Tuesday, September 18, 2012

NYT's Brooks Slams "Thurston Howell Romney"

If  you're the Republican presidential candidate and yet you've lost New York Times conservative columnist, David Brooks, you're in serious trouble.   Brooks slams Romney's remarks disparaging half of Americans as, essentially, parasites.   Brooks may have just written Romney's political obituary and it's wonderful:

This comment suggests a few things. First, it suggests that he really doesn’t know much about the country he inhabits. Who are these freeloaders? Is it the Iraq war veteran who goes to the V.A.? Is it the student getting a loan to go to college? Is it the retiree on Social Security or Medicare?

It suggests that Romney doesn’t know much about the culture of America. Yes, the entitlement state has expanded, but America remains one of the hardest-working nations on earth. Americans work longer hours than just about anyone else. Americans believe in work more than almost any other people. Ninety-two percent say that hard work is the key to success, according to a 2009 Pew Research Survey. 


It says that Romney doesn’t know much about the political culture. Americans haven’t become childlike worshipers of big government. On the contrary, trust in government has declined. The number of people who think government spending promotes social mobility has fallen.

The people who receive the disproportionate share of government spending are not big-government lovers. They are Republicans. They are senior citizens. They are white men with high school degrees. As Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution has noted, the people who have benefited from the entitlements explosion are middle-class workers, more so than the dependent poor.

Romney’s comments also reveal that he has lost any sense of the social compact. In 1987, during Ronald Reagan’s second term, 62 percent of Republicans believed that the government has a responsibility to help those who can’t help themselves. Now, according to the Pew Research Center, only 40 percent of Republicans believe that.

The Republican Party, and apparently Mitt Romney, too, has shifted over toward a much more hyperindividualistic and atomistic social view — from the Reaganesque language of common citizenship to the libertarian language of makers and takers. There’s no way the country will trust the Republican Party to reform the welfare state if that party doesn’t have a basic commitment to provide a safety net for those who suffer for no fault of their own.

I wonder how anguished Brooks must have been to write these things about the Republican nominee?   He must realize that his party, the GOP, has been hijacked by lunatics and needs to be taken out into the woods and put down.   Romney's litany of blunders shows he knows the way.



3 comments:

  1. In the end it will be Willard Milton Romney's own words that that will bring down his seven year run for the presidency. I thank you Romney for speaking your real mind, sure its ugly but it just confirms my feeling that you act more like a Corporation than a person with compassion who realizes that a majority of my country is suffering. Hey the empty chair was a great hit, thanks for the laughs.

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  2. Wow, if he's lost BoBo (Brooks) George Will and Ann Coulter will be out on the hustings campaigning for Obama any day now.

    His dad was a perennial wannabe candidate for president too back in the day. That is funny considering he was born in Mexico, and not to parents on military duty (like McCain in Panama) but was descended from polygamist fugitives from justice.

    It's rich that Obama's birth is such an issue, of course Republicans were smarter and saner then, and maybe that's why they never chose him and went with such stellar dudes as Goldwater and Nixon. Maybe in those days when a Republican read the Constitution they actually understood what it said.

    By the way the clip of Mittens' Mom talking about being on welfare when they returned stateside last night on Stewart or Colbert was priceless.

    It must of been pure money that won him the governorship of Democratic Massachusetts or they were running a child molester or equivalent against him. His political skills are virtually non-existent. Couldn't he have talked at least one of his five strapping sons to at least serve in the military? Biden's son was a JAG in Iraq. Of course the number of congress critter spawn who actually served is amazingly small.

    I'm still not convinced he won't be president next January though thanks to all the money, Diebold, voter suppression and as a last ditch Hail Mary, the Roberts Supremely demented court.

    Then that may be best because maybe the only thing that has any chance of saving the US and the planet may be violent revolution or even another global conflagration - either one would cull the herd and definitely reduce unemployment.

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  3. I don't think Goldwater or Nixon would be remotely acceptable to Republicans today. The modern GOP is truly a radical, extremist movement.

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