As you may know, I am fueled creatively by my massive hatred of David Brooks. Sometimes, though, I forget that he’s not just a right-wing nut, he’s also exceptionally intellectually dishonest. Yesterday, in the wake of the Rubiobot’s dismal performance in New Hampshire, he wrote that:
Marco Rubio, who has become the most intellectually creative of the presidential contenders, has given us a book, “American Dreams.” He moves beyond the Reagan-era emphasis on top marginal tax rates. He moves beyond the Mitt Romney distinction between makers and takers.
The title of the column is Marco vs. Larry (which might be a good title for a rom-com where Michael Sera and Ryan Gosling compete for the affections of Emma Stone), and the idea is that Larry Summers also has some kind of a good economic plan but it’s not as good as Rubio’s because it’s not Burkean enough.
Anywho, it’s Rubio porn, meant to buck up the spirits of mythical moderate Republicans and/or get tote-baggers talking about what a serious guy Marco Rubio is. The least Bobo could have done was begin with “Dear Penthouse Forum”, so his readers would know where the column was going.
Contrast this with Michael Gerson’d dead-on piece about Donald Trump’s prospects in South Carolina:
Trump appeals fairly broadly in South Carolina — many opponents of Trump I talked with in the state report having some relative who loves him. But there are lots of angry, rural white males at his rallies. They have reason to feel disadvantaged in our economy and overlooked in our politics. This is mixed here (as elsewhere) with baser motives. On racial matters, according to one senior South Carolina Republican, Trump is using “not a dog whistle but a train whistle.”
[….]Republicans who remain unreconciled to the Trump dynasty now comfort themselves with one scenario. After the shock of early Trump victories wears off, some candidate in a winnowed field will need to rise and restart the race. “Trump,” this heretofore mythic figure will argue, “has won some early primaries in the South. But he has a ceiling of support — just 35 percent in the GOP — that dooms him with the national electorate. So, here I am, the only candidate who can unite the party and win a majority in November.” At that point, the spigots of Republican money will open and the electoral terrain — in Illinois, Missouri and Ohio, and eventually in New York and California — will dramatically improve.
All of which depends on two questionable assumptions. First, I can remember when Trump’s ceiling was supposedly 25 percent. After a series of victories, it may rise again. Second, this scenario assumes that any of the mainstream candidates are capable of cutting the alpha down to size.
Gerson hates Trump at least as much as Bobo does (he’s devoted several columns to this topic) and in many ways he is just Bobo with extra Jesus sauce. But at least he has the decency to write columns about what is actually happening in the GOP primary, rather than mash notes to a pretty robot who probably won’t finish higher than third in the next primary.
Thoroughly Pizzled
David Brooks outlived David Bowie. God is not in heaven; God isn’t anywhere.
guachi
I’m going to see Hillary today! Yay!
I live in Augusta, GA – right on the South Carolina border. I keep looking for events for candidates, any of them (R or D, doesn’t matter), that are close enough for me to go to. That generally means no farther than Columbia 75 minutes away. But too many 2+ hours away or at times I can’t make, like during work.
But Clinton will be just south of Columbia in Denmark, SC at 3 pm. And I can get off work early to go there. Maybe I’ll get pictures and if a FP wants to post them I’ll send them.
JPL
@guachi: Please do. Bill Clinton is in town tomorrow, but the ticket was beyond what I was willing to pay.
Humboldtblue
The Republican reaction when they thought they had found their man in Dry Mouth Marco
Now they can’t understand why America hasn’t fallen for their latest Golden Boy with his tale of fighting vicious jungle battles against Castro before being forced to flee to the shores of Miami where he raised an army of Cuban expats prepared to re-take their native land from the commies only to be thwarted by big government foreign policy concerns and leaky boats.
He vows to invade if elected, however.
Anoniminous
HuffPo Poll of Poll standings:
Donald Trump 34.8%
Ted Cruz 20.4%
Marco Rubio 16.3%
Ben Carson 8.4%
JEB! 5.0%
John Kasich 2.8%
There’s not the slightest flavor of a chance Rubio is going anywhere but home after the end of March. The Crazy Loon faction of the GOP is running at 63.6% with the Brooks Moderate, Sensible, Corporate Kiss Ass Faction having 36.4%.
Jeffro
I’d hate to be the kind of person who could console myself with thoughts of Marco Rubio…ugh.
Betty Cracker
Hahaha! I can’t believe he actually wrote that. Jesus God, what a shameless knob-slobberer.
Jeffro
@Anoniminous: My R-voting dad emailed me today, saying he’s finally decided and a Bush/Kaisch (or reverse) ticket is what he’s hoping for…”but frankly any combination of Rs would be better than any combination of Ds”
Ooooookay then. Here’s your Trump/Ernst ticket then, Dad…much better for America than Clinton/Castro, I’m sure…
MattF
@Jeffro: I guess we’re reduced to wondering who Der Trump will choose as his running mate. Palin more likely that Ernst, I’d guess. Palin has the required reality TV experience.
MattF
And comparing Rubio with Summers is like… Oh, I give up. (rude sound).
Seanly
The racist dingleberries in SC won’t vote for Marco. While Cuban is an okay group in polite Republican elite circles, those elites have forgotten that they’ve made anyone not lily white unacceptable. Cruz’s piousness & pissing in the elites’ cornflakes* deflects his Hispanic background to an extent.
Trump – 40%, Cruz – 20%, Rubio – 10%, Kasich -10% ~ give or take a few points.
*Cruz is the tough Hollywood cop. He plays by his own rules! He tortures the suspect he knows is guilty – those pesky rules shouldn’t apply to him! Sure there’s a trail of corpses but he gets results! But ultimately he’s just doing what the crabby Captain and Police Commissioner wanted done anyway! And if he actually fails then he’s at least legitimized his tactics. McGarnagle!
Germy
@Thoroughly Pizzled:
And Kissinger still stalks the earth.
p.a.
AuthoritariansFascists love strength; winning = strength. As long as Trump keeps winning his ceiling will keep increasing with Republicans.zzyzx
All good dreamers pass this way someday…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I can’t even begin to wrap my brain around this. Rural white males are overlooked in our politics? from ag subsidies to being exponentially overrepresented in the Senate, how the fuck can anyone argue this? And if they’re disadvantaged in our economy it’s in no small measure cause they’ve been voting that way since ’68.
(Rhetorical. I know who and what Gerson is)
Trentrunner
I hope everyone read Brooks’ “I’m Gonna Miss that Uppity N**ger Obama” column. Truly disgusting.
Anoniminous
@Jeffro:
As hard as it is for political junkies to accept, most people are only vaguely aware of politics. They vote, if they vote, on the Brand label.
Cacti
Yep, Trump has dispensed with the Lee Atwater, plausible deniability school of appeals to white racial resentment.
He’s just an open, unabashed bigot, and working class white males (and females to a lesser extent) are eating it up.
Anoniminous
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Ignorance, bigotry, and ressentiment are the fuel of the rural white vote.
The Republic, Blah Blah Blah...
@Germy: Which is why zombie books and movies are so popular…
MattF
@Trentrunner: But Brooks said some positive things about a colored person. Isn’t that admirable?
The Republic, Blah Blah Blah...
@Betty Cracker: And I’m having a hard time believing you actually wrote that…
***SNORK***
I agree completely but I’m still having a hard time…
Btw… you’re a chicken person…
I and a friend took one of her birds to a really good chiropractor the other night and it worked.
The chicken is moving much easier now…
WarMunchkin
@Cacti: I found out recently that Romney actually won amongst white women in 2012. Urk.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
All good dreamers pass this way someday, and these people are dreaming of the world they (think they) remember when only the right kind ran the US.
raven
@guachi: I’m coming over for the Monday Practice round!
The Pale Scot
Sorry, I can’t wait for an open thread.
The first music video film aboard the Vomit Comet (I think)
OK Go – Upside Down & Inside Out
So Cool
Keith G
“Trump dynasty”?
Yellowdog
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Rural doesn’t mean farming necessarily. It is a place not an occupation. And good paying jobs are even harder to find in rural areas. The frustration is understandable to a degree. It’s just how they take out the frustration that is despicable.
Chip Daniels
I harbor a hope that in the event Trump/Palin actually wins the general election, the European powers, China, the UK, and Commonwealth nations will meet and collectively decide to terminate this disastrous experiment called the United States, for our own good, and their safety.
They will liken it to forcibly institutionalizing a beloved relative who has gone mad, stockpiled a fearsome arsenal, and barricaded himself in his house with wife and kids as hostages.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Thinks this is going to get better if they’re not done by California? I got news for him. If Trump’s message – i.e. deport all the Mexicanos – was tailor-made for any constituency, it was the California GOP. I expect him to win this state’s GOP vote with over 80% of the total.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Yellowdog: yeah thats one of the reasons I didn’t get into the “overlooked in the economy” part, but people who aren’t always right-wingers are quick to talk about working-class or blue-collar whites being “overlooked” (Jim Webb, I’m looking at you), when as my lily-white ass sees it, they choose racial/ethnic or at the very least cultural identity over things that actually effect their economic interests. What the matter with Kansas, Al Gore wants to take your guns and bible, Obama is killing coal out of pure malice, etc
mapaghimagsik
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Probably, though delegates are not proportional, I think.
Mai.naem.mobile
I am worried about what Hills is going to do with Trumpy but right now I’m just going to enjoy the GOP establishment and financial backers first soiling and then rendering their underwear into tiny little strips. Y’all brung these people to the dance. Hahahahaha
Mnemosyne
@WarMunchkin:
Yep, the majority of white women vote Republican, especially married white women. I am ashamed of my demographic group.
Felonius Monk
So if David Brooks is your raison d’être, then your admitting that he serves a useful purpose.
Calouste
35% is enough to win the nomination as long as there is more than one other candidate. The vast majority of the GOP primaries are winner-takes-(almost) all, and 35% of the vote will get 90% of the delegates. South Carolina for example is winner-takes-all statewide (26 delegates) and winner-takes-all by district (21 delegates total, 3 for each of the 7 districts). The winner gets at the minimum 35 delegates, and if they win by 5% or so probably 41 or 44 out of 47. And of course the establishment candidates combined poll in the low-mid 20s.
daverave
Remembering, just a few months ago, when the BJ commentariat was fervently, almost gleefully, wishing that TRUMP would be the Repub nominee… good times!
Snarkworth
The Unbearable Lightness of Marco.
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
White men have been told for years that they would all be living on Easy Street if not for all of those unworthy Others living off their tax dollars, and they really believe it. It’s become an article of faith at this point, and I’m really not sure how to break that mentality.
A couple of weeks ago, someone was posting here about the glory days of union battles from the late 1800s through the 1940s, but he kept ignoring people who pointed out that one of the things those guys were battling *for* was the right to keep black and brown men out of their unions.
Linda Featheringill
@Mnemosyne:
Frequently.
WereBear
Well, they don’t understand what does effect their economic interests, do they? If they were offered a good job but it meant their boss would be a black woman, how many of them would smile and accept it?
Jeffro
@MattF: I think even Trump knows she (Palin) is out of her gourd mental-health-wise and pharmaceutical-wise. I’m convinced he’ll pick an R woman in high office (governor or senator) who will – in his mind – help inoculate him against charges of being a pig.
Mark S.
Umm, did anyone actually click on the link to the David Brooks story? The article is from Feb. 13, 2015, not ‘Yesterday, in the wake of the Rubiobot’s dismal performance in New Hampshire’.
I’m no fan of David Brooks, but I can’t fault him for not writing about what the Republican race is going look like a year in the future.
jl
Brooks column is worthless trash. His discussion of corporate governance is ridiculous. Corporations do in fact partner with government all the way along. You read a good economics or finance text on corporate finance, the first chapter is on legislative and regulatory structures of corporate governance. Why? Because government grants corporations limited liability (unavailable to the ‘lesser people’) and corporations are governed by what essentially are private political institutions, which in a public context, produce all sorts of problems that economists like to complain about (often in a thoroughly confused way and commiting blunders in their mathematical modelling).
So, Brooks doesn’t know what he is talking about and is either in way over his head, or is running a con of some kind, or both. My cynical guess is that various hacks send him stuff to put in his columns, since I don’t think he understands enough to even know how to learn of and access some of the material he plunks into his columns.
p.a.
@WereBear: Sorry, I disagree. I believe in the cardboard box/curtain rod/sparrow hypothesis for that particular demographic.
What I don’t ‘get’ is the conservative elite; it’s so self-evident consumer spending makes up 70% of the American economy I can’t see their continual efforts to immiserate the general populace as rational. Being ‘elite’, I give them credit for rationality and a clear sense of what is utilitarian to their own benefit. The evidence shows I’m wrong; I just have a hard time accepting it about educated people. (Not my wrongness in general, I have had loads of experience getting comfortable with that, just in this particular case).
Peale
@Mnemosyne: Its o.k. the majority of white folk under 30 also will be voting for Trump I guess as after a little flirtation with Obama. And the last time I checked, while the share of the Fox News watchers are old as hell, the number of under 30s who watch that network is still larger than that the number who watch MSNBC. Just bringing that up
kc
@Seanly:
SC did elect a black Senator. Who has endorsed Rubio.
Capri
@Yellowdog: I think rural = code for white middle and lower class. They are talking about the guy who used to make good money at the Westinghouse factory before they moved to Mexico.
Calouste
@Jeffro: I’m thinking Trump will pick Donald Trump Jr. as his VP. Doesn’t want to have his campaign materials spoiled by someone else’s name. He’ll show the Bushes how you really turn this country into a monarchy. (only partially /s)
Applejinx
@Thoroughly Pizzled:
God is in heaven ‘cos he sure ain’t here
boatboy_srq
@Capri: Hmmm…. White guy working for white company gets laid off when white management and white shareholders want to save a few dollars in operating costs, and of course that’s Those People’s fault. About right?
Paul in KY
@Jeffro: You did tell him he’s completely nuts (unless he’s some kind of millionaire), didn’t you?
Paul in KY
@Jeffro: That POS Ernst might be it.
Paul in KY
@p.a.: This ‘elite’ can easily move to another country, if/when their ripping off has reduced the U.S. to quasi-3rd world status. Move with a shitton of loot.
satby
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: @Yellowdog:
I moved from Chicago to very rural SWMI, and all they know around here is that decent jobs are gone and so are a lot of their kids in search of a better life. Driving around my area is like driving around during the Depression, abandoned and decrepit houses, empty storefronts, entire town centers almost devoid of any businesses. Hell, I have education and experience and the best jobs I can get around here are mostly part time $12/hour. They mostly listen to Fox and Rush and their apocalyptic ministers and only know that no one gives a rat’s ass about making their lives better. They still think the Republican party is mostly their father’s party and vote accordingly, kept completely in the dark by our media about how the policies pushed by Republicans today hurt them. Even with all that Obama won this county, much to my amazement; because a lot of them really hope for better. The relentless media “both sides” stories make it hard for them to correctly discern who’s to blame. And they aren’t reading blogs.
Jeffro
@Paul in KY: Telling him he’s nuts is a waste of time – he’s pretty thoroughly in the FoxBubble these days. It does have its funny moments, though: he’s always good for the latest goofy rumor that he thinks will turn the election around and make it a blowout win for the GOP.
Like Hillary about to be indicted any day now…(!)
Like Bloomberg about to jump in any day now…as a Dem no less…(!!)
Like Sanders throwing his support to Bloomberg…or Kaisch…out of disgust for the Clintons…(!!!)
It’s truly amazing.
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffro: The one I heard was Bloomberg naming Hillary as his running mate after Sanders gets nominated.
These rumors have an outsize effect on me too, for the opposite reason: I’m a Democrat and my mind is always looking for the reason doom is coming. I’m accustomed to doom.
Turgidson
How do you ever forget this? It’s his trademark and damn near everything he writes and says is premised on it. Ron “Severe Dementia” Fournier is his only real rival in this competition. But hardly anyone outside the political junkie world and the unfortunate employees who work near the Morning Joey Joe Joe Jr. Scarborough green room have any clue who Ron “Severe Dementia” Fournier is. Far more people know who BoBo is and are snookered by his his dulcet tones of bullshit.
Jeffro
@Matt McIrvin: That’s great and makes so much sense, right? Bloomberg-Clinton, yup and lol.
I worry a bit, but you gotta just play the odds: the most likely outcome here is that Trump continues on to the GOP nom, and that Hillary, post-Super Tuesday, gets and keeps a lead that lasts to the Dem nom. I do believe that’ll result in a Hillary win.
My biggest fear is Cruz extorting his way onto the GOP ticket as VP (as the price for his delegates putting either Trump or the last Establishment guy standing over the top). Ugh. This country can’t have that guy anywhere near the Oval Office.
Matt McIrvin
I just saw some article about Hollywood Democrats trying to get Biden to jump in.
Jeffro
@Matt McIrvin: Yes, there’s that one out there too. Anything to keep from taking a good hard look at what’s not only been happening on the GOP side, but at just how unappealing all of their “deep bench” candidates are.
Inyake
@Doug! Nice pull. One of my all time favorite Will Ferrell sketches.
slag
My neighbor recently suggested over email that I might be interested in reading David Brooks’ Road to Character. I strongly considered replying that David Brooks couldn’t find the Road to Character with a flashlight and Google Maps. But I was weak and simply didn’t reply.
Unlike you, DougJ, I am apparently stymied creatively by my massive hatred of David Brooks. How do you find the will to go on?