Like most of us here, I have no use for David Brooks. He has long been a defender of everything that is wrong with our politics and society. Still, today’s column title caught my eye and I decided to just take a look. It was quite a surprise:
Trump Came for Their Party but Took Over Their Souls
I thought I was beyond shockable, but this week has been profoundly shocking for me. I spent the bulk of my adult life on the right-wing side of things, generally rooting for the Republican Party, because I thought that party best served America. People like Sarah Palin and Donald Trump chased me out of the Republican orbit (gradually and then all at once), but I have still held out the hope that my many friends on the right are kind of like an occupied country. They have to mouth the Trumpian prejudices to survive in this era, but somewhere deep inside, the party of Reagan still lives in their souls.
He (sort of) confesses he was wrong:
My progressive readers are now thinking: Have you not been paying attention? Donald Trump has owned this party for years. If he told them to kill the immigration compromise because he needed a campaign issue, they were going to kill that proposal.
To which I respond: I don’t think you quite understand what just happened. This wasn’t just about Republicans cynically bending their knee to Trump. Rather, I’m convinced that Trumpism now pervades the deepest recesses of their minds and governs their unconscious assumptions. Their fundamental mental instincts are no longer conservative, but Trumpian.
OK, he still believes in conservatism. Tant pis (too bad), as the French say. But he no longer believes in the Republican party.
Here are some of the convictions that Republicans had to assent to in order to do what they did this week: . . .
Democracy is for suckers. . . . Republicans . . . have adopted the Trumpian logic that under him, they will never have to compromise.
Entertainment over governance. . . . Showmanship has eclipsed even simple governance.
Foreigners don’t matter. . . . People like J.D. Vance really seem to believe that if we let Vladimir Putin win his wars of conquest in Europe, it will have no consequences for us back home. Somewhere even Neville Chamberlain is gaping in disbelief.
Lying is normal. . . . Trump has erased the assumption that credibility is a nice thing to have.
America would be better off in a post-American world. [Republicans] operationally . . . share many of Xi’s and Putin’s goals — to reduce America’s role in the world, to destroy America’s confidence in its ability to project power, to reduce America to a regional superpower.
Each of those lines is followed by paragraph after paragraph of examples. This particular admission stood out for me:
The American economy is enjoying one of its greatest growth periods of our lifetimes, and yet many Republicans have persuaded themselves that the nation is in ruins and can’t afford foreign commitments.
Brooks still misses some things. First, he doesn’t give the Democrats credit for the economy or for anything else, really. More to the point, he ignores the reality that Republicans have been moving in this direction anyway, long before Trump (though he does give a nod to Sarah Palin). Trump took over the car that was heading for the cliff and jammed on the accelerator. The GOP’s path to the destruction of our democracy goes back at least to Nixon’s day, when they realized they were never going to persuade a majority of Americans to vote for their policies, and decided that, rather than change those policies, they would change the ability of people to vote. (And also to reduce the ability of Americans to think critically about their policies as well. This is a multi-pronged attack.)
Still, it does say something about the dysfunction, the chaos, the incoherence of the whole GOP that have now — finally — lost David Brooks.