"...Republicans will come to regret this missed opportunity. So let us pause to identify the people who decided not to seize the chance to usher in the largest cut in the size of government in American history. They fall into a few categories:
The Beltway Bandits. American conservatism now has a rich network of Washington interest groups adept at arousing elderly donors and attracting rich lobbying contracts. For example, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform has been instrumental in every recent G.O.P. setback. He was a Newt Gingrich strategist in the 1990s, a major Jack Abramoff companion in the 2000s and he enforced the no-compromise orthodoxy that binds the party today.
Norquist is the Zelig of Republican catastrophe. His method is always the same. He enforces rigid ultimatums that make governance, or even thinking, impossible.
The Big Government Blowhards. The talk-radio jocks are not in the business of promoting conservative governance. They are in the business of building an audience by stroking the pleasure centers of their listeners.
They mostly give pseudo Crispin’s Day speeches to battalions of the like-minded from the safety of the conservative ghetto. To keep audience share, they need to portray politics as a cataclysmic, Manichaean struggle. A series of compromises that steadily advance conservative aims would muddy their story lines and be death to their ratings.
The Show Horses. Republicans now have a group of political celebrities who are marvelously uninterested in actually producing results. Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann produce tweets, not laws. They have created a climate in which purity is prized over practicality.
The Permanent Campaigners. For many legislators, the purpose of being in Congress is not to pass laws. It’s to create clear contrasts you can take into the next election campaign. It’s not to take responsibility for the state of the country and make it better. It’s to pass responsibility onto the other party and force them to take as many difficult votes as possible.
All of these groups share the same mentality. They do not see politics as the art of the possible. They do not believe in seizing opportunities to make steady, messy progress toward conservative goals. They believe that politics is a cataclysmic struggle. They believe that if they can remain pure in their faith then someday their party will win a total and permanent victory over its foes. They believe they are Gods of the New Dawn.
Fortunately, there are still practical conservatives in the G.O.P., who believe in results, who believe in intelligent compromise. If people someday decide the events of the past weeks have been a debacle, then practical conservatives may regain control."
Americans should never forget that during the time of fiscal crisis, the GOP swore their allegiance to some right wing purist instead of the Constitution. This is the party that swears fealty to the Constitution as a badge of honor; and then when the time came to live up to that oath, they showed where their real loyalty resided.
But the GOP hasn't a clue why this is so.
3 comments:
I admire David Brooks' perserverance in calling out his own party. If he keeps it up, hopefully he will get some of the knuckleheaded GOP voters to wake up. It has to start with them. Neither the GOP politiicans nor the conservative pundits have a reason to start talking sense as long as their zombie-like followers are gulping the Kool-Aid.
Hm, As a fiscal conservative, and a independent one at that, I simply cannot find much of anything to disagree with in the article.
There is character in standing by your values and principles. If you are lawmaker there comes a time when the debating and arguing principle must turn to finding solutions. Sadly the GOP and neo-cons receives a huge fat F- on this one.
Good post Shaw.
I didn't know RN was an independent conservative. I'll be damned.
That he's in agreement with Brooks does indeed show him to be rational.
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