Hallelujah! exclaims David Brooks this morning. The "Palin Spasm" finally ended on Tuesday. Until then, David was very worried that "his kind of Republicans," you know, the stuffed chair sitting, pipe smoking, reading Fortune at the club kind of Republicans, had lost out to the Palin-type crazy people. But Tuesday, all that changed, as the "adults" got elected.
Fortunately, serious parties eventually pull back from the fever swamps. That’s what’s happening to the Republican Party.
As usual,
Driftglass has the goods on Brooks:
I will not bore you with yet another recitation of how the last time the GOP was a "serious party" they lied us into the wrong war, botched that war, lost an entire American city, added "Gitmo" and "Abu Gharib" to our nation vocabulary, blew the deficit higher that Reagan and Bush I combined, presided over the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression and So!Much!More!...while David Fucking Brooks cheered them on every inch of the way.
Brooks extols the background of these non-Palinesque new leaders:
Thom Tillis: NC (Wang, IBM, PwC) -- in charge of NC's refusal to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, reductions to unemployment benefits, cuts to public education, voter identification legislation and legislation restricting abortion access.
David Perdue" (GA): (Exec at Sara Lee, Reebok and Haggar): Pro Hobby Lobby, anti-equal pay
Tom Cotton (AR): (Hahvahd! Big law firm): voted against Sandy aid, wants to cut Medicaid.
For some reason, Brooks doesn't mention Joni Ernst -- who is a more polished Palin, favoring personhood, nullification, Agenda 21 (!)
Brooks lives in a fantasy world in which "both sides" have blocked infrastructure, going to Harvard means you can't be a crazy wingnut, and being a CEO inoculates you against anti-woman, reactionary policies.
The GOP clown car goes through Brooks's car wash and emerges as Everett Dirksen.
You'd think that Ike was playing golf with Rockefeller, with Dirksen caddying.