David Brooks is one of those elites who think their fecal matter doesn't stink....

Reading an article written by a castrated conservative

It is often speculated that majority of conservatives lose principles and intelligence once they move to Washington, DC. I believe Dave Brooks is an (in)famous example confirming this rule. Recently, Dave wrote a series of articles lamenting the rise of the populist movement against government corruption which is popularily known as the tea-party.

Read the rest on my blog:
http://hyphenatedamericans.blogspot.com/2010/01/reading-article-by-castrated.html

Guys, I am a middle-brow, middle-class American who agrees with Brooks. I live in Knoxville, TN and, by way of work and marriage, I know many of the same people that the very elite gentleman who runs this blog knows. The fact the law professor Glen Reynolds pretends to be a regular guy blows me away. He is the embodiment of an over-educated elitist who hasn't a clue about how most people live. Anyway, I don't understand why you guys think President Obama is such an extreme lefty and I don't understand why so many people on the left think he is a sell-out. He is a slightly left of center politician trying to govern a nation that is so divided by partisan bickering that it is practically ungovernable. I really believe that Brooks nailed it.

MichaelBlakers:

Gawd, when was the last time you reread the 10th Amendment? Read it and come back and repeat what you just said - or better yet, defend it.

Brooks jumped the shark a long, long time ago, maybe the mid-'90s, when he and E.J. Dionne provided political commentary for NPR ("All Things Considered," I think). Whenever they were on, I couldn't tell which one was speaking. The same liberal mush came out of both mouths.

Brooks wasn't bad before he got a job with the Times. Then he went native. It must have something to do with having a full belly.

David Brooks has officially jumped the shark.

Have you heard David Gergen, the liberal's favorite go-to-conservative was disgraced for helping to fill Kennedy's seat with an unknown Republican?

Brooks is pining for Gergen's talking head seat.

Whatever else he is, Brooks is a fanatic elitist. His "conservatism" of the European-style monarchist variety, as opposed to any of the flavors of American conservatism. And in his world, Obama has the proper patents of nobility from Harvard and Columbia, eats the right food, wears the right clothes, etc, so the unwashed masses should shut up and let him do his thing.

Brooks and Andy Sullivan are exactly alike. They each claim to be some sort of conservative, but they show know evidence at all of being such. The problem is in that they have invented their own definition. If David Brooks is a conservative, then so is Maureen Dowd.

I suppose he imagines he can call himself a "conservative" because he rarely farts at the dinner table. Beyond that, it's a ludicrous assertion.

David Brooks used to be a sensible, if shallow, thinker. But he has been sucked into the East Coast world of the bien pensants now and has lost all connection with the country outside it.

"In a sensible country, people would see Obama as a president trying to define a modern brand of moderate progressivism. In a sensible country, Obama would be able to clearly define this project without fear of offending the people he needs to get legislation passed. But we don’t live in that country. We live in a country in which many people live in information cocoons in which they only talk to members of their own party and read blogs of their own sect. They come away with perceptions fundamentally at odds with reality, fundamentally misunderstanding the man in the Oval Office."

David is offended that we are a nation of strong opinions and opposing ideologies. We should all just throw away our beliefs and follow the sainted Barack Obama, who in David's world is not the radical leftist his actions or his pre-campaign rhetoric indicates. It appears Brooks will be the very last American to wake up and look behind Obama's curtain.