich. Now, I think it’s more likely that this mobilization leads to a Romney win then...

Although many hope that members of the super committee will still reach an 11th hour deal on spending cuts before the November 23 deadline, New York Times columnist David Brooks doubts that any deal will ever be reached, now or in the future. Brooks suspects that United States is headed toward a fiscal crisis much like that of Greece. On Friday night’s broadcast of PBS’s “NewsHour,” Brooks said that despite the best possible groundwork being laid to reach a deal, a deal still couldn’t be made. “Yes, I mean, I’m hearing the exact same thing,” Brooks said. “I think the tragedy...

On Friday’s broadcast of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” host Robert Siegel asked New York Times columnist David Brooks if the surfacing of sexual allegations from the late 1990s reported by Politico last week was “the beginning of the end” for businessman Herman Cain’s presidential run. “There was no beginning,” Brooks said. “He was a TV show that lasted for a little while. Let me stand up for elitist insiders — this is a job for professionals. Running for office is a job for professionals. Governing is a job for professionals. What Herman Cain did this — let’s leave aside the...

The United States is a country that has received many blessings, and once upon a time you could assume that Americans would come together to take advantage of them. But you can no... --snip-- The shale gas revolution challenges the coal industry, renders new nuclear plants uneconomic and changes the economics for the renewable energy companies, which are now much further from viability... --snip-- These problems are real, but not insurmountable. An exhaustive study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology concluded, “With 20,000 shale wells drilled in the last 10 years, the environmental record of shale-gas development is for the...

New York Times columnist David Brooks often receives the scorn of many conservatives for taking positions contrary to ideology in the name of moderation and smart politics. But what did Brooks think of Herman Cain’s Web ad featuring his campaign manager smoking a cigarette at the end of it? Brooks’ impression might surprise some. In his regular appearance on Friday’s PBS “NewsHour,” host Judy Woodruff inquired about the ad and Brooks all but gave it two-thumbs up. “My heart melts for that smile,” Brooks said. “I just I like it. Everybody is going crazy, ‘Oh, it’s terrible.’ First of all,...

Despite Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain's precipitous rise in the polls, New York Times columnist David Brooks seems to think that the Republican presidential nomination is former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s to lose. “It’s not a primary process. In the primary process you have several candidates and they go after each other. We don't have that. We have one plausible candidate and a bunch of other guys who are prepping him for the Obama onslaught. So, basically they attack him.”

Gail Collins: David, are you reconciled to the fact that Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican presidential nominee? David Brooks: Oh, I went through that phase a few weeks ago after the debate at the Reagan library. That’s the night I noticed Romney was the best candidate in the field. Since then I’ve noticed that he has given three debate performances that are better than any Barack Obama has given in his life. (Obama’s a better speechmaker, but Romney’s a better debater.) So now I’m settling into the idea that Romney might well be president. This will be...

David Brooks admitted in his column yesterday what conservatives have long suspected: He really, really liked Obama. In fact, he’s “a sap.” Here are ten examples of his sappiness over time. 10. David Brooks thought he had a wonderful plan for poverty reduction. Why? “A neighborhood is a moral ecosystem, and Obama, the former community organizer, seems to have a . . . feel for that.” 9. In a 2009 profile of Brooks in The New Republic, the columnist describes Obama as capable of holding his own as an intellectual: “He can do the jurisprudence, he can do the political...

Let us give credit for honesty (at least temporarily) to the New York Times "conservative" columnist, David Brooks, for his brutal self-recognition of a political flaw. Brooks flat out admits that he is a sap: I’m a sap, a specific kind of sap. I’m an Obama Sap. Brooks lays out in some detail his discovery of what most of the rest of us already knew; his extreme gullibility when it comes to believing Obama: When the president said the unemployed couldn’t wait 14 more months for help and we had to do something right away, I believed him. When administration...

One thing’s for certain — Texas Gov. Rick Perry has made an impressive charge in the polls since he announced his candidacy for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination early this month. So how does a guy like Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, take him on? In an appearance on Friday’s “NewsHour” on PBS, New York Times columnist David Brooks explained that Romney will have to “do something aggressive” to remain formidable. “He has only been in the race a couple of weeks but the polls moved to a degree that is almost unprecedented. He has catapulted and catapulted...

By refusing to accept tax increases in a deal to raise the debt ceiling, Republicans are behaving like "fanatics," writes David Brooks of The New York Times. Anti-tax Republicans "have no sense of moral decency," he adds. They are "willing to stain their nation's honor" to "worship their idol." If this "deal of the century" goes down, as he calls the Barack Obama offer, "Republican fanaticism" will be the cause. "The GOP has become a cult" that has replaced reason with "feverish" and "cockamamie beliefs," writes Richard Cohen of The Washington Post. The Republican "presidential field (is) a virtual political...

You know the desperation of liberals and New York Times "conservatives" like David Brooks is starting to grow when the GOP swapping tax hikes in a down economy for an end to structural budget deficits is deemed "the mother of all no-brainers". Brooks is dead wrong, not just in fact, but we've also already settled this matter years ago....

The Republicans have changed American politics since they took control of the House of Representatives. They have put spending restraint and debt reduction at the top of the national agenda. They have sparked a discussion on entitlement reform. They have turned a bill to raise the debt limit into an opportunity to put the U.S. on a stable fiscal course. Republican leaders have also proved to be effective negotiators. They have been tough and inflexible and forced the Democrats to come to them. The Democrats have agreed to tie budget cuts to the debt ceiling bill. They have agreed not...

Plenty of Sunday morning airtime was devoted yesterday to Sarah Palin. George Will says it's common knowledge she shouldn't be trusted with nuclear weapons. Andrew Sullivan says he's afraid she will run because there's a possibility she could beat Obama. David Brooks essentially thinks she's a joke. "Yeah. But, you know, being president is waking up, somebody hands you the crisis and said, "There's a crisis in Venezuela. What are you going to do about it?" Does any, does anybody think Sarah Palin's ready for that? I don't think so. So she can manage her brand. But running for president...

One big problem conservatives face in trying to develop and implement effective public policy is that conservative thinkers have gotten used to operating in an intellectual milieu that assumes activist government is the answer to every question. In his recent New York Times column, The Missing Fifth,” David Brooks exemplifies the point.

Dan Butler and David Broockman of Yale had a very bright idea. They mailed a series of letters to legislators in which a fictional constituent asked for help in registering to vote. Some of the letters were signed with putatively black names (like DeShawn Jackson) and some were signed with putatively white names (like Jake Mueller). The letters from the putatively black constituents received fewer responses from white legislators and received more responses from minority legislators. The really interesting finding concerns the partisan nature of the responses. There wasn’t one. Whites from both parties exhibited similar levels of discrimination against...

The March 7 Newsweek (NewsBeast) features an article titled "David Brooks Wants to Be Friends," but there's more bridge-burning than friend-making in this interview with James Atlas. Of course, he came up in Washington through conservative opinion journalism from the National Review, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and The Weekly Standard, but "something has changed." Conservatives are now more uncivil. Well, either that -- or his paychecks are now signed by PBS, NPR, and The New York Times: But Brooks insists that something has changed in the past decade. Political discourse had grown coarse, he laments. Gone is the...

If only this were a coalition of the left and the right working out differences. But alas, it’s just a coalition of mostly liberal politicians who used to label themselves by a political party and now would rather fly stealth. Sigh. If you are not familiar with “No Lables”, no worries, it’s brand new and they certainly deserve a Hat Tip for brevity. Here’s their declaration: We are not labels – we are people. We care deeply about our country. We are frustrated and concerned about the tone of politics. We are passionate about addressing America’s challenges. We are Democrats,...

DAVID BROOKS, NYT: Yes. Well, I shouldn’t have confessed this. He said this to me off the record about a year ago. But it hasn’t… JIM LEHRER: Off the record? So, then you can’t talk about it. DAVID BROOKS: Yes, because Peter Baker is a better than I am, because I couldn’t get him to go on the record with that thing. JIM LEHRER: He said this to you a year ago? DAVID BROOKS: It was obvious. I mean, you are trying to build a stimulus package. And when they were trying to build it, believe me, they would have...

(snip) Whitman is representative of an emerging Republican type — what you might call the austerity caucus. Flamboyant performers like Sarah Palin get all the attention, but the governing soul of the party is to be found in statehouses where a loose confederation of uber-wonks have become militant budget balancers. Just as welfare reformers of the 1990s presaged compassionate conservatism, so the austerity brigades presage the national party's next chapter. Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana who I think is most likely to win the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, is the spiritual leader. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey...

Every political movement has a story. The surging Republican Party has a story, too. It is a story of virtue betrayed and innocence threatened. Through most of its history, the narrative begins, the United States was a limited government nation, with restrained central power and an independent citizenry. But over the years, forces have arisen that seek to change America's essential nature. These forces would replace America's traditional free enterprise system with a European-style cradle-to-grave social democracy. These forces are more powerful than ever in this age of Obama. So it is the duty for those who believe in the...

If a RINO is a Republican In Name Only, let's coin a new acronym for David Brooks: RINYTO: Republican In New York Times Only. For only in the Gray Lady's bailiwick could Brooks be considered much of a Republican. Take his current column in the Times. Brooks warns Republicans on the verge of regaining power that it would be nothing short of a "tragedy" if they were to oppose . . . more government and higher taxes.

The Democrats could be heading toward a defeat of historic proportions in November, but it is possible to imagine a scenario in which things might have turned out differently:

Columnist David Brooks has a reputation for being every liberal's favorite conservative. It's a debatable moniker, but it does seem to fit so far as the White House is concerned. The Obama administration has courted centrist to left-leaning pundits since coming to Washington. White House officials regularly make advisers and experts available to liberal columnists on deadline. They've also held several off-the-record lunches with the president during major policy rollouts. Brooks is one conservative among the White House favorites. (SNIP!) Brooks' favorite soundtrack these days also seems entirely apt for the even-tempered columnist: "Sense and Sensibility."

Democrats are reportedly planning to raise $125 million for a campaign to sell Obamacare to the voting public. Apparently, the idea is that what 50-plus presidential speeches and statements and months of congressional debate could not do can be done by spending $125 million on everything from TV ads to community organizers. Maybe. But there seems to be a more fundamental problem here. The Obama Democrats didn’t set out to produce an unpopular stimulus package, an unpopular health-care bill, and an unpopular cap-and-trade scheme. They thought these initiatives would be popular. In their view, history is a story of progress...

The New York Times token resident conservative, occupying the Larry Craig distinguished columnist chair, recently wrote a fascinating article (Two Theories of Change) on the differences between the French Revolution and the American revolution, based upon the differences between their respective philosophical bases. As usual, it is concise, contains a wealth of material, and draws from a wide variety of sources. Also, as usual, it is completely wrong: this piece virtually cries out for a Fisking. Let's start with the first two paragraphs, to get off on the wrong foot(*)."When I was in college I took a course in the...

David Brooks seemed to be having a coherency challenged moment during his latest scheduled conversation with fellow New York Times columnist, Gail Collins. First Brooks excused what Connecticut senatorial candidate Richard Blumenthal falsely claimed about being a Vietnam combat veteran as an "accident": As for Blumenthal, my guess is he survives his little brush with mendacity. The Connecticut Democrat accidentally said he was a combat veteran, when in fact he never served in Vietnam. Could happen to anyone! A moment later, Brooks reversed course and admitted that Blumenthal lied but, eh, no big deal: The claim is dishonorable, but everybody...

This probably confirms that the Utah GOP did the right thing eliminating Senator Bob Bennett, because RINO so called conservative David Brooks thinks it's a 'damn outrage'...(Video)

Roughly a century ago, many Swedes immigrated to America. They’ve done very well here. Only about 6.7 percent of Swedish-Americans live in poverty. Also a century ago, many Swedes decided to remain in Sweden. They’ve done well there, too. When two economists calculated Swedish poverty rates according to the American standard, they found that 6.7 percent of the Swedes in Sweden were living in poverty. In other words, you had two groups with similar historical backgrounds living in entirely different political systems, and the poverty outcomes were the same. (snip) This is not to say that policy choices are meaningless....

David Brooks is on a search to find out how it was that we elected such a “moderate” president and wound up with the worst of big government liberalism and a polarized electorate. He seems stumped as he explores these questions in what can only be described as evasive phrasing: "The country had just elected a man who vowed to move past the old polarities, who valued discussion and who clearly had some sympathy with both the Burkean and Hamiltonian impulses. He staffed his administration with brilliant pragmatists whose views overlapped with mine, who differed only in that they have...

Hey Dave, the only biggers Gamblers are the people who voted for Obama on Election Day. Brooks: The White House has said we're all in, they're betting their whole Presidency on getting this thing passed...It's very easy to see how this thing goes down...What strikes me at the end of the day is that we've elected another riverboat gambler, President Obama is risking his Presidency on a 50/50 chance, would you risk your house on a 50/50 chance? I wouldn't"

Today Matt Patterson takes on The New York Times’ David Brooks for his infatuation with Obama and the “limits of [Brooks’] understanding.” The jumping off point for his piece at Big Government is Brooks’ “continued fascination” with Obama’s perfectly creased pants. So let us jump off Obama’s lap and begin this discussion with a bit of history. You are likely not aware that trousers with creases were once sneered at. They announced to everyone that your pants were “store bought” — creased from sitting on a store shelf, a sign they were factory-made and of inferior quality. Those weren’t “creases”...

A series of longitudinal studies, begun decades ago, are producing a rosier portrait of life after retirement. These studies don't portray old age as surrender or even serenity. They portray it as a period of development – and they're not even talking about uber-oldsters jumping out of airplanes. One of the keys to healthy aging is what George Vaillant of Harvard calls "generativity" – providing for future generations. Seniors who perform service for the young have more positive lives and better marriages than those who don't. As Vaillant writes in his book Aging Well, "Biology flows downhill." We are naturally...

There is a specter haunting America: the specter of a saner, updated version of Ross Perot. He is lurking out there, ready to ride the free-floating anger and distrust of Washington. He is out there now in one of his homes or private jets, getting madder by the day. He is large of ego, full of money and cranky in mien. When he enters the arena, he’ll say that Washingtonians, all of them, are a bunch of failures. Over the past five years, Washington has tried to reform Social Security, immigration, health care and energy policy. All of these efforts...

t didn't take long for the critics to come out in force -- and on YouTube -- against the Obama administration's just-leaked plan to propose a three-year freeze in discretionary, "non-security" spending as part of the upcoming budget. Some Democrats scoffed at the idea, calling it the wrong approach during a time of deep economic recession. Republicans depicted it as a political gambit destined to be shot down by a non-compliant Congress. One particularly tough attack, however, was delivered in Obama's own words -- in the form of a video compilation showing the president scoffing at just such a proposal...

On Oct. 17, 1989, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Bay Area in Northern California. Sixty-three people were killed. This week, a major earthquake, also measuring a magnitude of 7.0, struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Red Cross estimates that between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died. This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story... The first of those truths is that we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries...

David Brooks notes that in the last year, something dire has happened: The public has turned decisively against the "educated classes" and all of their works. At the same time, it has also moved against Barack Obama, who began his term with approval ratings that bumped up against 70, and have now sunk to the high to mid-40s, with "strongly disapprove" ratings that rival those of George W. Bush at his worst. It has also moved strongly against his — and the educated classes' — ideas. It is more pro-life, more anti-climate change, more free market, less statist, more inclined...

David Brooks notes that in the last year, something dire has happened: The public has turned decisively against the "educated classes" and all of their works. At the same time, it has also moved against Barack Obama, who began his term with approval ratings that bumped up against 70, and have now sunk to the high to mid-40s, with "strongly disapprove" ratings that rival those of George W. Bush at his worst. It has also moved strongly against his -- and the educated classes' -- ideas. It is more pro-life, more anti-climate change, more free market, less statist, more inclined...

The United States opens this decade in a sour mood. First, Americans are anxious about the future. Sixty-one percent of Americans believe their country is in decline, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey. Only 27 percent feel confident that their children's generation will be better off than they are. Second, Americans have lost faith in their institutions. During the great moments of social reform, at least 60 percent of Americans trusted government to do the right thing most of the time. Now, only a quarter have that kind of trust. The country is evenly divided about President...

Band of Brooks Brothers Malcolm A. Kline, January 7, 2010 When you make a rapid ascent from college classroom to metro newsroom, you may miss a lot. Plucked from the University of Chicago by none other than William F. Buckley himself to toil at National Review, David Brooks then made a dazzling climb up the editorial ladder to where he is perched today at the New York Times. In the course of his career, he might have overlooked some pivotal trends in America. “The public is not only shifting from left to right,” he wrote in a recent column. “Every...

Among the many issues we focus on within the pages of this blog are the worthiness – or lack thereof – of the elites here in America and elsewhere in the Western world. It is our contention here at the Hayride that elite status must be maintained through merit and quality; if elites do not reflect the best values and traditions of a society then either they aren’t actually the elites or the society as a whole is in the process of rejecting its best values and traditions – with steep decline an inevitable result.

Mr. BROOKS: Well, we did have Afghanistan, which is sort of bipartisan. I do think when he gets his substantive policy grounds correct, you can actually create bipartisanship. I probably am the squishiest conservative on the face of the earth, but even I couldn't stomach the stimulus bill or the health-care bill. So, the policy just wasn't there for any kind of centrist alternative.

McCain standard bearer and “conservative” columnist David Brooks launched his own salvo at actual conservative Sarah Palin on ABC’s This Week, joining other bitter RINOs who have attacked the former Alaska governor in recent days. If I may channel Chandler Bing for a moment: “Can he be any more elitist?” Perhaps Brooks hasn’t seen the Amazon sales lists, the thousands attending her book signings, or, for that matter, the book sales list published by his own worthless rag. Remember, folks, this is the same guy who talked about how great John McCain was as a candidate and the very same...

Here is video of David Brooks on ABC's "This Week" saying Sarah Palin is a "joke" and calling her a "potential talk show host." Brooks said "I just can't take her seriously" and said "the idea that this potential talk show host is considered seriously for the Republican nomination, believe me it will never happen." (Video)

Liberals and conservatives each have their own intellectual food chains. They have their own think tanks to provide arguments, politicians and pundits to amplify them, and news media outlets to deliver streams of prejudice-affirming stories. Independents, who are the largest group in the electorate, don’t have any of this... --snip-- The most telling races this year were the suburban rebellions across the country. For example, in Westchester and Nassau counties in New York, Republican candidates came from nowhere to defeat entrenched Democratic county officials. In blue Pennsylvania, the G.O.P. won six out of seven statewide offices... --snip-- The percentage of...

The next time you read or hear a member of the mainstream media complaining about how much of the blogosphere engages in lurid sensationalism and is not to be taken seriously, then just point them today's New York Times column, Cellphones, Texts, and Lovers, written by house "conservative" David Brooks. Yes, today is election day in several parts of the country but Brooks shuns any analysis of these races in favor of delving into the lurid world of cellphone sex from the pages of the Times opinion section which, with his column, reads more like something lifted from a sleazy...