Er, wow. Harsh! Here's what David Brooks had to say in an interview about Sarah Palin today. Video below. Excerpt here:
[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.
More on HuffPo, including Brooks saying that Palin is "not even close" to being ready to be president, if duty called.
Oh, oh, oh, when McCain loses this thing, the recriminations orgy on the Right is going to resemble an all-you-can-eat chum buffet in a shark tank. In fact, as this Brooks interview demonstrates, the recriminations have already started. I have no doubt that David Brooks believes what he's saying, but I do wonder if he would have said it publicly had he not been convinced by last night's debate that McCain is going to lose this thing.
For my part, I would not have chosen that cruel phrase -- "a fatal cancer" -- to describe Palin and what she represents. But I do think that she represents the dead end of sloganeering, attitudinizing and tribal identity politics among Republicans, as a substitute for compelling ideas and vision.
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Rod,
I just want to say thanks for running the only intelligent discourse on American politics I've found on the Web. It is very refreshing to see reasonable (not intellectual) people from all sides passionate about political differences in an unobtrusive manner.
I hope your efforts gain support in returning accountability and true conservatism to the republican movement.
That's the sort of Change We Need.
I think there are refreshing qualities about Palin, but these are mostly not the ones being used. She is using, or being used I'm not sure which, the more hostile and demagoguery elements of her nature. I don't like this. She shouldn't be whipping up people to hate Obama as a person, but instead to reject his policies and such. She should also be getting people to like her and McCain, which I think many are willing to do. This campaign sucks and if I were voting for campaign McCain would lose with me big time.
Sarah Palin deserves a lot of credit for holding her ground, that I will give her. She is, indeed, a tough woman, but she is not ready to be the Vice President of the United States.
The Republicans made a HUGE mistake with John McCain; Ron Paul would have been much better. Why are Americans so fickle, so afraid of sound principles that would help our country truly? It would have been a much more interesting race, that is for sure.
On another front: why are folks so terrified of open debates? Third party candidates should be heard and have a chance to stand against the Republican and Democratic nominees.
Ron Paul would have been much better. Why are Americans so fickle, so afraid of sound principles that would help our country truly?
No ... Americans simply don't agree with Ron Paul's principles -- market-uber-alles -- and/or think the unsound. And they are correct not to.
Your memory is still wrong because health care was not particularly identified as Hillary's issue until she was made head of the commission after he took office. And in any event, what could "Hillary's Health Care" possibly have meant in the context of a campaign and what could "shooting [it] down" possibly have meant in that context, except defeating Clinton outright (which is not what happened)?
What on earth does that have to do with anything? I called it Hillary's Health Care because that's what everyone calls it at this point in time, regardless of the fact that, indeed, it wasn't specifically identified with her until well after the election.
Your memory is still wrong because Republicans didn't "shoot down" the plan until 1994. There was a broad consensus that something needed to be done throughout 1992 and 1993 (that's all in the Fallows Atlantic article here.)
Yeah, there was a 'broad consensus' that was exactly slightly to the right of where the Democrats were, and continued to be to the right of them for years, regardless of how they moved.
And I'm sorry that you think 'shot down' meant 'stopped'. That was probably at least somewhat unclear, but I think I clarified it just fine.
You see, what you failed to notice is I wasn't talking about Republican politicians. I was talking about 'conservatives', and there was a reason I said things like 'you guys' and 'you people' and 'you can't elect conservatives'. You guys. The people reading this. Conservatives. Republican voters.
You guys attacked Democrat's (I guess I'll call it) Health Care plan of giving everyone 'last ditch' insurance, and that was fine and understandable to me, in fact, I mostly agreed. And then you guys attacked Clinton overturning the ban on gays in the military, because, apparently, we don't want to make soldiers uncomfortable, which I could see was possibly the most absurd rationale ever.
But it is one on which the facts are crystal clear and uncontroversial, and on a fact that you depended on to construct a false narrative (the "Amazing Grace / I-used-to-be-a-sinner-before-I-saw-the-Light" tale).
If someone thinks that was some sort of 'redemption' tale or whatever, they are very confused. I was a Republican and/or Libertarian for almost a decade after that. I didn't start disagreeing in principle with conservatives until 2002 or so, when I got out of my little college bubble.(1)
I thought most of what the Republican Congress did during the Clinton Administration was crap. I was simply trying to point out the last time 'conservatives voters' had a principled stand against expanding the government. I was trying to be nice and mention the 'moment of contemplation' you demanded we take in 1992, the first and only one I remember, because after that it was all attacks on personal issues and crazy religious right incitement.
1) And there is no 'tale' there, I simply started seeing things that the government could improve, and at that time me, and the Republican party, which was backing Bush's Iraq War, were having disagreements, and I had realized the Libertarians were clearly insane a few years earlier, so I decided to go check out the 'enemy' and discovered we actually had a lot more in common than I thought. That is the sum of my 'conversion experience', and there's an interesting question there of how much my political beliefs drove me to the Democratic party, and how much my being driven to the Democratic party ended up influencing my political beliefs, but this is not the time or place.
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