in the wrong era. Soundly refuting
liberals online since 2000. NOTE: That is NOT
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Audacity of Truth
"Diplomacy":
"People are saying what in the world is going on with North Carolina, we look like Mississippi." - NC Gov. Bev Perdue (D) on the passage of Amendment One, 5-11-12
David Brooks: I’m worried about Obama’s legacy, and I have some suggestions I hope will help him
Slobbering succotash! Obama’s favorite “moderate” Republican columnist pens yet another column filled with suggestions he thinks Obama can use in order to heal his damaged reputation, his administration, and – of course – the nation. After talking about what he believes The One was elected, he writes:
It was not to be. Voters are in no mood for a wave of domestic transformation. The economy is already introducing enough insecurity into their lives. Unlike 1932 and 1965, Americans do not trust Washington to take them on a leap of faith, especially if it means more spending.
The country has reacted harshly to the course the administration ended up embracing. Obama is still admired personally, but every major proposal — from the stimulus to health care — is quite unpopular. Independent voters have swung against the administration. Voters are not reacting to the particulars of each bill. They are reacting against the total activist onslaught.
A president can’t lead a social transformation without a visceral bond with the center of the electorate and without being in step with the rhythm of the times. Obama is lacking these things. As a result, the original Obama project, the third Democratic wave, is dead.
The administration resists this conclusion, just as it took the Bush administration a while to recognize that Social Security reform, and the larger privatization dream, was dead. But federal activism will not mark the next three years.
The next challenge is to find a new project, a new one-sentence description of what this administration hopes to achieve. It is obvious: President Obama will show that this nation is governable once again. He should return to the other element in his original campaign.
The suggestions? I’ll just highlight a couple – try not to laugh:
That would mean first leading a campaign of brazen honesty with the American people. He could lay out the fiscal realities and explain that voters cannot continue to demand programs they are unwilling to pay for.
[...]
Fifth, it’s time to have a constitutional debate. We might require amendments of one sort or another to fix the broken political system.
LOLOL. Forgive me for laughing at what should be a serious piece. Brooks is suggesting a “return” to … honesty and bipartisanship, indicating that he seriously believes that President Obama was sincere as a candidate in promising a “return” to “transparency” and “honesty” and “reaching across the aisle.” Brooks needs to take his rose-tinted glasses off for once. Candidate Obama said what he needed to say and did what he needed to do in order to get elected POTUS. He told the American people what he thought they wanted to hear, made all the right moves, shook all the right hands, went on an overseas tour, and the MSM dutifully helped him the whole way by clearing his path of any inconvenient truths about his radical associations, his thin resume, and his flimsy list of “accomplishments” while serving as an elected official both in the Illinois state legislature and the US Congress as a Senator.
And now, after a year of watching Mr. HopeNChange morph back into the calculating partisan political operator he really is, many people – unlike David Brooks – are finally waking up and seeing beyond the empty rhetoric. So while Brooks’ O-friendly column is likely to earn him more sweetheart brownie points and more offers for “off-the-record” lunches with RahmboCo., his actual suggestions will fall on deaf ears. Neither Obama, nor Axelrod, nor Emanuel, nor any one else in the inner circle is interested in “brutal honesty” and “bipartisanship.” Instead, it’s all about ramming unpopular bills through Congress under the pretense of “doing what’s right for America” – all the while sticking future generations with the burden of footing the bill via increased taxation and over-regulation – and punishment in the form of “fines” and possible jail time for those who choose not to go along for the joyride.
Maybe if David Brooks weren’t so obsessed with keeping his approval ratings up with Beltway elites he’d be able to see that. Until then …
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I swear, Iowahawk’s “T. Coddington Van Voorhees” parodies are nothing compared to the reality of these cocktail conservatives. They satirize themselves without knowing it.
And why is it, when one faction or another doesn’t get their way, they scream that the country is ungovernable and we need to amend the constitution? Losers.
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I’ll help Comrade Obama (PBUH) out the door of the White House when he loses the 2012 election to Sarah Palin. Always ready to lend a hand where needed most.
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Rocketman
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The supposed president is a pathetic, pathological liar whose only direction is a total takeover of every American life. He doesn’t care if the takeover is as gentle as velvet or as brutal as the old Soviet crackdown of Hungary in the 50′s. His only goal is that takeover.
So wait for the sweet sounds of bipartisan cooing coming from the prez as he shuts the door on the opposition and (metaphorically) guns them down as they sit there entranced.
I’m sure sometime in his life he’s told the truth. I’m just not sure if it was in adolescence or puberty. I know it’s not been in adulthood (if that’s what his pathetic life now can be called.)
Why does anyone getting ready to criticize this Chump in Chief always start out with the default BS line, “while president Obama is still personally admired, his….sucks..”? Not only do most Americans not like his socialist reformation ideas, we flat out don’t like the man.
Hey Mr. Brooks here’s a thought. Before we amend the Constitution lets try enforcing it first and see how that works out.
Rock on, Sis! Well said!
Brooks:
Sorry for the double comment in quick succession, but something was bothering me about the cocktail conservative’s post, and I just realized it was the above sentence. With those few words, Brooks laid bare the condescension, paternalism, and elitism at the heart of the Rockefeller Republicans, of which Brooks is the latest example.
Dear David Brooks:
Listen, you smug, pants-crease worshiping twerp. If the people demanded programs they weren’t willing to pay for, it was because their political leadership told them there really was such a thing as a free lunch. Social Security is a demographic Ponzi scheme. The Great Society had almost no positive results and definitely harmed Black society. No Child Left Behind, while touted by a president I admire, is an administrative nightmare according to teachers I know, taking away from teaching time and thus robbing the children. The people were sold a statist bill of goods.
How dare you blame the American people for trusting “leaders” supposedly elected from among them, and how dare you -HOW DARE YOU- implicitly criticize them for finally waking up and refusing to be played for suckers? This, David Brooks, is exactly how the system is supposed to work when the elected representatives no longer represent the people, and don’t you dare compare them to unruly children who need a lecture from the National Nanny.
Go back to admiring His pants-crease, David. That’s where you belong.
It’s about the economy…that’s what Americans want fixed right now, not health care or global warming.
Mr.Brooks you and your ilk in the “fourth estate ” help to create this “thin resume…” into President44.When we get access to the “particulars of each bill…ad nauseum”,the people exercise first amendment rights to stop the particulars from being formed.Instead of being a shield for Obama write about the dangers of the “particulars”to the American People.
In the words of that immortal philosopher Buggs Bunny,”what a maroon!”
I think your quotation marks should be around ‘republican’, not ‘moderate’
His only legacy should be the “boot” the voters give him in 2012, donated to his outhouse size library to be built over a the economic pit he dug for America at a later date.
Preach it, Anthony!
And Anthony, remember, all the “programs they are unwilling to pay for” are the programs the statists shoved down our throats to begin with!
Those programs are designed to “help” those who are not productive and aren’t paying significantly into them to begin with. They are the bastard children of bleeding hearts gone wild.
And, for the last four decades at least, they are the programs designed to keep Americans from working the land that they, not the “government”, in fact own. When “We, the people” becomes “we, the government,” the Constitution designed to protect us from them (the government) has failed.
People foolish enough to accept Ponzi schemes such as Social Security and Medicare are foolish enough to think that a shrinking work force can support an expanding entitlement list.
David Brooks wrote “Fifth, it’s time to have a constitutional debate. We might require amendments of one sort or another to fix the broken political system.”
This is a howler. The last thing Obama or any progressive want is a debate on the constitution. They regard it as settled that it is a “living’ document. For this reason they see no need for amendments. To them, the Constitution means whatever they say it means.
Remember that FDR proposed a Second Bill of Rights. It failed to gain ground, and the progressives realized that the Constitution was a sacred document and it was better to just leave it be. They realized they could get what they wanted through the courts and legislature, which is what they’ve been doing ever since.
As a “living document” the Constitution the Founding Fathers so carefully crafted has been grown into a noxious weed, just as a rose will if left to its own devices.
The solution? Find federal judges who will start trimming the excessive of federal reach, until what is left is the original document with its original intent.
Typical of any “progressive”, Brooks assumes that because something is wrong with the way things are playing out with the changes, there must be something wrong with the document itself. It never occurs to them or him that the problems are with the changes, not the document itself.
Where have I heard this before? Hmmmm….
“We support the troops but we are against the mission”
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Apparently, the Democrats have convinced Boehner that it is “reconciliation” …
For the weak minded, that’s a NO to the health care summit.
Cheney agrees with Obama on Afghanistan and DADT …
Biden and NSC Jones disagree with Cheney, say he is misinformed.
Hilarity ensues.
…I don’t know when I’ve read such mindless twaddle as this offering by Brooks. And this is what passes for journalism in the current era.
A pox on them all!
Thank God for the Tea Party! Brooks, et al are becoming increasingly irrelevant. They do serve to stir up those of us who actually think, however. And for that maybe they deserve a bit of gratitude. Nah!
Am I allowed to steal “slobbering succotash”?
LOL, Helen! A tiny tip o’ the hat will do
Sure thing, ST. I never steal without linking.