David Brooks is slowly coming to an uncomfortable conclusion that is at odds with his core mission as a well-paid pseudo-intellectual hack for the corporate right. That conclusion is that the Republican Party has been taken over by fanatics who cannot be reasoned with or trusted with power in our government. That’s progress, I guess, until he conveniently forgets next week what he’s learned and the obvious implications. But maybe with enough two-steps foreward/one-step back moves, Brooks will eventually come to realize that he’s on the wrong side of a deathmatch for the soul of our country. When that happens, he’ll probably see his career reduced to dust.
For now, however, he’s only begun to climb the fence. Straddling will come later, if it comes at all. In today’s column, he establishes a predicate (also progress for Brooks). The predicate is that the Republicans are good negotiators and they’ve succeeded in getting a sweet offer from the Obama administration, but they’re too goddamned insane to take it.
Then he gives us this:
Over the past week, Democrats have stopped making concessions. They are coming to the conclusion that if the Republicans are fanatics then they better be fanatics, too.
The struggles of the next few weeks are about what sort of party the G.O.P. is — a normal conservative party or an odd protest movement that has separated itself from normal governance, the normal rules of evidence and the ancient habits of our nation.
Did he set the predicate for calling the Democrats ‘fanatics’? No. We are asked to make an unsupported logical leap. If, as Brooks established, the Republicans are not negotiating and not interested in evidence, expert advice, or compromise, then the Democrats have no reason to make further concessions to them. That’s a rational decision, not a resort to fanaticism. And Brooks knows this because the next and concluding paragraph affirms it.
If the debt ceiling talks fail, independents voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not. If responsible Republicans don’t take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern.
And they will be right.
This is why David Brooks is a hack and frequently honored for his prolific wanking. The point of using poor logic is to deceive. He uses poor logic because he’s afraid of the career implications of coming out against the modern-day GOP with all the vigor and clarity that is required by his conscience. He knows the Democrats are not fanatics. He calls them fanatics anyway.
