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A couple of months ago, Ramesh Ponnuru made a curious case in support of Mitt Romney. As Ponnuru argued, congressional Republicans "aren't going to change," they're not going to compromise, and they'll continue to make the nation ungovernable if President Obama wins. It's better, he said, to have Romney win so Washington can function under "unified Republican government."
In other words, GOP policymakers will simply never work constructively or cooperatively with Democrats, so if you want to avoid "gridlock," voters have no choice but to let Republicans control everything.
David Brooks makes a similar case in his column today. Republican lawmakers "still have more to fear from a primary challenge from the right than from a general election challenge from the left," so they'll continue to refuse to govern. If you want to "get big stuff done," Brooks concludes, you have no choice but to give Republicans power over the federal government.
It's rather remarkable to see the Ponnuru/Brooks thesis in print, as if this is somehow normal. The argument, in a nutshell, is that the politics of hostage strategies must be respected and rewarded, and that in an era of a radicalized Republican Party, Democrats should accept that they simply aren't allowed to govern, ever. They're free to work with Republicans, but that's it.
The argument is just astounding. Inflexible Republicans, allergic to compromise and obsessed with obstructionism, would rather destroy the government than work cooperatively with Democrats, ergo, don't elect Democrats. The hostage takers of American politics aren't fooling around, so it's better for everyone if they get their ransom.
Brooks added, however, that Romney will be a responsible moderate -- all of his campaign promises notwithstanding -- so there's no cause for alarm. And this reminds me of Brooks' interesting track record.
Exactly two years ago this week, the New York Times columnist assured the public that the Republican Congress wouldn't be that bad. On the contrary, Brooks said, the incoming Republican leaders would be "modest and cautious." They'd be "sober." They'd resist the urge to "overreach." The GOP's leaders, Brooks wrote at the time, are "prepared to take what they can get, even if it's not always what they would like."
The new Republicans may distrust government, but this will be a Republican class with enormous legislative experience. Tea Party hype notwithstanding, most leading G.O.P. candidates either served in state legislatures or previously in Washington. The No Compromise stalwarts like Senator Jim DeMint have a big megaphone but few actual followers within the Senate.
Over all, if it is won, a Republican House majority will be like a second marriage. Less ecstasy, more realism.
Two years later, Brooks' prediction looks ridiculous, if not literally laughable.
Nevertheless, he's certain a Romney administration and Republican lawmakers will be responsible, and the new Republican president with the far-right agenda would abandon everything he's promised voters and "govern as a center-right moderate."
Given Brooks' track record, his assurances are underwhelming.
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I saw Brooks on Morning Joe spewing this nonsense. Honestly, the man is delusional.
President Obama's biggest mistake was expecting Republicans to act as responsible adults in governance.
In other word's "blackmail" the American people,not only democrat's but republican's as well.Or maybe there are no unemployed republican's.Just us democrat's that feast off of government handout's.This is getting more ridiculous by the minute.I hope Rick Santelli get's an ass full of bedbug's for starting all this bull$hit.
No, Democrats are free to agree with Republicans, that's it.
Yes...'if Obama hadn't made us all such DICKS we would have worked together to fix the country...but if you elect ROMNEY then we'll just whine about the 'obstructionism' of the Dems while we ram unpopular policies down the throats of the 'American People' who secretly WANT us to do it.' OK, did I capture Brooks and the GOP?
Indeed. Earlier today, Kevin Drum @ Mother Jones agreed that Brooks was endorsing hostage-taking.
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/10/david-brooks-says-we-must-allow-hostage-be-killed
Un@!$%#ingbelievable.
Instead of voting in a Republican President and a Republican Congress lets just elect a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress. Throw in a few moderate Republicans and we can solve many of our problems.
David Brooks remains a thoroughly confused individual. But his column today resembles many he's penned in the past.
In their moments of clarity, leading conservatives like Brooks readily agree that the Republican Party has gone nuts. But then, almost as readily, conservatives blame Democrats in general and President Obama in particular for the ensuing polarization whenever Democrats refuse to bend over backwards (even further) to play nice with these people.
Thus, when Republicans walked away from a budget deal two summers ago with President Obama that would have provided what he called the "astonishing concession" of three dollars in spending cuts for every one dollar raised in new taxes, an incredulous Brooks declared the GOP "may no longer be a normal party."
Instead, the New York Times conservative called Republicans an odd protest movement that "has separated itself from normal governance, the normal rules of evidence and the ancient habits of our nation." Only such a movement could have turned down the "mother of all no-brainers" Democrats were offering.
From its curious behavior during the deficit negotiations, Brooks could only conclude that Republicans "do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms."
Neither do they accept "the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities" if their findings conflict with Republican's own received orthodoxy. Nor do the members of this conservative movement have a sense of "moral decency" if they can so easily walk away from their obligations and "talk blandly" of a default that would stain "their nation's honor."
And now these are the people David Brooks wants to put in charge?
I'll say it: this approach worked out well for Germany in the 1930s, didn't it?
I don't think Americans have any idea about how insidious this group is. They are anarchists, pure and simple, whose only "idea" is to destroy all civil society.
The tipping point was reached, I'm afraid, long long ago...
Finally, a Nazi analogy that is actually correct. The Reichstag at the end of the Weimar period was totally dysfunctional largely because of the very large number of political parties. No one party could ever have a clear majority, and there were too many parties for there ever to be a stable coalition. The Nazis made the situation worse by agitating in the Reichstag and on the streets. Hitler was appointed chancellor in a desperate gamble to gain political stability, in the hope that once on the inside the Nazis would settle down. Instead, they moved quickly to take over completely and systematically outlawed every opposition party. The astonishing thing is how passively the other parties accepted this.
There is no reason to believe that Republicans would be any better than the Nazis if they achieved complete political domination. Not only do they occupy much the same space on the political spectrum and are also totalitarian and eliminationist, it is simply the case that no political movement ever acts with restraint when it achieves unquestionable power.
I'll remind everyone once again of Richard Hofstadter's description of these people 50 years ago:
"It can most accurately be called pseudo-conservative -- I borrow the term from the study of The Authoritarian Personality published five years ago by Theodore W. Adorno and his associates -- because its exponents, although they believe themselves to be conservatives and usually employ the rhetoric of conservatism, show signs of a serious and restless dissatisfaction with American life, traditions and institutions."
“Their political reactions express rather a profound and largely unconscious hatred of our society and its ways -- a hatred which one would hesitate to impute to them if one did not have suggestive clinical evidence ... The pseudo-conservative, Adorno writes, shows 'conventionality and authoritarian submissiveness' in his conscious thinking and 'violence, anarchic impulses, and chaotic destructiveness in the unconscious sphere…… The pseudo conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers,consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.'"
A conservative can only lie to convincingly persuade others
A democrat exhausted by explaining the conservative's lie, has little energy to explain democracy, and no energy left to carryout democracy.
Knowing these two things, we can only wonder why God gave mankind a brain, the power to reason for the democrat, and the power to believe without reasoning to the conservative.
(God's hint: thinking sometimes is more useful than just reproduction.)
A romney supporter in my neighborhood made calls for romney to the 3000 or so in this retirement community. It was not a robocall - he left his name and telephone number so I called him. I was particularly incensed by his last remark that we could trust romney to do the right thing with medicare.
My main question for him was how in the [bleep] he could possibly know what romney would do with anything since he had been on all sides of every issue at least once and maybe more (I did mange to keep from inserting an expletive).
Well he just trusted romney, he said. He saved the SLC olympics and he felt romney would do well by the country. My neighbor has graduate degrees in economics and finance and worked in finance so maybe you can forgive him for feeling an affinity with a fellow money grubber. But you can see how the Brooksian mentality has gotten romney this far.
Or, you know, we could just give the left a majority and say "We'll govern on our own if you guys aren't willing to do it."