In a fancy footwork piece of opinion writing in the August 9 New York Times’ Sunday Review, David Brooks asks us to believe that except for the areas of the Republican Party Trump has touched – which is all of it – there is “off in the corners, there’s a lot of intellectual ferment.” According to Mr. Brooks, Senators Rubio, Hawley, Sasse, and Cotton are the purveyors of this intellectual ferment and the possible future of a post-Trump Republican Party. But Mr. Brooks has missed the boat. More specifically, he completely fails to recognize that the ship, the SS Trumptanic, began sinking moments after it left the pier, and his four Phoenixes were among those reported missing.
To explain the Republicans’ intellectual ferment, Mr. Brooks states, “I think Trumpism will survive Trump because the history of the Republican Party is the history of paradigm shifts.” While that statement sounds very positive, very forward-looking, the reality is very different.
The Cambridge Dictionary defines a paradigm shift as “A time when the usual and accepted way of doing or thinking about something changes completely.” That Mr. Brooks’ rhetoric about the intellectual ferment now taking place in the corners of the Republican party attempts to conjure an image of positive change, such as that of FDR’s pursuit of a New Deal, is an enormous stretch. Instead, Mr. Brooks’ trumpeting the virtues of these four Phoenixes is bankrupt thinking from a bankrupt political party, devoid of ideas or initiatives.
While putting forth his four rising stars (Rubio, Hawley, Sasse, and Cotton) of Republican intellectual rebirth, Mr. Brooks gives deference to their academic credentials: “Though populist[s], three of them have advanced degrees from Harvard or Yale.” After being around DC politics for more than 40 years, I have no idea why Mr. Brooks thinks academic credentials are relevant – or that they are indicative of one’s political skills or likelihood of success in the political arena. After all, Donald Trump is a self-proclaimed populist who holds a degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s prestigious Wharton Business School, one of the nation’s two best business schools. And we all have seen the damage Mr. Trump’s higher education has wrought on the Republican Party in less than four years.
In support of his four rising stars, Mr. Brooks also is willing to forgive – or forget – a lot. In particular:
- Senator Hawley supported Mr. Trump’s threatened withdrawal from the World Trade Organization;
- Senator Hawley adamantly opposed language in the recent Defense appropriation spending bill requiring that Confederate-named bases be renamed, calling the provision ‘a veiled attack upon President Donald Trump’s supporters’;
- Senator Hawley urged Attorney General William Barr to launch a federal civil rights investigation of St. Louis' elected prosecutor, accusing her of abuse of power in her investigation of a white couple who wielded guns against unarmed protestors outside their home during a protest.
Mr. Brooks also forgives – or forgets:
- Senator Rubio’s inexplicably twisted defense of his vote against impeaching Mr. Trump;
- Senator Rubio’s statement that shortages of a coronavirus treatment reported in Florida's hospitals are due to a "bad disconnect" with the Trump administration about his state's needs;
- That Senator Rubio is identified by The Bulwark (a neoconservative news and opinion web site) as “[O]ur great republic’s most overrated senator—which is really saying something, since pretty much everyone in America, left, right, and center thinks he’s a joke” and that
- Senator Sasse is a former Trump critic turned apologist to ensure his political survival;
- Senator Cotton is an early participant of the House Trump Caucus and Trump defender during the “Access Hollywood” tape imbroglio; and that
- Senator Cotton also doesn’t think that waterboarding is torture.
Mr. Brooks’ naming of these four senators as the source of ‘intellectual ferment’ and potential Republican party rebirth is indicative of how desperately those on the Right are to find something to hold onto as the SS Trumptanic founders, ready to sink and take a significant part of the current Republican party down to Davey Jones’ locker.
Finally, Mr. Brooks’ essay also is notable for what it did not consider… the impact of demographic changes in America and their effects on voting; the economic, racial, and social justice movements now roiling our nation, and the public response to Trump’s authoritarian impulses, among other contemporaneous issues.
If the Republican party is to have a functional future in American politics, Mr. Brooks needs to be talking and writing about the efforts of the Lincoln Project to turn Mr. Trump out of office and to defeat Trumpism. The founders of the Lincoln Project are likely to have a significant role in any rebirth or renewal efforts the Republican Party can muster in the future. Mr. Brooks’ four Phoenixes are likely to struggle to even tread water, given the extreme levels of their disconnect with political, social, and economic issues facing our nation.
