David Brooks Admits He Is An ‘Obama Sap’
Alternative headline: David Brooks has lost that lovin’ feelin’ for Obama.
I’m a sap, a specific kind of sap. I’m an Obama Sap.
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 officials called around saying that the possibility of a double-dip recession was horrifyingly real and that it would be irresponsible not to come up with a package that could pass right away, I believed them.
I liked Obama’s payroll tax cut ideas and urged Republicans to play along. But of course I’m a sap. When the president unveiled the second half of his stimulus it became clear that this package has nothing to do with helping people right away or averting a double dip. This is a campaign marker, not a jobs bill.
It recycles ideas that couldn’t get passed even when Democrats controlled Congress. In his remarks Monday the president didn’t try to win Republicans to even some parts of his measures. He repeated the populist cries that fire up liberals but are designed to enrage moderates and conservatives.
Read the whole thing. It was clear years ago that Brooks was a sap for placing so much faith in Obama due to the perfect crease in his pants. Punditry doesn’t get more shallow or less serious than that.
As for Obama, there was much speculation that the mid-term shellacking would cause him to moderate and move to the middle to position himself for re-election. I never saw things that way; there is no evidence that either the president or his close advisers have any moderate tendencies or instincts at all. His phony jobs plans tell us that Obama intends run for re-election as a hard left liberal of the tax and spend species. He is literally promising tax increases so he can spend more money. He should ask Walter Mondale how that tends to work out.
If you’ve lost Brooks, you’ve lost the entire polite-company RINO media commentariat.
Oh, I hope so. That would mean we actually stand a chance of getting something worthwhile passed, after the next election (It won’t happen before then.)
Brooks and his ilk, like Peggy Noonan, didn’t see Obama as a rigid left wing ideologue because they DIDN’T WANT TO SEE IT.
To most of us, it was as obvious as the nose on his face. Between his past, his close associations with extremist radicals, his lack of an academic record, his voting record, his lamentations about the restrictions that the Constitution places on government, and his nebulous campaign rhetoric all added up to an uber liberal masquerading and hiding behind flowery, but meaningless rhetoric like ‘Hope and Change’. Not to mention his narcissistic persona. What presidential candidate campaigns in front of the Berlin Wall? Who has plastic Greek columns and a god-like echo overdub whenever he speaks to give his voice more resonance?
Did he not make statements about bitter clingers and spreading the wealth around?
It was all there, if you chose to look at it, Mr. Brooks.
You’re right. You are a sap. I hold you, and others like you, personally responsible for promoting this guy to the presidency.
– creases and leg tingles? O Mencken, Where Art Thou?!
One mild confession does not a convert make. Brooks has so admired the man with crisp creases and is so firmly embedded in the pocket of said pants, his vision and critical thinking skills are totally skewed.
I’ll believe Brooks has had an epiphany if and when he spends the next 14 months reporting substance with thought and integrity, and just an itty-bit of objectivity.
Sap, indeed. No need to say, “stupid sap.” The stupid is assumed and therefore silent.
If everyone was so enamored of his pants crease, why didn’t we just elect his drycleaner?
It really couldn’t have turned out much worse.
Pray tell, in what surreal world is Brooks actually a conservative? The Kremlin?
The NYT Editorial Board, that’s where.
(The joke writes itself, 2 times a week, with national circulation)
Kremlin and NYT editorial board are both right.
He’s also the “conservative” voice on PBS Newshour (Friday evening panel).
Yes, feel free to LOL.
Damn. First Noonan, and now Brooks. When’s Parker going to flounce? At this rate, he’s not going to have any girlfriends left.
Obama is not the problem. We are a nation of too many saps for electing this guy.
How many moronic things did this guy say before he got elected? Too many to count. This country needs a good, hard dose of reality to get over our sappiness.
Or put another way.
People get the government they deserve. Exactly the government they deserve.
What we are seeing is not a process of conversion. We are seeing a process of obfuscation. Brooks, Noonan, Parker, et. al. are rightly persona non grata with the Republican base and the TEA Party. They have worked hard to achieve that status, believing that the Institutional Republican Party would reward them handsomely for their efforts to defeat the insurgent peasants. Now they are facing the possibility that the peasants might win.
They are publicly trimming their sails, trying to establish a credible cover story of opposition to the Political Class. But have no doubt. After the Republican nomination is settled, they will be trumpeting their opposition to the “extremist” takeover of the Republican party; unless Huntsman or Romney is the nominee. And each of them will vote for Obama as an act of faith in the Political Class, no matter who is the nominee. When you are a remora, you do not turn on the shark that carries you and whose table scraps you subsist on.
A Conservative victory means oblivion and irrelevance to them. They have chosen their side.
Subotai Bahadur
Well said, Subotai. I’d add Rick Perry to your list of big-government-knows-best RINOs (Romney and Huntsman).
Cracks are appearing the the stone dam of protection erected by the mainstream media in 2008. When the trickle of leaks begin to grow into streams and then washed-out sections, the Obamanation is history! I predict that many of the recanting Journolists will become the most vocal critics of The Great and Powerful Oz, and strong supporters of Ruling Class “conservative” Democrats and RINO Republicans as they struggle to regain their credibility (and their places on the A list!)
I don’t see any real walking back. BAsically, he’s saying the Republicans made Barack act this way, he really doesn’t want to but he has to to act this way to deal with those rigid Republicans. And it’s sad for me to realize he can’t transcend Washington.
In my mind, he’s still a sap if he doesn’t believe this is his character and beliefs on display.
Awwww….Another fangirl finds out the prince is a poopy-head.