David Brooks on Mitt Romney's Campaign: 'It's as if He's Running to be Tom Sawyer"
I've heard a lot of idiotic statements in my lifetime, but this one by David Brooks on the PBS Newshour this Friday evening takes the cake. Brooks is so desperate to paint Mitt Romney as some "every man" during this GOP primary race, that he actually goes so far as to call him someone who is "running to be Tom Sawyer" and he thinks that's going to work for his campaign.
This makes my head hurt trying to even figure out what there could possibly be about Mitt Romney that would make the analogy of Tom Sawyer pop into that centrist loving, GOP apologizing, false equivalency propagating head of his, so I'm not even going to try. I'll leave that to anyone else that wants to analyze what goes on in the brain of David Brooks.
In the mean time, here's his hackery from this Friday's the PBS Newshour:
JIM LEHRER: All right, let's talk about Romney for a moment, beginning with you, David. How do you read the situation on Romney right now, where he stands and what his prospects are in Iowa?
DAVID BROOKS: He's exuding confidence. I think his people are exuding confidence.
I went to a rally this morning in the rain, and he was he was with Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. And it was just a smooth, effective, not-too-long, but sort of a corporate race. It was like George Bush in year 2000.
And what's interesting is the tactic he's taking. It's very short on policy. It's very long on patriotism. He talks about driving across the country looking at the national parks. He talks -- he sings, or at least recites, some verses from "The Star-Spangled Banner." It's as if he's running to be Tom Sawyer.
And I think it's a way to establish a connection with voters, even despite questions they may have about Mormonism or anything else. I think it's a way to distinguish, in his eyes, between him and Barack Obama. He's more mainstream.
And then, again, this theme of returning, as -- posing as Tom Sawyer, he's returning to some earlier values. And, you know, that may play this year. Mark is absolutely right. Rick Santorum and a lot of the candidates are very negative, the guy who won it four years ago, Mike Huckabee, very positive. But the mood here has darkened appreciably. And maybe they're in tune with what the voters are hearing right now.
And they pay this guy how much money to write a column for the New York Times every week? David Brooks... more proof that wingnut welfare pays much better than actually having anything you talk or write about actually based in reality.
For more on why David Brooks should never be allowed to write another column or appear on television again, I highly recommend Driftglass' tireless work following his legacy of whitewashing horrible right wing Republican policies and trying to dress them up to sound reasonable to most of the public.
for the linky-love.
I am honored.
Flannel shits and blue jeans. Why the Bain outsourcing billionaire is just like the rest of us.
Middle class, all the way down to his cowboy boots.
Yeehaw!
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
Yeah, sizing 'em up and figuring how much we could sell them for to the Chinese.
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
I think that the dear david believes that "The Mitt" will convince all the rest of us regular folks to whitewash his fence for him sorta like he's gotten everyone else to make him money!
I guess it's been a while since David Brooks read Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. My recollection of Tom Sawyer was of an irresponsible young man full of cruel practical jokes who tricked his friends into paying him for the privilege of whitewashing Aunt Polly's fence.
Admittedly, the fence whitewashing incident is probably what made Mr. Brooks think that Tom Sawyer makes a good role model for a President. Tricking others into paying their leader for the privilege of giving up their own resources is standard republican ideology... sort of like union members voting for Reagan.
Actually, that's not even the stupidest thing Brooks said yesterday. I was driving home from work with NPR on the dial, listening to the usual duo of E.J. Dionne and Brooks, and if i'd been drinking coffee it would have been spewed all over the dashboard. In summing up the past year, Dionne made the observation that Obama started out trying to deal with the Republicans, which made him look weak, then eventually realized that wasn't working and around September he went on the offensive and it seemed to be breathing new life into his poll results. In Dionne's opinion, Obama and progressives ended the year in better shape than they started. NPR's Robert Siegel asked Brooks if he agreed with that, and he said something like, "Well, Obama's been more vitriolic. I don't know if that works in the long run." Then he went on to pooh-pooh OWS and cite the poll showing more people said they feared big government more than big busines, blah blah blah. When I heard the word "vitrolic" used in the same sentence as Barack Obama, I nearly ran off the road. What IS this man smoking that reality is so skewed for him??? Or is it as Inigo Montoya says in "The Princess Bride": "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means"?
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