Like Steve Benen, I’m curious to know what’s up with NYT columnist David Brooks, who on October 2 gushed,
With a bemused smile and a never-ending flow of words, she laid out her place on the ticket — as the fearless neighbor for the heartland bemused by the idiocies of Washington. Her perpetual smile served as foil to Biden’s senatorial seriousness. [ Etc., etc.] The race has not been transformed, but few could have expected as vibrant and tactically clever a performance as the one Sarah Palin turned in Thursday night.
Now here he is today:
[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. … Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I’m afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices. [She is] absolutely not [ready to be president or vice president].
How to explain the segue from “vibrant and tactically clever” to “a fatal cancer to the Republican party”? They’re not completely contradictory concepts, as Benen points out — only just-about-as dissonant as non-contradictions can get. (Today Brooks is also back to some heavy-duty gushing about Barack Obama and Joe Biden, as has been his occasional wont in the past.)
Well, I just don’t know. Passing attack by Little Starburst-itis, making him forget that the internet keeps words put on it forever? David, get a grip.
I think it’s pretty easy.
Brooks has recieved his second quarter statement for his 401K.
Without smart liberals to keep things on track, his little piece of the economy is tanking. He’s getting the bill delivered for his 8 course Bushmeal. And it makes him cranky.
HEY, Mary — great to have you back, and unhassled by the spam gizmo, even!
brooks is the most level headed of the entire right. don’t beat him up too bad for thinking she was winking at him.
Aw foot, IAT, that starburst crowd is just irresistible for hootings-at. ‘Course, this is a change from Brooks’ usual pearls-clutching, so there’s that . . .
I got one worse than that. A long time friend who I know I converted to Democratism many, many years ago … an educated person, a retired lawyer now … says she is crazy about Sarah and all the good things she has done and is expected to do for Alaska. Coulda’ knocked me over with a feather. I grilled her pretty hard on this, but she didn’t budge. Things like that happen when they come unloved, I guess.
Ben, the hardest thing in politics is to realize that a couple of things from twelve steps programs apply here:
1. give me the serenity to accept those things that I can not change.
2. it is all a program of attraction, not persuasion.
Jeez, Ben 5, that’s really inexplicable — unless maybe your friend gets all her news offline?
lotus: I think it must all the snow and the long nights. Screws up a person’s head.
One of my co-workers observed that Paling* will be leaving the sunshine to go back to Alaska next month just in time for those very looong Alaskan nights-aaah, justice, sweet justice.
*That final g was actually a typo but it looked too appropriate to correct-both because the pronunciation so aptly describes what’s happening to her little starbursts and as a tribute to the queen of g-droppers.
Forgot an important point in Post 5, above: the friend has lived in Alaska for about 20 years now.
This seems like a fairly normal course correction for Brooks. He’s not really a split personality – he just writes like one. Someone (at FDL, I think it was) did a little compare and contrast of some selected Brooks articles a while back, and it was pretty amusing. I’m surprised the man doesn’t walk around with his neck in a brace all the time.