Freedom as Detachment. Wow! That sounds profound. Of course, there is another word for it that has been around for centuries. One of the seven deadly sins, actually. A word everyone understands. Greed.
80
Where has Brooks been for the last ten years, that he's just figuring this out now? Pretty much all the Republican party has been doing for the last couple of decades is scaring the middle class with the prospect of slipping socially because government is taking their stuff and giving it to undeserving welfare queens, and then covertly taking all of their stuff and giving it to the undeserving one percent. "Greed is good" is a philosophy that works well for the haves and less so for the have-nots, but that's all the Republicans have.
66
Paul Goodman, the dean of American anarchism in the sixties, had a very interesting take on freedom.
He said, similar to Mr. Brooks, that there are two kinds. Freedom "from" and Freedom "for", perhaps just a simpler iteration of Mr. Brooks' definitions.
He said that the Constitution largely guaranteed freedom "from" on the assumption, that being free "from" unfair taxes, unfair persection, theft etc, would automatically lead to Freedom "for" the pursuit of happiness (pursuit at the time BTW meaning "the practice of" rather than 'chasing of' )
IMHO, the alt right has corrupted this notion so that any aspects of "The Price of Civilization" is regarded as a restricion of Freedom "from" and should be unconstitutional.
This , again IMHO, is a dangerous distortion
He said, similar to Mr. Brooks, that there are two kinds. Freedom "from" and Freedom "for", perhaps just a simpler iteration of Mr. Brooks' definitions.
He said that the Constitution largely guaranteed freedom "from" on the assumption, that being free "from" unfair taxes, unfair persection, theft etc, would automatically lead to Freedom "for" the pursuit of happiness (pursuit at the time BTW meaning "the practice of" rather than 'chasing of' )
IMHO, the alt right has corrupted this notion so that any aspects of "The Price of Civilization" is regarded as a restricion of Freedom "from" and should be unconstitutional.
This , again IMHO, is a dangerous distortion
20
Although it would create untold deaths, misery and chaos I kind of hope Republicans DO pass their horrific "healthcare" bill. Nothing is more sure to flip the House, Senate and White House than killing people's family members. Further, I think the whole debacle will end with Single Payer Universal healthcare for everyone.
The one smart thing Ross Perot ever said was "sometimes you have to break an egg to make an omelet".
What do you think?
The one smart thing Ross Perot ever said was "sometimes you have to break an egg to make an omelet".
What do you think?
32
Beginninng when the tea party took over, republican representatives know or care nothing about governing. They were elected because of their hatred of toward our government, and determined to "drown it", as their godfather Grover Nordquist instructs them to do. So what can you expect? Since then they have done nothing except oppose and thwart Democrats' efforts to govern. Now that they are in full control, and will not act to remove Trump from office, and cannot govern, our 250 year old very sick democratic republic is at death's door.
35
Good column...but
So why are you still a Republican?
So why are you still a Republican?
54
All McConnell and the republicans can do is obstruct. How pathetic is it when McConnell threatens his fellow republicans with "If we don't pass something we may have to work with the democrats" That, his stating that his goal is making Obama a one term president and blocking Obama's supreme court nominee and then changing the rules to get his guy in sums up his way of doing business. Trump doesn't know what he is doing but the real problem is McConnell, Ryan and to be fair Pelosi!
20
Never underestimate the power of bellyaching to bring people together.
Once they're together, nothing happens, but it sure feels good to bellyache.
Once they're together, nothing happens, but it sure feels good to bellyache.
5
I left the party when Bush & company used Southern Baptists to smear John McCain. I left organized religion at the same time. As long as Republicans continue to use GAG- guns, abortion and gays - their voters don't seem to care whether they legislate or not or whether Republicans rob them of their rights and money. Until the "base" demands better of Republicans, I don't see anything changing. We've run out of real estate running to the right. We're in free fall. McCain was right. They are agents of intolerance.
47
*Freedom is the freedom of the weakest.*
Can children play in their neighborhoods without fear?
Will all young people be free to choose their career paths solely based on their inclinations and abilities?
Will sick people be cared for and can recover without worrying about their financial survival?
Will old people be able to live in dignity and die in dignity?
The strong always have "freedom". The question to our society is: will the weakest have it too?
Can children play in their neighborhoods without fear?
Will all young people be free to choose their career paths solely based on their inclinations and abilities?
Will sick people be cared for and can recover without worrying about their financial survival?
Will old people be able to live in dignity and die in dignity?
The strong always have "freedom". The question to our society is: will the weakest have it too?
38
It's like every Republican on Capitol Hill has a Gadsden flag "Don't Tread on Me" license plate on their cars. They probably wouldn't pull over to help you with a flat tire, especially a metaphorical one, like being unable to pay a medical bill without going bankrupt. The treading they do on American citizens, on the other hand, is blatantly dictatorial.
Leave our Medicaid alone, Congress. Don't Tread on Us!
Leave our Medicaid alone, Congress. Don't Tread on Us!
24
"If you’re a regular American, the main threats to your freedom are illness, family breakdown, social decay, technological disruption and globalization." In another story in today's NYT we learn about yet another toll of poverty and racism in America - poor mothers, particularly of color at risk of having their children taken by CPS over relatively minor issues. I think you're missing the most substantial threats to freedom of capacity in this nation: lack of a fair playing field; that is, flat out structural, systemic, institutionalized inequality.
31
The old saying is true; the Republicans run for office telling you that government can't do anything, then they get in office and spend all their time proving it.
30
Much too convoluted. The GOP can't pass legislation because they don't believe in government. They don't believe in collective action to ensure that social costs are spread across society. For them, everyone has the freedom to sleep under a bridge.
31
The GOP is a religion. While the practitioners understand that The GOP isn't perfect. The prospect of jumping the wall and signing on with infidels, is beyond the pale.
The wrangling over specifics of policy is not going to move the 62milliom +/- voters who supported the GOP from top to bottom of the political stack.
All is lost, there is no hope for USA.
Nothing lasts forever.
The wrangling over specifics of policy is not going to move the 62milliom +/- voters who supported the GOP from top to bottom of the political stack.
All is lost, there is no hope for USA.
Nothing lasts forever.
15
Mr. Brooks tells many truths here. Who would have believed the GOP would steadily devolve into the anti-science, flat-earth party that blindly rubberstamps the agenda of the 1 percent while promising never to work with Democrats. It's kind of like "Lord of the Flies" except all the stranded boys are GOP lawmakers in suits and ties. BUT never forget, there is a huge, money-making machine in Fox and other right-wing broadcasters that promise to destroy any Republican who breaks ranks with the mob. The GOP Senate just approved a federal judge who writes an anti-gay blog! They are flying the airplane of our democracy straight at the ground.
34
Books dismisses Trump a "boob": a foolish or stupid person, an embarrassing mistake. Yes. And Trump as president is the most powerful man in the world. This is terrifying.
18
How easily "Sure, Donald Trump is a boob,..." rolls off the page of a dedicated Republican. But, you had to add "but..."
But nothing. If every Republican made Trump irrelevant, then your party might rise to a greatness of a GOP nature. Think about Rush, Fox News, Tea Partiers holding a machine gun fund raiser, Palin, Nugent. Mega-donors are convinced that imbeciles need face time because if you go totally berserk, like Trump, the strategy works on racially motivated dufusses in the guise of economic motivation. Read Mr Blow's op-ed.
Mega-donors want wins, anything less than Trump wrestling the media is going to be overruled as Goldwater milk toast. Trump is the latest height of Republican craziness, it seems more likely that the trend will continue.
The author really needs to call-out every crazy assault on common sense by his fellow Republicans, or he can forget about Republican greatness. I wish him well because no one deserves association with the sickening lies of the Trump clan.
But nothing. If every Republican made Trump irrelevant, then your party might rise to a greatness of a GOP nature. Think about Rush, Fox News, Tea Partiers holding a machine gun fund raiser, Palin, Nugent. Mega-donors are convinced that imbeciles need face time because if you go totally berserk, like Trump, the strategy works on racially motivated dufusses in the guise of economic motivation. Read Mr Blow's op-ed.
Mega-donors want wins, anything less than Trump wrestling the media is going to be overruled as Goldwater milk toast. Trump is the latest height of Republican craziness, it seems more likely that the trend will continue.
The author really needs to call-out every crazy assault on common sense by his fellow Republicans, or he can forget about Republican greatness. I wish him well because no one deserves association with the sickening lies of the Trump clan.
18
The tone and tenor of the Republican party was set in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan declared that government was never the solution, but was in fact the problem by stating "The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Since then, Republicans not only don't think the government can be part of the solution to our problems, but have evolved to believe that there are no problems (think climate change, gun violence, income inequality, racial achievement gaps) except those that can involve sex/gender or can be solved with military interventions and bombing (think WMD in Iraq, terrorism (that kills far fewer Americans each year than 33 other threats, such as lightening, heat waves, airplane crashes and biking (http://www.businessinsider.com/death-risk-statistics-terrorism-disease-a... and now terrifyingly North Korea). The problem David is not that libertarians have taken over the Republican party, but that their gilt-framed glasses are polarized to only see one solution other than bombs, and that is the panacea of tax cuts for the rich. They will pass a tax cut, it will be skewed towards the wealthy, and it will grow the debt/deficit. And David, you and other Republicans will applaud that and vote for whatever bozo they nominate next who promises to do the same. Take of your glasses, David, and see the world as it is, not as some 15th Century philosopher you read in grad school thought it should be.
17
I see no endgame for Bannen and his puppet president other than to destroy modern American culture. That goal moves closer by the week. I appears to go beyond shock and awe as a tactic, rather destroy the State and rebuild on the ashes. Lenin a hero of Bannon
9
Social decay? More than income inequality? We have a vibrant culture cooking along here, Mr. Brooks! I don't think I buy family breakdown, either. I'm not paid to write columns (probably that's as it should be), but I'd say the threats to Americans, in order of danger, are 1. climate change (how interesting that you didn't notice it!), 2. income inequality, and 3. the modern Republican Party. I otherwise agree with this article.
22
***In 1996, Republicans passed and Bill Clinton signed a welfare reform law that tied benefits to work requirements so that recipients would develop the skills they need to succeed in the labor force.***
Before welfare reform, a woman (and perhaps, a man) of limited means and a bright intellect could get a PhD without having to work a low-paying job that would make that goal impossible to reach.
Welfare reform obliterated that option.
Before welfare reform, a woman (and perhaps, a man) of limited means and a bright intellect could get a PhD without having to work a low-paying job that would make that goal impossible to reach.
Welfare reform obliterated that option.
5
We can thank those that have idolized Ronald Reagan for the move from Capacity to Detachment.
16
So David are you now going to become an independent?
Show some courage !
Show some courage !
12
David your best article this year easily
3
The rightwing of the GOP literally declares WAR on members of Congress who dare to stand up for freedom as capacity.
http://www.redstate.com/patterico/2017/07/19/means-war-obamacare-betraya...
http://www.redstate.com/patterico/2017/07/19/means-war-obamacare-betraya...
3
Finally David, you see the light. You seem to be eons away from when you would be defending the know-nothings and do-nothing Republicans. But then again there is no President Obama who made you write the convoluted defense of the undefensible. But now you have become your true self, the real to-right-liberal showing exactly what's wrong, immoral, our weaknesses, our strengths. Yours is a sane voice in the cacophony of insanity. Switch, Mr. Brooks. You don't belong in the rabid Party with it's insane rabid leader.
5
The way out of this mess is for the republicans to get their way, trash America and after the trials and their imprisonment, to rebuild in a republican-free atmosphere. It would take about five years, probably reduce our national security to zero, and kill our economic credibility in the world. It would be like removing a tumor, and recovery.
4
Come on, David. Tell us what you really think. No sugar-coating! We can take it! Give it to us straight! What do you really think about Republicans?
Don't beat around the bush. We can handle it.
You admire them, right?
Don't beat around the bush. We can handle it.
You admire them, right?
2
David Brooks is pining for a GOP from times in the distant past of over a century ago. Teddy Roosevelt was the last Republican to definitely put country before party. Every GOP leader since has been lacking in the attributes he lived and governed by. From Nixon on it has been from bad to worse, Reagan, spoiled brat Bush, to the unqualified and dangerous orange one. The GOP should be tried for crimes of treason and dereliction of duty and banished to the wilderness for at least a century if not forever
8
As for those Western people...They wanted the freedom to do whatever they wanted as soon as the government got rid of the natives.
3
Could you imagine what would have become of our nation had this election occurred in 1932 with this outcome? It's a good thing we have a stable economy without any large scale aggressive gambits in the offing? Where would we be with these IDIOTS in office in 1932. Eastern half of the nation speaking German and the western half speaking Japanese. And that's GOP success in their minds eye.
3
Please - enough of this pseudo-intellectual psychobabble. You state the obvious by cloaking it in laughably ivory tower claptrap. I would think you'd be embarrassed by the tiny market niche this is implicitly aimed at.
3
Yet David is STILL a Republican, so this deflection is meaningless.
7
David Brooks, you are a god.
I find it fascinating how week after week Brooks adds pieces to his sleight of hand Rube Goldberg machine, constructed to hide just how screwed up the Republican Party has become.
7
David, when will you stop being so honest? Why can't you howl at the moon like the FakesNews and sycophant friends crowd? You would make more money. Why do you have to be such a great conservative mind with incorruptible intellectual integrity? No wonder the Goliath in the dark house calls the like of you "enemies of the People!". Your name is David. You sure know what to do. Tikun Olam.
[not for publication]
Ha Ha. I didn't think you'd publish that. Please: I'd really like to believe it's not because I wrote "poop". No: I don't really wish there was a military coup in the US. But I do think your situation is as serious as that. In short I think you have some very powerful people in your country who have a deeply erroneous and disturbed view of human nature and human existence - both supporters of and in the Republican party. These people regard themselves too highly and others - the vast majority - too lowly. There's a lack of care and empathy and understanding and solidarity loose and prevailing in your country. Too much "egoism" and egotism. Too much "I'. Not enough "We". Cheers.
Ha Ha. I didn't think you'd publish that. Please: I'd really like to believe it's not because I wrote "poop". No: I don't really wish there was a military coup in the US. But I do think your situation is as serious as that. In short I think you have some very powerful people in your country who have a deeply erroneous and disturbed view of human nature and human existence - both supporters of and in the Republican party. These people regard themselves too highly and others - the vast majority - too lowly. There's a lack of care and empathy and understanding and solidarity loose and prevailing in your country. Too much "egoism" and egotism. Too much "I'. Not enough "We". Cheers.
7
Ok, let's try to spell it out for Republicans in a way they might understand: HSA's DO NOTHING WHEN YOUR WAGES ARE TOO LOW TO HAVE ANY SAVINGS. Got it? Need more explanation? How about this: $5,000 IN AN HSA MEANS NOTHING IN THE FACE OF A $70,000 ONCOLOGY BILL.
HSA's are great for wealthy people with disposable income looking for yet another tax shelter. I don't even have to write that in block letters to know that's the only part of this comment a Republican will understand...or care about.
HSA's are great for wealthy people with disposable income looking for yet another tax shelter. I don't even have to write that in block letters to know that's the only part of this comment a Republican will understand...or care about.
84
Democrats gave us social security, medicare, and medicaid, collective bargaining, the 5 day week, the minimum wage, the middle class. I'm with them.
80
This is a very interesting and enlightening perspective about which to frame politics, thank you.
13
Even at their best freedom under Republicans was limited to the haves not the haves not. Just look at the two examples the author list. The Medicare tax law they passed did not allow the program to negotiate the price of drugs with the manufacturers and thus made it unaffordable to low income beneficiaries. The welfare reform bill marginally improved the income of welfare recipients under Clinton booming economy while reducing the freedom of mothers to stay with their children and with not enough available quality child care, and quickly deteriorated as the economy started to go South under W.
21
Freedom and deregulation are words manipulated by Republicans to convince people to act against their best interest. They send millions of corporate dollars to think tanks in this effort.
Unfortunately, those who lose to these efforts, fall further and further behind as their ability to fight back is lost to the money factor. That is what the current GOP is trying to preserve and even advance.
Unfortunately, those who lose to these efforts, fall further and further behind as their ability to fight back is lost to the money factor. That is what the current GOP is trying to preserve and even advance.
24
They most certainly can pass Bills, and sometimes with the help of the democratic party; go back to the Reagan years, and almost every Bill passed that had the GOP's endorsement and the democrats spinelessness, and you will legislation that helped bring our economy to the point where the lower 60 percent of households have been reduced to waiting for the Trickle Down to come their was. Unfortunately it has, but in the way they expected.
10
This is the best column you have written in a very long time. What you say is right on point, too.
There was a time when Republicans worked to solve problems. That time has passed. Now they seem insistent on worsening or ignoring them.
Government is not our enemy. It is an institution that, in a democracy, we have to constantly shape in ways that will maximize its effectiveness and its responsiveness to our society's ideals. If we abandon that goal, as Republicans seem so inclined to do, then we have anarchy.
There was a time when Republicans worked to solve problems. That time has passed. Now they seem insistent on worsening or ignoring them.
Government is not our enemy. It is an institution that, in a democracy, we have to constantly shape in ways that will maximize its effectiveness and its responsiveness to our society's ideals. If we abandon that goal, as Republicans seem so inclined to do, then we have anarchy.
28
Asking the Republicans to propose a government-sponsored bill on anything, is like asking an Atheist to organize a tent revival.
Republicans simply don't do government-sponsored programs. As we've seen lately, their attempts to dismantle existing programs hasn't gone too well either.
Maybe a left-leaning President, and a right-leaning Congress might work better--assuming the Congress doesn't lean too far, and fall on its face like this one has.
Republicans simply don't do government-sponsored programs. As we've seen lately, their attempts to dismantle existing programs hasn't gone too well either.
Maybe a left-leaning President, and a right-leaning Congress might work better--assuming the Congress doesn't lean too far, and fall on its face like this one has.
7
Seems like the definition of freedom could be as simple as first the freedom to exercise one's potential, which clearly resides in Mr. Brooks notion of "freedom as capacity." His "freedom as detachment" concept is less clear. A stronger definition might be to look at freedom from interference and oppression, as well as freedom from want and barriers to good health as well as to a reasonable means of earning a livelihood.
9
If they GOP can't get the votes to extend the Treasury's borrowing limit, most economists believe that this will likely trigger a massive sell off on all the major stock markets. When people lose 35% of their life's savings in their 401K, maybe it'll matter to them?
15
And to be fair, in this case two negativities do Not create a positive. The Dems need to find their own Big Idea and a champion to promote it.
Where have you gone, Teddy Roosevelt?
Where have you gone, Teddy Roosevelt?
11
Ok as far as it goes but as usual racist. A regular American who is black has as much to fear from white racism as from illness. When David writes regular American he means whites. That is a stupid blinkered view, although common.
10
Jack Kemp ???
7
This is what happens when you have decades of candidates running on the slogan "Government is the problem."
Eventually, someone makes the next logical leap:
"Government is the problem. Vote for me, and I'll prove it!"
Eventually, someone makes the next logical leap:
"Government is the problem. Vote for me, and I'll prove it!"
24
Sure, the Clean Air Act, as well. But what about Bebe Reboso? The Christmas Bombings? Reagan ignoring AIDS research while his friend Rock Hudson died a slow death? Funding of contras? Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld feeding on Gerald Ford in a post-Nixon White House built for vampires? The Persian Gulf War we will see no end of in our lives? Can you say Citizens United is bi-partisan?
Republican freedom is the John Birch Society and the Heritage Foundation, the Mercers and the Koch brothers. Get real.
Republican freedom is the John Birch Society and the Heritage Foundation, the Mercers and the Koch brothers. Get real.
29
We elect them to WORK......Not shut down the government in some bizarre hissy fit..Not obstruct the work necessary for the American people..Not to behave like 1950 racists towards a black President.....or cheerleaders for a mentally challenged white President... Watching them spew hate or grovel is revolting on a regular basis....
Some of us remember the old guard Republicans who actually worked hand in hand with Democrats to accomplish goals for the American people..People who had a work ethic....Not this crowd of double speak whiners plotting their way home for yet another 4 week vacation....Hard to engender much respect for their institutionalized laziness.
Some of us remember the old guard Republicans who actually worked hand in hand with Democrats to accomplish goals for the American people..People who had a work ethic....Not this crowd of double speak whiners plotting their way home for yet another 4 week vacation....Hard to engender much respect for their institutionalized laziness.
31
"Today, the G.O.P. is flirting with its most humiliating failure, the failure to pass a health reform bill,".....A major part of the problem is that it is not a healthcare reform bill. What it is, is an attempt to eliminate Medicaid, an attempt to cut taxes, and an attempt to defund Planned Parenthood. And if they should ever get so far as to write a tax reform bill, it will be an attempt to strangle the Federal Government by cutting off its revenue. And what do you think a Republican infrastructure bill will look like? Heck they won't even raise the gas tax to adjust for inflation. No, what they want to do is turn the infrastructure over to private enterprise. In truth the only thing the Republican agenda will accomplish is to push us further down the road to becoming a third world country.
34
"... Republicans offer nothing but negativity, detachment, absence and an ax."
Well, thank you for the ax, dear Republicans. Your heads go here, on the 2018 Chopping Block!
Well, thank you for the ax, dear Republicans. Your heads go here, on the 2018 Chopping Block!
15
A lot of words that come down to: The current GOP is lazy and dumb.
At least their President is an honest representation of what the Party is about.
At least their President is an honest representation of what the Party is about.
20
Republicans = tax cuts for rich.
If they can no longer subscribe to that cruel edict while fooling the rest of their Toby Keith rubes, they will implode
If they can no longer subscribe to that cruel edict while fooling the rest of their Toby Keith rubes, they will implode
13
Cersei Lannister is clearly a Republican.
6
You helped create the reactionary Republican party of monsters, racists, bigots and imbeciles, Mr. Brooks.
Behold your creation.
Behold your creation.
18
In becoming,nominally, "the Get Government Off My Back Party, the Leave Us Alone Coalition, the Drain the Swamp Party, the Don’t Tread on Me Party," we now have a government that treads on people indiscriminately, with the swamp deeper and darker than the Black Lagoon, and on our backs with stupid and bigoted, gender-discriminating and mean-spirited executive orders.
Give the GOP-dominated regime credit where it's due, however. It is leaving us alone to fend for our survival in the absence of any standard of decency on health care. Bravo!
Give the GOP-dominated regime credit where it's due, however. It is leaving us alone to fend for our survival in the absence of any standard of decency on health care. Bravo!
13
Five teens watched and recorded a man in Cocoa Beach, Fl drown. They never called for help. After he drowned they cavalierly mentioned he was dead and posted it on Facebook.
I was horrified. Then thought, isn't this the same attitude the republicans have towards their fellow man without insurance?
Disgusting.
I was horrified. Then thought, isn't this the same attitude the republicans have towards their fellow man without insurance?
Disgusting.
29
I appreciate David Brooks' insightfulness and his ability to capture the intellectual essence of the discussion. . In this case he appears, intellectually at;least, to have come as close to the core of the problem:
The GOP doesn't know how to govern. is not interested in governing. & is not interested in learning, how to govern.
Add to this, an incompetent, intellecually vacuous mean spirited boob as titular head of the party, and the express train to demise has taken off.
Governing is about compromise, finding the sweet spot where America 's political life has resided during the period of its' greatness.
Fox Breitbart Sean Hannity,Gingrich are all about themselves, about making $ stoklng the flames of discord. ; it is their ticket to riches
Their utterirresponsibility significantly contributes to making America a second rate Banana Republic. It is absolutely unpatriotic, anti-American.
As for the rube at the top of the heap, he is his own worst enemy and appears to have a wish for failure or is so stupid he cannot comprehend what is going on around him. He will never listen.
It's not a matter of if 45 and the GOP crash and burn. it's a matter of when. There is no Whig Party, nor Federalist Party in our poliical system today. There will be no GOP. Let's hope for a centrist alternative
It's time to change the coluntry by listening.The GOP legislators' stopped listening to their consituents a long time ago. GOP: Please make sure you turn out the lights on your way out.
The GOP doesn't know how to govern. is not interested in governing. & is not interested in learning, how to govern.
Add to this, an incompetent, intellecually vacuous mean spirited boob as titular head of the party, and the express train to demise has taken off.
Governing is about compromise, finding the sweet spot where America 's political life has resided during the period of its' greatness.
Fox Breitbart Sean Hannity,Gingrich are all about themselves, about making $ stoklng the flames of discord. ; it is their ticket to riches
Their utterirresponsibility significantly contributes to making America a second rate Banana Republic. It is absolutely unpatriotic, anti-American.
As for the rube at the top of the heap, he is his own worst enemy and appears to have a wish for failure or is so stupid he cannot comprehend what is going on around him. He will never listen.
It's not a matter of if 45 and the GOP crash and burn. it's a matter of when. There is no Whig Party, nor Federalist Party in our poliical system today. There will be no GOP. Let's hope for a centrist alternative
It's time to change the coluntry by listening.The GOP legislators' stopped listening to their consituents a long time ago. GOP: Please make sure you turn out the lights on your way out.
17
"... this philosophy is not going to spawn creative thinkers who come up with positive new ideas for how to help people."
That says it all. Capito of West Virginia said it even better: "I didn't come to Washington to hurt people." We can only hope she sticks to her principles.
That says it all. Capito of West Virginia said it even better: "I didn't come to Washington to hurt people." We can only hope she sticks to her principles.
11
The only thing republicans can pass is gas. From both ends.
10
Can someone double check the by line? I think Paul Krugman may have written this column.
"Sure, Donald Trump is a boob, but that doesn’t explain why Republicans can’t govern from Capitol Hill." Sounds straight outta PK
"Sure, Donald Trump is a boob, but that doesn’t explain why Republicans can’t govern from Capitol Hill." Sounds straight outta PK
4
Has anyone considered that Trump is really creating this chaos because he is a Democrat at heart? The more he drives the Republican party into positions antithetical to the country and his base, the more he enrages women and the undecided with his antics and his meglomania, the more he seems more Russian focused than US centric, then he helps the Democrats to regain control of the government. Maybe this was his goal all along. He's the Manchurian Candidate, not for Russia, but for the Democratic Party.
David, you're just out of contact with the spirit of what we calll 'truth'. Those GOP "accomplishments' do nothing in actuality to support your thesis. The ADA was a liberal project whose time had come, the l996 reform was never credited with enhancing anybody's 'capacity' (and the word you want is M. Nussbaum's "capability', not the one you used); and Bush's preposterous unfunded give-away was pure political cynicism, duping seniors while awarding the hugest 'capacity' of benefit to the pharaceutical industry. It reeked and only GOP shills would deny that. Oh yes. You. It is SO disappointing for someone with so many advantages who wants to be known as a thinker about morality to play such a sycophant to evil.
7
It is 290 years since Jonathan Swift wrote his Modest Proposal. Swift said the same thing as David Brooks is saying today. Swift hit you hard on the head with a hammer so you paid attention. The problem with America is since Reagan satire is confusing. I continue to ask myself whether they can be that stupid and I know the answer is always yes. Yet I continue to ask the same question. Even without movies and television Walpole's government still had Yahoos, blunt enders and pointy enders. Paul Ryan knows less than my Pekinese about economics but I could sure use him as a fitness coach. Mitch McConnel makes a fine Senate Majority Leader and would be great if he understood policy and its ramifications.
I live in one of the most conservative countries on the planet but we understand "the times they are a'changin"
Thirty seven years of stupid can't be undone over night but as the early 19th century statesman and humourist Thomas Chandler Haliburton said "When a man is wrong and won't admit it, he always gets angry."
Anger won't cut it any more it is time to put the solar panels back on the White House and plan for Carter's sustainable economy. We have a planet to save.
I live in one of the most conservative countries on the planet but we understand "the times they are a'changin"
Thirty seven years of stupid can't be undone over night but as the early 19th century statesman and humourist Thomas Chandler Haliburton said "When a man is wrong and won't admit it, he always gets angry."
Anger won't cut it any more it is time to put the solar panels back on the White House and plan for Carter's sustainable economy. We have a planet to save.
16
Gee, it couldn't have anything to do with the fact the the GOP is the party of stupid? When most Republicans believe that college is a bad thing, what are you expecting.
5
David Brooks called T a "boob"??!! Thank goodness I wasn't drinking anything...it would have come out of my nose!
5
The ADA passed because the Dems controlled both houses of congress,; the Clinton Work/Welfare Reform pushed more people onto the rolls of social security disability, and the Medicare Part D passed without any provisions to pay the costs.
2
If the election of Donald Trump did anything positive it showed that a
Republican could easily win the Presidential nomination by promising to preserve and strengthen Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid while making Healthcare insurance cover more at lower cost that it is currently.
He coupled it with anti-immigrant policy, nationalism, racism and numerous other Republican and Alt-Right positions.
This reveals a tremendous majority of Americans want the Social Retirement and Healthcare programs preserved perpetuated and I expect Americans are willing to foot the bill for the programs too.
Republican politicians need to understand these programs are vital and important to a vast swath of Americans.
Americans need to enhance our public educational institutions as well.
True political leadership would recognize these facts and work to meet the challenges and find the methods to achieve the economic dynamism required to perpetuate their funding through a rebuild of our Infrastructure and a redefining of what a "fair share" tax policy looks like.
We do not need the tax structure of the 1950's but we do need to rebalance tax fairness.
Our past 35 plus years of giving the very wealthiest a huge discount on their share of being an American has hurt this nation to the point we elected a huckster who made promises to Republican Americans and other Americans that they found irresistible.
Congressional and Senate leaders, who's going to answer the call?
Republican could easily win the Presidential nomination by promising to preserve and strengthen Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid while making Healthcare insurance cover more at lower cost that it is currently.
He coupled it with anti-immigrant policy, nationalism, racism and numerous other Republican and Alt-Right positions.
This reveals a tremendous majority of Americans want the Social Retirement and Healthcare programs preserved perpetuated and I expect Americans are willing to foot the bill for the programs too.
Republican politicians need to understand these programs are vital and important to a vast swath of Americans.
Americans need to enhance our public educational institutions as well.
True political leadership would recognize these facts and work to meet the challenges and find the methods to achieve the economic dynamism required to perpetuate their funding through a rebuild of our Infrastructure and a redefining of what a "fair share" tax policy looks like.
We do not need the tax structure of the 1950's but we do need to rebalance tax fairness.
Our past 35 plus years of giving the very wealthiest a huge discount on their share of being an American has hurt this nation to the point we elected a huckster who made promises to Republican Americans and other Americans that they found irresistible.
Congressional and Senate leaders, who's going to answer the call?
8
The GOP is reaping the fruits of McConnell's campaign of scorched earth partisanship. No surprise that 8 years of a unified party saying the one word "No" has created a party that does not know how to constructively govern.
Coupled with that is the no-longer-hidden fact that the GOP legislates for their campaign donors, not their electors. "Blowback after GOP fails to pass Healthcare Bill" refers to the GOP Senators' contributors and no where does it mention their constituents.
(We went to war over 3000 dead in 9/11; yet we now have a party in control that wishes to legislate the deaths, suffering and bankruptcies of thousands of Americans---they are the real threat to our health and happiness.)
Coupled with that is the no-longer-hidden fact that the GOP legislates for their campaign donors, not their electors. "Blowback after GOP fails to pass Healthcare Bill" refers to the GOP Senators' contributors and no where does it mention their constituents.
(We went to war over 3000 dead in 9/11; yet we now have a party in control that wishes to legislate the deaths, suffering and bankruptcies of thousands of Americans---they are the real threat to our health and happiness.)
5
This column misses the mark. The Republican Party promotes policies that favor its major donors -- arms and weapons manufacturers; fossil-fuel producers and distributors; banks and insurance companies; and assorted other wealthy industrialists, including operators of private prisons. To win votes, it makes appeals to the George Wallace Crowd, stirring up their racism and irrational fears. To preserve its power, it changes the rules wherever it can and acts ruthlessly to stifle political rivals.
But make no mistake. The Republican Party promotes policies intended to promote the sale of guns and weapons; the sale of coal and petroleum products; and the incarceration of millions, mostly for non-violent possession of intoxicants.
There is no large constituency that favors these policies, and so it stirs up fear and loathing among the George Wallace Crowd. Donald Trump's Administration is the ultimate expression of the Republican Party, the culmination of Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy.
Pundits like Mr. Brooks can philosophize all they want, but he is only carrying water for that party, giving it an air of respectability and thoughtfulness it ceased to deserve when it alighted upon its Southern Strategy -- sops to the racists for their votes, and policies for arms dealers, fossil-fuel vendors and various other plutocrats, and let's throw leftists and minorities in jail for a profit while we are at it.
But make no mistake. The Republican Party promotes policies intended to promote the sale of guns and weapons; the sale of coal and petroleum products; and the incarceration of millions, mostly for non-violent possession of intoxicants.
There is no large constituency that favors these policies, and so it stirs up fear and loathing among the George Wallace Crowd. Donald Trump's Administration is the ultimate expression of the Republican Party, the culmination of Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy.
Pundits like Mr. Brooks can philosophize all they want, but he is only carrying water for that party, giving it an air of respectability and thoughtfulness it ceased to deserve when it alighted upon its Southern Strategy -- sops to the racists for their votes, and policies for arms dealers, fossil-fuel vendors and various other plutocrats, and let's throw leftists and minorities in jail for a profit while we are at it.
7
David, another great piece.
I do take issue with the claim that the GOP is the "Drain the Swamp Party." While Trump used that as an applause line in his stump speeches, he has done nothing to drain the swamp. Rather, he has expanded the swamp, added various new invasive, posionous species and is feeding them in an attempt to bolster his power.
Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are even worse. They have systematically fought all attempts to stop the flood of money that has so disastrously distorted our political system. While Citizen's United could easily be overturned with Congrssional legislation with bi-partisan support, the GOP has no interest in overturning it. Why? Because today's GOP believes that legislation is best when it is bought and paid for.
But you do rightly identify a marked change which has occurred in the Republican Party. Great men like George H.W. Bush understood that while government should be limited, it does have a role to play in a modern, western society. Government is uniquely positioned to provide structures, systems and incentives, that that can unleash potential within the people of a soceity.
The biggest challenge to the Republican Party is who is setting the agenda. The alt-right is drowning is conspiracy theories. As such, it is constant war-time footing. Demanding purity and fealty, unelected blowhards like limbaugh, levin, and Hannity direct the circus. We now have Mafia Don as the Master of Ceremonies.
I do take issue with the claim that the GOP is the "Drain the Swamp Party." While Trump used that as an applause line in his stump speeches, he has done nothing to drain the swamp. Rather, he has expanded the swamp, added various new invasive, posionous species and is feeding them in an attempt to bolster his power.
Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are even worse. They have systematically fought all attempts to stop the flood of money that has so disastrously distorted our political system. While Citizen's United could easily be overturned with Congrssional legislation with bi-partisan support, the GOP has no interest in overturning it. Why? Because today's GOP believes that legislation is best when it is bought and paid for.
But you do rightly identify a marked change which has occurred in the Republican Party. Great men like George H.W. Bush understood that while government should be limited, it does have a role to play in a modern, western society. Government is uniquely positioned to provide structures, systems and incentives, that that can unleash potential within the people of a soceity.
The biggest challenge to the Republican Party is who is setting the agenda. The alt-right is drowning is conspiracy theories. As such, it is constant war-time footing. Demanding purity and fealty, unelected blowhards like limbaugh, levin, and Hannity direct the circus. We now have Mafia Don as the Master of Ceremonies.
10
For the first time in a long time, Brooks has said something relevant and consequential rather than opining mystical thoughts about why he is so confused and perplexed by his own party. A lightbulb must have come on in his brain.
He has hit the proverbial nail on the head and described the reason I and others like me slowly left that party over the last 30+ years. It all started when Reagan so darkly said "The government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem." No Mr. President, that is not the problem. The problem is the people who think that way.
That shift in attitude coincides with the influence of other factors including ongoing racism concentrated into one party through its southern strategy, wealth concentration placed above the general Welfare and narcissism used as a moral compass above all else. It is all of those factors bound together with the attitude of government being the problem that have so negatively driven the GOP from Grand as in Lincoln to Gross as in Trump.
Maybe it's time for today's old mainly white, mainly male GOP to Exit Stage Right and be replaced by the more moderates within he party whether now in office or waiting in the primary wings to be selected to serve on the big stage; you know the stage Reagan said is the problem, not the people on it.
Hats off to Brooks today. He has truly nailed it!
He has hit the proverbial nail on the head and described the reason I and others like me slowly left that party over the last 30+ years. It all started when Reagan so darkly said "The government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem." No Mr. President, that is not the problem. The problem is the people who think that way.
That shift in attitude coincides with the influence of other factors including ongoing racism concentrated into one party through its southern strategy, wealth concentration placed above the general Welfare and narcissism used as a moral compass above all else. It is all of those factors bound together with the attitude of government being the problem that have so negatively driven the GOP from Grand as in Lincoln to Gross as in Trump.
Maybe it's time for today's old mainly white, mainly male GOP to Exit Stage Right and be replaced by the more moderates within he party whether now in office or waiting in the primary wings to be selected to serve on the big stage; you know the stage Reagan said is the problem, not the people on it.
Hats off to Brooks today. He has truly nailed it!
10
Just to clue you in Mr Brooks but Medicare Part D is a horrible system. As we are finding out, using for profit mechanisms to create a public good doesn't work well. Competition does not create better goods and services in health care. Prof Krugman has pointed out Health insurance is about getting premiums and never paying claims.
5
The result of the anti-governing party -- the freedom as detachment party as you define it -- is legislative nothingness. The party that doesn't believe in governing clearly cannot govern.
5
David Brooks is no health care economist, but he should do better than come up with examples like "a bill that offers catastrophic care to the millions of Americans left out of Obamacare". Is he talking about those who earn less than the ACA subsidy cutoff but happen to live in states where GOP governors or legislatures refused to expand Medicaid the way the law envisioned? Then why not just give them expanded Medicaid, 90% of which is paid for with Federal money in perpetuity? Or perhaps he means illegal immigrants barred by law from Medicaid or any ACA benefits - presumably as they should be in any Republican-backed plan?
3
Pretty much everything that has crossed Trump's desk has been signed. Of course, this is no surprise, since of all things, Trump is flexible. In other words, he's policy-free. So the problem is Congress, not Trump.
4
I want to start a new party and call it the Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You Party.
8
I suspect that those in the middle class who voted for Trump will not only be sorely disappointed, but they will continue to "lose ground" in this modern world, and the GOP and it's "freedom-as-detachment" philosophy will further accelerate those declines.
6
You are correct that they will continue to lose ground, but they won't be disappointed. To be disappointed they would have to be in possession of enough of the facts to understand what is going on.
6
The GOP has the major problem that it's stalemated. Although the big goal is the same, dismantle government, there seems to be a difference over how to get there. The fiscal conservatives seem to be unable to think past immediately cutting expenses, while Ryan/McConnell think a more incremental approach has better long term prospects.
But at bottom, fellas, it's all about getting rid of government and putting the billionaires in charge. So settle your differences over methods! Remember: do what you're told to do! Who besides billionaires can make the country better for billionaires??
But at bottom, fellas, it's all about getting rid of government and putting the billionaires in charge. So settle your differences over methods! Remember: do what you're told to do! Who besides billionaires can make the country better for billionaires??
4
It's tough to govern effectively when the stars of your party address only one or two hot-button issues dogmatically -- and even harder when those stupid stubborn facts get in the way of your ideology.
By letting the American Taliban Christian Right and Grover Nordquist run the party and by casting out non-ideological Republicans as RINOs, the Republican party has built a tent that will last only as long as their core voters remain alive.
When the Republicans decide they owe more to voters and the country than to their major stockholders -- that is, once they quit letting the Democrats be the only adults in the room -- will they become a viable party once again.
By letting the American Taliban Christian Right and Grover Nordquist run the party and by casting out non-ideological Republicans as RINOs, the Republican party has built a tent that will last only as long as their core voters remain alive.
When the Republicans decide they owe more to voters and the country than to their major stockholders -- that is, once they quit letting the Democrats be the only adults in the room -- will they become a viable party once again.
6
nailed it.
3
Surely the following can hardly be called detachment:
(1) Invading Iraq. (2) Denying eligible people the right to vote. (3) Refusal to do their job in hearing Justice Garland. (4) Actively denying climate change by tossing snowballs on the senate floor. (5) Believing that LGBT people "choose" their orientation. (6) Believing that corporations are people. (7) Believing that money is free speech.
This all is active malfeasance.
(1) Invading Iraq. (2) Denying eligible people the right to vote. (3) Refusal to do their job in hearing Justice Garland. (4) Actively denying climate change by tossing snowballs on the senate floor. (5) Believing that LGBT people "choose" their orientation. (6) Believing that corporations are people. (7) Believing that money is free speech.
This all is active malfeasance.
11
Is the title of this odd essay a threat or a wish?
1
Freedom as detachment? How do you square that with the GOP's unrelenting attack in its latest iteration on women's control of their bodies? Forty years ago the party supported Roe. Then the rejection of feminism became a plank in Reagan's coalition.
5
"...Republicans offer nothing but negativity, detachment, absence and an ax.". Nonsense! Tax cuts for Oligarchs are the solution to any and all problems. You haven't been paying attention.
3
Thank God they can't pass bills. If they were able to they would do even more damage to this country than they are now doing, which is quite a lot. Why they continually try to damage us is beyond me. lt is hard to believe they do it for money, but I think that's the main reason. So, in a sense, they are really traitors to what this country stands for and for the people who inhabit it. If only the democrats knew how to take advantage of the republicans destructiveness....if only......
4
It is getting to the point that I can't wait for the next David Brooks column.
1
Welcome to the Democratic party, Mr. Brooks.
5
You left out a crucial part of the problem. Republicans are the party that sacrifices ordinary Americans to the rich. They cut our services, wages, security, and channel the savings into the pockets of their plutocratic benefactors. Nothing, including treason, is too reprehensible to deter them from their primary goal---feed the rich.
7
Adding the drug option to Medicare did not give Medicare the FREEDOM to negotiate with Big Pharma thanks to a GOP amendment with the author of the amendment having the FREEDOM to become a high paid lobbyist for Big Pharma. Why this was not pure graft is beyond me.
7
Ouch!
1
So...if the GOP controls the WH, the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court...and they STILL can't find common ground on anything except abortion...are they a viable party, or a party in name only?
5
In the end, why blame the Republican lawmakers? American voters wanted to have their "Democrats/Liberals are losers, they've done nothing for us" cake and eat it too: "But let's keep what they gave us and did for us." How's that working out? Republicans AREN'T going to do that, OK? You didn't know that? At the end of the day, actions speak louder than words. In your lazy need for sexy sizzling messages from the Dems, you brushed away what Dems DID for you. You may have heard of one such contribution? The ACA, also called Obamacare?
4
A few weeks ago I was on a train and a loud annoying young woman was gushing about her conservative views. She had friends in SF, she said, and just could not understand their love for liberal ideas. Then, without skipping a beat, she announces "My back was acting up this week so I wasn't gonna go to work. I took my Family and Medical Leave - the heck with them thinking I have to work when I've got a backache."
I thought of calling her out on her hypocrisy, telling her that any improvement she's seen in her short life has been the result of liberal policies and politicians, but what's the use? You can't fix stupid.
Today's Times has some interviews with chanting ACA-haters who are just starting to realize that maybe having some health insurance isn't actually a bad thing. However, I still have no faith that the average brainwashed Trump voter will wake up to facts anytime soon, however.
I thought of calling her out on her hypocrisy, telling her that any improvement she's seen in her short life has been the result of liberal policies and politicians, but what's the use? You can't fix stupid.
Today's Times has some interviews with chanting ACA-haters who are just starting to realize that maybe having some health insurance isn't actually a bad thing. However, I still have no faith that the average brainwashed Trump voter will wake up to facts anytime soon, however.
1
Republican failure on healthcare is not about intellectual failure, it's about lying. Death panels, Job killing, etc., and the denial that Obamacare gave millions of people pretty good insurance. Having convinced their base of these lies, they can't explain to them why they shouldn't just repeal in toto. And any replacement that doesn't cause disaster for millions ends up looking a lot like. ... Obamacare!
5
And the last line of his column says it all..............
“Today, the G.O.P. is flirting with its most humiliating failure...”
No, today the government is flirting with its most humiliating failure; “disaster,” catastrophe even. A presidential clown, a congress that can’t pass gas, much less bills, and a supreme court that’s become a playground for adolescent indulgence and epicurean whims. And as for the terminal affair, a press that’s 110% complicit with the entire “business.”
I’m sorry Mr. Brooks, but your op-ed is narrow-minded, and in dire need of some life and vision, myopically portraying as it were an out of control party that can’t get its act together, when the “real” problem is the entire “mess.”
No, today the government is flirting with its most humiliating failure; “disaster,” catastrophe even. A presidential clown, a congress that can’t pass gas, much less bills, and a supreme court that’s become a playground for adolescent indulgence and epicurean whims. And as for the terminal affair, a press that’s 110% complicit with the entire “business.”
I’m sorry Mr. Brooks, but your op-ed is narrow-minded, and in dire need of some life and vision, myopically portraying as it were an out of control party that can’t get its act together, when the “real” problem is the entire “mess.”
2
>>In 2003, Republicans passed a law giving Americans a new prescription drug benefit, which used market mechanisms to give them more control over how to use it.
This is a LIE. The legislation was specifically designed by the GOP to prevent the US government from negotiating price of drugs. WE have no congtrol. the big pharma companies do.
To call this "more control" is a perfect example of how Brook permanently drank the brain dead conservative Kool-Aid that passes for a political philosophy and is never going to "get it" about how real life works.
This is a LIE. The legislation was specifically designed by the GOP to prevent the US government from negotiating price of drugs. WE have no congtrol. the big pharma companies do.
To call this "more control" is a perfect example of how Brook permanently drank the brain dead conservative Kool-Aid that passes for a political philosophy and is never going to "get it" about how real life works.
6
A very succinct, very persuasive essay. Thank you, David Brooks, for nailing it with this minimal masterpiece.
David - while I agree with everything you've said, my sense is that you've identified the symptom, but not the cause.
The symptom is obvious: the sole focus of the current version of the Republican party is to provide the rich with a mammoth tax-break by cutting spending on programs that benefit the poor.
But the symptom demonstrates that the Republican party is able to gain power despite its embrace of policies that favor the wealthy few at the expense of the interests of the majority of the voting population.
And the cause of that symptom is depressingly obvious: the electoral process has been gamed to favor the wealthy and powerful via a) gerrymandering; b) uncontrolled campaign financing c) voter ID restrictions and d) a flawed electoral college system.
Unfortunately, Americans no longer live in a democracy.
The symptom is obvious: the sole focus of the current version of the Republican party is to provide the rich with a mammoth tax-break by cutting spending on programs that benefit the poor.
But the symptom demonstrates that the Republican party is able to gain power despite its embrace of policies that favor the wealthy few at the expense of the interests of the majority of the voting population.
And the cause of that symptom is depressingly obvious: the electoral process has been gamed to favor the wealthy and powerful via a) gerrymandering; b) uncontrolled campaign financing c) voter ID restrictions and d) a flawed electoral college system.
Unfortunately, Americans no longer live in a democracy.
19
And when did modern Republicans become the "Government Get Off My Back" party? I'd pinpoint the day Reagan said government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem. No matter the context to which he aimed those words, Republicans have moved further and further to the extreme in their anti-government, deregulation, and privatization zeal. It began with Reagan and hopefully will end with the demise of the Trump regime.
10
"everything would be fine if only those... elites in Washington got out of the way" But dysfunctional governance actually works for one group of people: the 1%: which does business locally and globally. So, we would expect law enforcement and 'national defense' will remain functional (You rob a bank you go to jail. You are a bank, and you rob Mainstreet: not so much). And how many Americans think all $600 billion a year spent on the military is for 'national defense'? We project force out into the middle of the Indian Ocean because our wealthy have assets out there, and that is the reason for that level of spending. Everything else in America should be broken, especially meddlesome regulations that prevent the 1% from exploiting resources in America (coal jobs? Come on: the only jobs Trump is protecting are the jobs of coal owners). Perhaps we should consider the possibility that, far from doing a poor job, the GOP is doing a fantastic job for its constituency.
6
If the Rs get there way they will make America worst. All from an ideal that the 50s were better. Destroy the ACA, cut social security, cut medicare, change the rules of law developed over the last 60 years. They have done these things at the state level and they have made Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, Kansas, parts of other states into 3rd world countries. And yet what so many have today comes from progressive thinking especially in states like California, Washington, Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, Virginia. Trying to bring 1/3rd of a country up is hard when that third refuses to see the light.
3
The party of social Darwinism associated with a POTUS who is the ultimate social Darwinist.
3
Let's hope and pray that GOP voters really are elephants, and never forget what their own party is doing to them.
3
While I do appreciate this article, David, I'm still waiting for the one where you pledge to never again vote for Republicans, from President all the way down to local school boards.
8
It's much easier to obstruct than construct, David, especially for an institution like the US Senate, designed to cool passions and oppose the tyranny of both king and demos -- styled "The President" and "House of Representatives". But while trying to deconstruct so-called Obamacare senior Republican senators epitomized by Sen. McConnell, experts at obstruction, ran up against the very monster they had built and loosed upon Obama. It had no "off" switch, and they suddenly had to develop new tactics, arguments and skill-sets to fit what was, for them, novel circumstances: the old, detested King was gone but the new one was one of their own. That he appeared to be a useful idiot easily led around by the nose an added benefit. Be careful what you wish for.
But McConnell and his caucus, largely informed and trained to defy executive authority and obstruct it in myriad ways, had to shed those same traits and habits in a hurry. Alas, "a leopard cannot change its spots", the saying goes.
But McConnell and his caucus, largely informed and trained to defy executive authority and obstruct it in myriad ways, had to shed those same traits and habits in a hurry. Alas, "a leopard cannot change its spots", the saying goes.
4
LOL. And all this time I thought it was just because they didn't like Obama. Brooks has revealed their secret shame!
2
"If you’re a regular American, the main threat to your freedom is illness, family breakdown, social decay, technological disruption and globalization."
I'm confused...I thought from your earlier column that the largest threat to freedom was pretentious charcuterie.
I'm confused...I thought from your earlier column that the largest threat to freedom was pretentious charcuterie.
3
Ah... the Four PASSIVE Freedoms; to be exploited - to be abandoned - to be ignorant - to be enslaved
and their ACTIVE counterparts; to rape - to pillage - to lie - to con
... do I have this about right ??
and their ACTIVE counterparts; to rape - to pillage - to lie - to con
... do I have this about right ??
8
Brooks credits the Republicans for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), but that legislation was authored by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Rep. Tony Coelho (D-CA) and approved by a Democrat-controlled Congress.
Indeed, the only votes AGAINST the ADA were Republicans like Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC).
Indeed, the only votes AGAINST the ADA were Republicans like Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC).
13
Thank You!!!! [For a minute there, I thought it was me!]
No Republican policy in your lifetime has "promoted the general welfare."
2
The only thing the GOP is good at passing is gas.
1
At the core of the problem is a republican party that continues to foster an anti-government message to a base that is ignorant of the fact that the states which receive the most in federal assistance per capita and pay the least in taxes are almost exclusively Red states, and that the states that pay the most in federal taxes and receive the least back are Blue states. The Republicans have been feeding the opioids of deception to the American public all for the purposes of gaining support for cutting domestic programs to grant tax cuts to the top ten percent but hiding the fact that the cuts they are talking about are the sugar that their voters are hooked on. Unless and until we start seeing some statesmen (and women) in both parties that truly care more about the country then perpetuating themselves and the tax cuts for the rich this ship is going down fast and we’ll be looking up at the rear ends of other countries that have their act together. American exceptionalism is not a foregone conclusion but requires that all people in America are truly provide an equal opportunity.
6
Look at one of McClownell's tweaks to Trumpcare - taking money from the blue states to pay for the opiate addiction treatment of the red states. An addiction which, by the way, ballooned due to that freedom-inspired Medicare Part D giveaway that our Mr Brooks believes is one of the three examples of Republican good governance he can recall in his lifetime. Irony is, the latest Republican Faux News talking point seems to be that the gay-loving blue states are going bankrupt and need to be supported by the freedom-loving red states.
Jack Kemp a good Republican? Please! He was a contributor to making abortion become a political issue. That aside, Republicans are especially in this mess today because they helped elect and continue to support Trump, a despicable, moronic, lying, narcissistic, Putin loving weasel (no offense to weasels as an animal). If Republicans want to survive they need to count their losses, join with the Democrats and impeach Trump soon. That’s about the only way they can save face. Otherwise it’s down with the ship as their violins play on and then silence.
4
That sure made me snicker. Paul Ryan, an even bigger fake and obstructionist than McConnell, received all his on the job training from... Jack Kemp. True, Ryan does worship at the fictional theology if Rand, but his governing training was in the office and under the guidance of Kemp.
2
So what you are saying is that we would be best to detach our nation from the party of "no".
5
For a party that has all the maladies you liberals speak of it's interesting how they keep coming out the victors.
"A party operating under this philosophy is not going to spawn creative thinkers who come up with positive new ideas for how to help people. It’s not going to nurture policy entrepreneurs. It’s not going to respect ideas, period." I think Mr. Brooks is referring to the base here. Denies science, by a recent poll is against higher education. Combine tricks like gerrymandering and voter suppression with a know nothing and proud of it base that is conned to turn out to vote against its best interests time and again. Yeah, that's such a winner for America. The base is dying, the future is highly educated and well informed, full of creativity. The GOP base does not reflect those attributes.
2
Yeah, that's Trump's ideology, all right. Winning is everything no matter how many have to die. You and your fellow uninformed, incurious, ignorant anti-intellectual Republican lackeys are the reason the American century is over and the Great Experiment has failed. So go gag-a on MAGA!
File under fooling some of the people some of the time.
1
I highly recommend Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson's new book, "American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Rich." http://tinyurl.com/y7lv4b2j
1
There's also freedom of distraction. That's where the president of the United States lies repeatedly --- one lie after another, so many lies that the the news cycle cannot process a lie before another one comes along. The result is that the presdient can get away with a great deal as well as convince his imbecilic devotees that he is being inappropriately presecuted.
There's also freedom of destruction, also known as burning down the house. That's where an entire edifice is simply destroyed so that another can be built in its place. In this case the building is the federal government and the rule of law. A lot of Trump disciples think that destroying the system is a fine idea so it can be recreated in their sick image. Vladimir Putin thinks also thinks that's a great idea. Trump and many of his supporters are simply traitors. The rest of his supporters are simply ignorant.
There's also freedom of destruction, also known as burning down the house. That's where an entire edifice is simply destroyed so that another can be built in its place. In this case the building is the federal government and the rule of law. A lot of Trump disciples think that destroying the system is a fine idea so it can be recreated in their sick image. Vladimir Putin thinks also thinks that's a great idea. Trump and many of his supporters are simply traitors. The rest of his supporters are simply ignorant.
4
Perhaps the greatest irony is that a comprehensive health care bill was - back in the day - first s Republican proposal. When the Democrats picked up the banner, the Republicans turned against their own idea. How pathetic. The rest is sad history. David, I'd like to hear you analysis of that bit of history, and is contect as it continues today..
3
Spot on! I raise my muffaletta to salute your elite acumen, Mr Brooks!
Now how about a piece about Republicans subverting democracy via gerrymandering and voter resctrictions?
Now how about a piece about Republicans subverting democracy via gerrymandering and voter resctrictions?
4
They have been promising to not govern since RR and now they are delivering, but that may be a good thing when you get a good whiff of their agenda which seems to emanate from the far right stall of the GOP mens room.
2
Perhaps they confused by being confronted with sandwiches named “Padrino” and “Pomodoro” and ingredients like soppressata, capicollo and a striata baguette.
2
"There are many reasons Republicans have been failing as a governing party, but the primary one is intellectual. " Perhaps. But I believe the primary reason is simply laziness. It's the same reasons republicans and conservatives hate and try to destroy education. Because, like governing, education done correctly, is hard. The party that proclaims itself to be the "party of hard work and self reliance" is in fact, a party composed of nothing but do nothing, know nothing, lazy bums. How did it get to this? The republicans, aided by the all too willing to go along with the charade democrats, hit on a perfect strategy in Washington. Simply become the party that does nothing, and let the democrats (on occasion) do something. Let them do the hard work. But never ever lift a finger to do any work, or to help. One party, ever once in a rare while, does something to help ordinary Americans, say the ACA. The other does nothing. Meanwhile both work hard at only one thing - protecting and coddling the wealthiest Americans. For that is their one and only, and primary purpose in Washington. All other priorities are subservient to protecting and further enriching the rich. It's been a good scam for both parties, especially the ones who don't have to do any real work. But the charade is ending, and what you see are parties who no longer know how to govern. Especially the republicans.
1
In Shakespeare's time---Henry VI part 2---it was the lawyers. Now it seems to be the right wing billionaires at the root of all our troubles.
If we take Jeff Sessions' legal theory on confiscation seriously, a simple tip acccusing them of any crime (burnt out tail light? Jaywalking?) would be enough for the local cops to take the billionaires' assets and buy fleets of jet fighters and strategic bombers.
If we take Jeff Sessions' legal theory on confiscation seriously, a simple tip acccusing them of any crime (burnt out tail light? Jaywalking?) would be enough for the local cops to take the billionaires' assets and buy fleets of jet fighters and strategic bombers.
1
Nice try David - very intellectual. Guess who the Republicans kow-tow to? Two groups; (i) Anti-intellectual rascist imbeciles and (ii) Ultra-rich american oligarchs. Neither group wants anything to do with improving the lives of "regular" US citizens. The former by virtue of idiocy, the latter by design.
6
For at least a decade, some of them have started serving Russian Oligarchs too!
3
The health care bill "has no sponsors, no hearings, no champions and no advocates"?
Oh, but it DOES have its advocates--the Kochs, the Mercers, the Adelsons and the other bigly GOP donors. They are its raison d'etre.
Oh, but it DOES have its advocates--the Kochs, the Mercers, the Adelsons and the other bigly GOP donors. They are its raison d'etre.
6
David,
Once again, excellent analysis!
Maybe at the core is this truth: to put people in charge of government who hate government, whatever their party, is to get a hateful government.
gerry hair
Once again, excellent analysis!
Maybe at the core is this truth: to put people in charge of government who hate government, whatever their party, is to get a hateful government.
gerry hair
4
"A party operating under this philosophy is not going to spawn creative thinkers who come up with positive new ideas for how to help people."
Ha-ha, hee-hee. My sides are aching.
Help people!!! Are you kidding? Donnie and the Wealthy do not know what it means to help people!! As for new ideas, give all of your money to the rich has been around a while.
Ha-ha, hee-hee. My sides are aching.
Help people!!! Are you kidding? Donnie and the Wealthy do not know what it means to help people!! As for new ideas, give all of your money to the rich has been around a while.
2
Trump is a "boob"??????
For a NY Times writer surely you can come up with something more appropriate!
For a NY Times writer surely you can come up with something more appropriate!
1
What is most disturbing about republicans are the lies they tell. Because of their position this should be a crime. And their lies are always finished with blame games, topped off with "my people of my state want this." Yes and pigs fly.
Reagan began this mess in health care and maybe I should say the GOP hoodwinked him on it but either way as the years went by it got worse. Obama tweaked his healthcare package because he wanted to get enough to vote for it cause he knew they did not understand it. Clinton wanted him to speak more about it but he knew he could talk all he wanted that the people when they had more money in their pocket and actual healthcare for their family they would then know. Republicans and democrats should be now fine tuning it and making better it but the hate mongering republicans only yell repeal repeal and replace. They don't care they just want money for the rich like they promised. Their ancestors must be rolling over in their graves.
Reagan began this mess in health care and maybe I should say the GOP hoodwinked him on it but either way as the years went by it got worse. Obama tweaked his healthcare package because he wanted to get enough to vote for it cause he knew they did not understand it. Clinton wanted him to speak more about it but he knew he could talk all he wanted that the people when they had more money in their pocket and actual healthcare for their family they would then know. Republicans and democrats should be now fine tuning it and making better it but the hate mongering republicans only yell repeal repeal and replace. They don't care they just want money for the rich like they promised. Their ancestors must be rolling over in their graves.
3
What a big surprise.......
The Republicans and the Republican Party have been morally bankrupt tor two decades!
The Republicans and the Republican Party have been morally bankrupt tor two decades!
6
There are so many Hilary-hater misogynists, Obama-hater racists, people who believe "elites" in Washington don't include their representatives and senators, gullible morons who listen to right-wing talk radio and believe talk show hosts with zero credentials relating to their assertions, Trump could have run on "vote for me because you are stupid" and won. In my lifetime (and I'm 64) I remember being interested in both political parties (having watched the 1964 GOP convention), until Richard Nixon/Watergate, and Ronald (dementia)Reagan. The downward pitch steepened with 1994 with Newt Gingrich and the laughable "contract with America", shutting down the Government and losing the 1996 election. The GOP platform has become more and more cruel and detached from reality since. Yet, they seem to find life in connecting negativeness with the common person; convincing them others are the problem, not the GOP. Well the answer is front and center: a POTUS who is shallow as a puddle on the sidewalk, Speaker who is so self-enamored, nothing is accomplished, a senate majority leader who is so negative, he lacks any imagination; attempting to ram stupid legislation down his colleagues throats. Thank god for their ineptness. The GOP slogan for the 2018 election, "Nothing Accomplished". They'l go down in flames.
6
At this point, I highly doubt they could even pass gas.
2
I had considered adding that it is the ONLY thing they can pass, but that would be too gross.....
Yeah, freedumb. I'm free as can be to buy a Trump condo or a Tesla or go on a round-the-world luxury trip or eat in fancy restaurants in Brooks' bobo paradise. Or is it bozo?
Yes, I am. Only thing standing in my way is, of course, the wealth that the GOP has taken from me and us to give to the mega, macro, super rich. And, of course, tax breaks for people like Brooks' president.
Yes, I am. Only thing standing in my way is, of course, the wealth that the GOP has taken from me and us to give to the mega, macro, super rich. And, of course, tax breaks for people like Brooks' president.
5
David, You've missed again. GOP has a freedom-as-detachment philosophy narrowly constrained to only those things they feel willing to be detached about. Mainly the freedom to reduce their tax rates to a percentage approaching zero.
They are certainly not detached about the rights of women, the right to decent health care, the right decent public education, etc. and they feel absolutely no compunction about trying to rip those freedoms out root and branch. The honest among them would no doubt agree.
They are certainly not detached about the rights of women, the right to decent health care, the right decent public education, etc. and they feel absolutely no compunction about trying to rip those freedoms out root and branch. The honest among them would no doubt agree.
7
No different from a company, a nation's greatest assets are its people.
Companies that fail to invest in their people are companies that do not reach their potential.
There is no natural resource more valuable than a nation's people.
If there's any doubt, look at the nations of the world that have limited to no natural resources. Japan, a small island nation has the world's third largest economy. South Korea has the fifteenth largest economy despite the fact that most of its natural resources are in North Korea and quite inaccessible.
Italy, aside from marble has few natural resources, they have the eighth largest economy.
What do all of these countries have in common? The have strong social safety nets, they invest in education, they promote free trade.
If republicans want to make America great, they should start by investing in Americans instead of American corporations.
Companies that fail to invest in their people are companies that do not reach their potential.
There is no natural resource more valuable than a nation's people.
If there's any doubt, look at the nations of the world that have limited to no natural resources. Japan, a small island nation has the world's third largest economy. South Korea has the fifteenth largest economy despite the fact that most of its natural resources are in North Korea and quite inaccessible.
Italy, aside from marble has few natural resources, they have the eighth largest economy.
What do all of these countries have in common? The have strong social safety nets, they invest in education, they promote free trade.
If republicans want to make America great, they should start by investing in Americans instead of American corporations.
15
I think that what besets the Republican Party is a desire to think that being a nation does not mean that we are all in it together, when it fact we are. That translates into a desire for freedom from being responsible for the circumstances of our fellow citizens where it becomes burdensome.
6
An interesting distinction regarding freedom: capacity and detachment.
If we apply this to FDR "four freedoms," we find that the first two are capacities:
• freedom of speech
• freedom of worship
...and the other two, are detachments:
• freedom from want
• freedom from fear
That was when government was a positive public institution, responsible of its civic duties.
Since Ronald Reagan's statement "government is the problem," it became a negative instrument for dismantling public welfare. And, that is what Republicans have been doing ever since.
If we apply this to FDR "four freedoms," we find that the first two are capacities:
• freedom of speech
• freedom of worship
...and the other two, are detachments:
• freedom from want
• freedom from fear
That was when government was a positive public institution, responsible of its civic duties.
Since Ronald Reagan's statement "government is the problem," it became a negative instrument for dismantling public welfare. And, that is what Republicans have been doing ever since.
8
A worthwhile distinction regarding freedom: capacity and detachment.
If we apply this to FDR "four freedoms," we find that the first two are capacities:
• freedom of speech
• freedom of worship
...and the other two:
• freedom from want
• freedom from fear
That was when government was a positive public institution, responsible of its civic duties.
Since Ronald Reagan's statement "government is the problem," it became a negative instrument for dismantling public welfare. And, that is what Republicans have been doing ever since.
If we apply this to FDR "four freedoms," we find that the first two are capacities:
• freedom of speech
• freedom of worship
...and the other two:
• freedom from want
• freedom from fear
That was when government was a positive public institution, responsible of its civic duties.
Since Ronald Reagan's statement "government is the problem," it became a negative instrument for dismantling public welfare. And, that is what Republicans have been doing ever since.
1
David, you have changed!!! You really had to twist things to make republicans
human--anne
human--anne
Instead of using whatever intellectual capacity that remains to a few of them, they have smiled benignly as the noisy extremists have gained increasing foothold and finally dominate with their idiot stance of NO. No wisdom, no understanding, no diplomacy, no bipartisanship, no compromise...The fearmongering, mob-rousing rhetoric has won the day and destroyed any semblance of a party that Ronald Reagan would recognize. They capitalize on the worst of our instincts and do nothing to inspire or lead. Can't govern?!? Can barely conduct themselves as decent human beings! Where are any bright lights that might lead them out of their benighted swamp?
5
I would add that the Republicans offer this to "negativity, detachment, absence, and an ax: an unwillingness to compromise.
Here in Washington state, our legislators just adjourned their third special session. At the end of the second one, at the very last minute, an operating budget was passed, but not in time for anyone to read it before voting on it. The pretty universal verdict was that the Dems got rolled. The governor vetoed one major item slipped in at the end, but still, the bill mostly went the Republicans' way. Some said the Dems were the grownups at the table who avoided a government shutdown by giving so much away.
The next task was to pass a capital spending bill. The Republicans made that conditional on a separate issue involving water rights. The Dems offered ways to address the water rights issue, but Republicans wanted more. This time, the Democrats held firm, and the session ended with no money agreed to for building schools or mental health facilities or for local water and sewer projects. People who would have jobs because of the proposed 4 billion dollar budget won't be paid to make those improvements.
The Republicans would not compromise, and I'm glad this time around, the Democrats insisted on it instead of capitulating again.
Here in Washington state, our legislators just adjourned their third special session. At the end of the second one, at the very last minute, an operating budget was passed, but not in time for anyone to read it before voting on it. The pretty universal verdict was that the Dems got rolled. The governor vetoed one major item slipped in at the end, but still, the bill mostly went the Republicans' way. Some said the Dems were the grownups at the table who avoided a government shutdown by giving so much away.
The next task was to pass a capital spending bill. The Republicans made that conditional on a separate issue involving water rights. The Dems offered ways to address the water rights issue, but Republicans wanted more. This time, the Democrats held firm, and the session ended with no money agreed to for building schools or mental health facilities or for local water and sewer projects. People who would have jobs because of the proposed 4 billion dollar budget won't be paid to make those improvements.
The Republicans would not compromise, and I'm glad this time around, the Democrats insisted on it instead of capitulating again.
4
Excellent, Big D. This column has compelled me to offer to take you to lunch someday. I'm buying, my brother.
1
For once I believe in what you wrote, Mr. Blow with the exception of health savings accounts. When the average middle class person can't come up with $300 for an emergency, they have no money for health savings accounts either.
You can't save money when you have none!
You can't save money when you have none!
3
The current crop of Republicans in Congress are an amazingly mean, nasty and incompetant bunch of misery. They hate most Americans and each other.
The reason they can't get anything done is they are too stupid and too busy trying to find ways to make other people suffer.
It's really too bad that there isn't a disease that would only kill Congress.
The reason they can't get anything done is they are too stupid and too busy trying to find ways to make other people suffer.
It's really too bad that there isn't a disease that would only kill Congress.
2
David,
Jack Kemp was not a man of ideas. He believed in the fairy dust of supply side economics and he knew how to throw a football. Try again David.
Jack Kemp was not a man of ideas. He believed in the fairy dust of supply side economics and he knew how to throw a football. Try again David.
5
Slamming your party's politics ...good for you. About time someone is! Do you think it will help? (and yes he is the 'boob'!)
1
Freedom of detachment - what a god awful euphemism for the racist, cruel, bigoted, sexist hateful "I got mine you can drop dead" anti government power hungry republicans of today. This is exactly and only the place the racist hateful dog whistles of Reagan forward could ever go, of course now it's not dog whistling anymore, it's a giant megaphone in the hands of an orange narcissistic idiot. Republicans, you reaped what you sowed. No wonder you are in a giant morass of your own making. Enjoy while you sink the rest of us right along with you. Whatever happened to compassion and ethics?! Not one single republican seems to possess either.
7
Some of them are certainly genuinely empathetic individuals, but they are afraid of their so called leaders, who might fund a primary challenge!
There is something baffling about this legislative incompetence of Republicans. Why can't they prioritize an infrastructure bill?
We read about crumbling roads and bridges.
We read about a dearth of good-paying jobs.
We read about low labor force participation by able-bodied men.
We read about spikes in suicide and addiction among such men.
Why can't we pass an infrastructure bill that delivers good jobs directly to this population? Why do we have rusty bridges down the road from an unemployed addict? This is crazy!!
One has to conclude that Republicans absolutely cannot vote on new government spending.
We read about crumbling roads and bridges.
We read about a dearth of good-paying jobs.
We read about low labor force participation by able-bodied men.
We read about spikes in suicide and addiction among such men.
Why can't we pass an infrastructure bill that delivers good jobs directly to this population? Why do we have rusty bridges down the road from an unemployed addict? This is crazy!!
One has to conclude that Republicans absolutely cannot vote on new government spending.
6
Fine work, Mr. Brooks! Fine work! May I tell a short story?
Way back when, there was an election up in New England. A school board election. One or two super-conservatives were running. They were mightily exercised about something.
Books to be exact. "The Wizard of Oz" was one. A book retelling the tale of little Red Riding Hood was another. Get 'em out of our schools. Magic! Wizardry. You know.
And they were elected. I am supposing "The Wizard of Oz" and "Little Red Riding Hood" hit the road. Don't come back no more, no more!. . . .
Did they have any more ideas? About books? About ways to build up the kids' reading skills? Any classics on their list?
No. Nothing. They had no ideas. All their zeal, all that energy was focused on the books they strove to get rid of. They had no positive suggestions to make at all. None.
Another election came round. They were turned out of office. Good riddance.
I used to get e-mails from Republicans in the House. Glowing with pride in a job well-done, one told me, "Sixty nine times (!) we have voted to overturn Obamacare. And submitted it to President Obama for his signature."
Play-acting! He refused (of course) to sign it. What did they expect?
And now? No ideas. Nothing in the pipeline. No positive accomplishments waiting on the horizon. Nothing except the growing awareness of their own impotence. To do ANYTHING. Good or bad.
Good. Let 'em stew in their own juices.
As we look on. Smiling.
Way back when, there was an election up in New England. A school board election. One or two super-conservatives were running. They were mightily exercised about something.
Books to be exact. "The Wizard of Oz" was one. A book retelling the tale of little Red Riding Hood was another. Get 'em out of our schools. Magic! Wizardry. You know.
And they were elected. I am supposing "The Wizard of Oz" and "Little Red Riding Hood" hit the road. Don't come back no more, no more!. . . .
Did they have any more ideas? About books? About ways to build up the kids' reading skills? Any classics on their list?
No. Nothing. They had no ideas. All their zeal, all that energy was focused on the books they strove to get rid of. They had no positive suggestions to make at all. None.
Another election came round. They were turned out of office. Good riddance.
I used to get e-mails from Republicans in the House. Glowing with pride in a job well-done, one told me, "Sixty nine times (!) we have voted to overturn Obamacare. And submitted it to President Obama for his signature."
Play-acting! He refused (of course) to sign it. What did they expect?
And now? No ideas. Nothing in the pipeline. No positive accomplishments waiting on the horizon. Nothing except the growing awareness of their own impotence. To do ANYTHING. Good or bad.
Good. Let 'em stew in their own juices.
As we look on. Smiling.
6
Seriously? You are including the 2003 drug "benefit" as a "legislative accomplishment"? All it accomplished was lining the pockets of Big Pharma and the politicians they donate to. They lied about the cost and it increased the deficit. Instead of using an existing organizational plan, i.e., Medicare, they required hundreds of separate "plans", each costing extra and each covering some drugs and not others. Elderly people had 1 year to wade through all these plans to figure out which one carried their drugs and for how much money, and once they signed, they were stuck with the plan for a year, but the plan could change any of the drugs they carried any time they wanted! If they dropped all your drugs, too bad for you! Does David Brooks not remember this? Has he forgotten about "the doughnut hole", where all coverage disappeared exactly at the point you needed it most? Not to mention, when I called my father's health insurance, a very good plan he received as a retired government employee, they told me than not only was it probably not necessary to pick a plan because their drug coverage was so good, but that if he wanted to sign up, because he was a retired government employee, the 1 year deadline didn't apply to him!! Nice for him, but what about every other American? That legislation was and continues to be a travesty, but I didn't see any Republicans complaining about it then or now.
4
It's sad David, that you write this scathing piece about the GOP and then write a throw away line recognizing that their leader is a "boob". Isn't it the job of the "leader of the GOP" to lead them into relevance. You are another "journalist" who is hell bent on normalizing this disfunction that 77,000 votes created. Does anyone with a brain, think Hillary Clinton would have been anywhere near as inept, dishonest, untruthful or "boobish" than Trump. I think she would have been great!
3
The one freedom that the GOP has been propounding for decades has been to cut taxes for the rich and then blame the Democrats for overspending. Taxes pay for the spending. Good schools, good healthcare, good infrastructure is good use of spending. The GOP is hell bent to dismiss these needs.
The national debt has been rising as a consequence of inadequate tax revenues. Besides raising the national debt, the tax cut mantra has created obscene income and wealth inequality. It has left millions of people unable to afford healthcare insurance. Obamacare corrected that situation by offering subsidies. Republicans want to cut these subsidies, but not the tax cuts they want to give to the rich.
Obamacare mandated everyone to take responsibility for their health by purchasing health insurance with the offer of a subsidy, if needed. GOP wants people to have the freedom of choice; they should not have to buy something if they don’t want to. This is a weird and irresponsible argument. Does the GOP have compassion and concern for their fellow Americans? Obviously not. Portugal, with half the per capita income of the U.S., provides healthcare to all its citizens. What is wrong with the GOP? Can't the GOP be as generous as forty other countries which take care of the health of their people at a nominal cost? The big difference is the lopsided U.S. taxation policy which favors the rich and punishes the poor.
The national debt has been rising as a consequence of inadequate tax revenues. Besides raising the national debt, the tax cut mantra has created obscene income and wealth inequality. It has left millions of people unable to afford healthcare insurance. Obamacare corrected that situation by offering subsidies. Republicans want to cut these subsidies, but not the tax cuts they want to give to the rich.
Obamacare mandated everyone to take responsibility for their health by purchasing health insurance with the offer of a subsidy, if needed. GOP wants people to have the freedom of choice; they should not have to buy something if they don’t want to. This is a weird and irresponsible argument. Does the GOP have compassion and concern for their fellow Americans? Obviously not. Portugal, with half the per capita income of the U.S., provides healthcare to all its citizens. What is wrong with the GOP? Can't the GOP be as generous as forty other countries which take care of the health of their people at a nominal cost? The big difference is the lopsided U.S. taxation policy which favors the rich and punishes the poor.
5
Nothing here is surprising. It's been clear for decades that the GOP is unfit to govern. The only ideas it has are, basically, the same one: reduce government and cut taxes. The absolute need for a modern state to have good government is something that the Republicans have been unable to grasp since, at least, the 1990s, with the seeds planted long before. The fact that they were hijacked by wealthy interests (the Kochs and Adelsons) is also hard to miss. The GOP needs to be destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up. It needs people who understand and appreciate the need for government. It needs people who are willing to call for higher taxes, on the wealthy and everyone else, if necessary. It needs better programs to help people deal with economic disruption. But it is ideologically incapable, right now, of even considering these ideas.
3
Another impediment to the Republican Party operating in a sane way is the intense need to declare "We're number one". Imagine if the owner of the Detroit Lions, after losing all sixteen games in a season, which did happen a few years ago, were to declare his team the worlds greatest. That's what's been happening with Republicans and healthcare. Here we are coming in last by every meaningful measure and Republicans have shown no interest in examining how those other countries are achieving so much better results. Are they so invested in being number one that they don't want to even look at the scoreboard? Mr. Brooks talks about Republicans having a dual philosophy but the road to ruin, especially with how it effects healthcare seems far more complex to me.
3
Revenge is why.
Their calculatingly deliberate return to the Laissez-faire economics of the 19th century will remind us minions that the eras of Trust busting and New Deal were just an illusion.
Pay no attention to the 40 year subversive efforts to undermine the 120 years of progress that we've made in social and economic programs.
Their calculatingly deliberate return to the Laissez-faire economics of the 19th century will remind us minions that the eras of Trust busting and New Deal were just an illusion.
Pay no attention to the 40 year subversive efforts to undermine the 120 years of progress that we've made in social and economic programs.
8
The overarching problem for the Republicans is that there is no crisis to which they are responding with endless negativity. Their claim is that they are trying to forestall future problems. Obamacare will fail! Yes, they will help it fail.
Time was the Republicans used deficit spending as an endless whipping boy. They convinced Americans personally conservative in the way they lived their own lives that debt was looming and would one day cause a crushing disaster. Then, when Republicans have power, they'd go silent about the national debt. It was a crisis until it wasn't.
Citizen voters will put up with a lot of things if they think it is in response to dire needs. The Republicans have sold a bill of goods that they needs are great somewhere, out there, in the future, who knows?, but we must act forcefully right now and, in the end, it all comes down to tax cuts for the wealthy. How is it that every problem can be solved by lower taxes and fewer regulations?
The Republicans are at war with themselves. The old line, more genteel conservative philosophy espoused by third and fourth generation wealth is dead and gone. Reaganism and Reagan's tax cuts were done, enshrined into permanent law. What is left is a rabid conservatism spawned by talk radio and aggressive websites, inspired by rumors and lies with mythical threats seen around every corner. The Republicans are lost in space. It will take a new generation, rejecting talk radio extremism, to straighten this out.
Time was the Republicans used deficit spending as an endless whipping boy. They convinced Americans personally conservative in the way they lived their own lives that debt was looming and would one day cause a crushing disaster. Then, when Republicans have power, they'd go silent about the national debt. It was a crisis until it wasn't.
Citizen voters will put up with a lot of things if they think it is in response to dire needs. The Republicans have sold a bill of goods that they needs are great somewhere, out there, in the future, who knows?, but we must act forcefully right now and, in the end, it all comes down to tax cuts for the wealthy. How is it that every problem can be solved by lower taxes and fewer regulations?
The Republicans are at war with themselves. The old line, more genteel conservative philosophy espoused by third and fourth generation wealth is dead and gone. Reaganism and Reagan's tax cuts were done, enshrined into permanent law. What is left is a rabid conservatism spawned by talk radio and aggressive websites, inspired by rumors and lies with mythical threats seen around every corner. The Republicans are lost in space. It will take a new generation, rejecting talk radio extremism, to straighten this out.
7
They have the opportunity to prove you wrong. And they are expected to.
Revenge is why.
They're calculatingly deliberate return to the Laissez-faire economics of the 19th century will remind us minions that the eras of Trust busting and New Deal were just an illusion.
Pay no attention to the 40 year subversive efforts to undermine the 120 years of progress that we've made in social and economic programs.
They're calculatingly deliberate return to the Laissez-faire economics of the 19th century will remind us minions that the eras of Trust busting and New Deal were just an illusion.
Pay no attention to the 40 year subversive efforts to undermine the 120 years of progress that we've made in social and economic programs.
Freedom as detachment gives people the space to do their own thing, and this thing is often to intrude on the space of others, or to get together with a group and intrude on the space of other individuals or groups. Freedom as detachment, like free enterprise, quickly turns into its opposite unless constrained by an external force (which it will condemn as restraining its space).
This process of things turning into their opposites is just too complex for Republicans to deal with; it reeks of dialectical materialism (which was its appearance in economics) and they want nothing to do with it. So the idea that unchecked prosperity turns into its opposite (as evidenced in the mortgage meltdown or the Dutch tulip meltdown) is rejected out of hand.
Freedom as capacity means that any full time job will pay a living wage, and that anyone who looks diligently for such a job will quickly find one. Freedom as capacity is the fulfillment of the New Deal and the Four Freedoms, and is anathema to Republicans (except in tiny doses calculated to buy reelection).
We do not know how to make freedom as capacity lastingly real, and we should be using our American ingenuity to come up with ways, try them out, and improve them. But no one dreams that big any more, and Republicans reject such dreaming in principle in favor of getting back to a Garden-of-Eden mythical state of nature where government was tiny and the economy ran itself in perpetual prosperity.
This process of things turning into their opposites is just too complex for Republicans to deal with; it reeks of dialectical materialism (which was its appearance in economics) and they want nothing to do with it. So the idea that unchecked prosperity turns into its opposite (as evidenced in the mortgage meltdown or the Dutch tulip meltdown) is rejected out of hand.
Freedom as capacity means that any full time job will pay a living wage, and that anyone who looks diligently for such a job will quickly find one. Freedom as capacity is the fulfillment of the New Deal and the Four Freedoms, and is anathema to Republicans (except in tiny doses calculated to buy reelection).
We do not know how to make freedom as capacity lastingly real, and we should be using our American ingenuity to come up with ways, try them out, and improve them. But no one dreams that big any more, and Republicans reject such dreaming in principle in favor of getting back to a Garden-of-Eden mythical state of nature where government was tiny and the economy ran itself in perpetual prosperity.
They didn't just become. They were purchased by the right wing conservative moneyed class. They no longer serve the people they serve a bunch of wealthy donors.
7
Republicans want contradictory things:
They want a weak central government to enforce strong rules against abortion.
They want a mighty national defense and low taxes.
They favor local control over federal control, and they want federal punishment of sanctuary cities.
They want less regulation of business, and more regulation of businesses that work with Russia.
They can't reach their goals because their goals are self-contradictory.
They are not being stopped by Democrats. They are not being stopped by the media. They are being stopped by reality. Fiction can be manipulated, but "facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts" (John Adams, 1770).
They want a weak central government to enforce strong rules against abortion.
They want a mighty national defense and low taxes.
They favor local control over federal control, and they want federal punishment of sanctuary cities.
They want less regulation of business, and more regulation of businesses that work with Russia.
They can't reach their goals because their goals are self-contradictory.
They are not being stopped by Democrats. They are not being stopped by the media. They are being stopped by reality. Fiction can be manipulated, but "facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts" (John Adams, 1770).
11
They aren't the Drain the Swamp Party. They are the swamp.
10
Complain all you want, but Clinton's "deplorables" will continue to vote for their deplorable republican party. Our public lacks education. Now look who's in charge. DEPLORABLE.
10
The reason so many on the right hated Clinton's deplorables comment is because it was 100% accurate.
1
gOp accomplishments? democrat Tom Harkin wrote the ADA. The disabled community literally crawled up the steps of the Capitol to ensure ADA passage while inside legislators from both parties griped over how they would be able to exit their building. the House and Senate need to pull up their socks, stop excessive fundraising and campaigning and giving kickbacks to donors like the 2003 pharma bill.
6
When you do nothing for 8 long years but whine & complain, and do no real work, then you get poor performance! You need to change or be removed, whether it's a job, helping others, or running a government!
3
Republicans are loyal to their donors not their constituents.
Since this last election it is clear that Republicans are actually hostile to their voters by not holding town halls and refusing to communicate
Hopefully their voters will register a protest vote in the next election and stop identify politics and ask their politicians to make their state the priority .
It is amazing to me that the governor and both senators of Kentucky can brazenly vow to repeal and not replace the ACA in a state where 1 in 4 people are on the ACA or medicaid. Every person in Kentucky will be affected by not funding or eliminating the ACA...and these folks win by overwhelming majorities...i don't get it.
Since this last election it is clear that Republicans are actually hostile to their voters by not holding town halls and refusing to communicate
Hopefully their voters will register a protest vote in the next election and stop identify politics and ask their politicians to make their state the priority .
It is amazing to me that the governor and both senators of Kentucky can brazenly vow to repeal and not replace the ACA in a state where 1 in 4 people are on the ACA or medicaid. Every person in Kentucky will be affected by not funding or eliminating the ACA...and these folks win by overwhelming majorities...i don't get it.
3
Republicans have the freedom to take orders from the Koch brothers, Grover Norquist, the NRA, and antediluvian evangelical snake oil salesmen. We of the proletariat don't have the freedom to overcome gerrymandering.
3
The GOP and Fox News, plus the the talk radio noise machine, have turned us into the Untied States of America. There is no suitable punishment I can think of for these subvertors of our democracy that the moderators here would allow into 'print'.
And for what? What do they get out of this perversion?
Money and power perhaps till half the planet becomes uninhabitable. Then the super rich will sit sweltering in the rain on their isolated mountain tops roasting potatoes on sticks over campfires of useless, sodden banknotes.
And for what? What do they get out of this perversion?
Money and power perhaps till half the planet becomes uninhabitable. Then the super rich will sit sweltering in the rain on their isolated mountain tops roasting potatoes on sticks over campfires of useless, sodden banknotes.
3
Thank you David Brooks for substituting your usual supposedly intellectual blah blah blah with what you really should be doing with your pen - criticizing the Republicans and Trump from a conservative viewpoint. This is not the time for lofty intellectualizing - it is a time to confront the current and serious danger that Trump and Republicans pose to the future of the United States. I'd like to see more of your thinking on these topics.
2
Hegel had a great term for the negative, nihilistic idea of freedom: "vogelfrei," free as a bird/free like a bird (i.e. bird-brained freedom).
1
They are the "Leave us Alone" party until it comes to social issues then they feel justified in legislating a woman's right to choose, who you can marry, what bathroom you can use, and on and on. They are the party of hypocrites!
4
I still can't get over the fact that the Republicans have railed against "Obamacare" for the past seven years and in the meantime did NOTHING to come up with an alternative. Now, at the last minute, they're scurrying to find compromise even within their own party. You stupid morons! You had all that time to identify Democrats who also thought Obamacare needed fixing and work with them on a plan. So Sad!
3
"Sure, Donald Trump is a boob, but that doesn’t explain why Republicans can’t govern from Capitol Hill. " Why not use the simplest explanation, the one you used for Trump?
1
David, given your background this article must have been a tough one to write. However, you are absolutely correct in each assessment. What I don't understand, is why the folks in the House and Senate haven't figured out that Trump is a self serving boob, to use your word. He is also a liar, and I think he has something totally unconstitutional up his sleeve. Remember, when Hitler came to power, he did not have the Reichstag in his pocket. The boob does. Frightening!
1
David, Trump and his administration appear presently unable to stop legislation by a veto. The Congress can forward a bill and trump can veto, however, overriding should be no problem in many cases. As your news paper has editorialized, he is after all "an idiot" who cannot even communicate in English.
The problem with so-called freedom of capacity of encouraging my friend to stick with piano practice is that my friend is sick and can't afford piano lessons, let alone buy a piano. My friend's parents can't afford healthcare, their wages have been stagnant.
My other friends with children in high school can't afford to send their kids to their favorite college. Republican legislators have cut education funding, one of their favorite cuts. Keep 'em stupid so they'll vote against their own interests.
The only way infrastructure will get Republican attention is if Ryan and McConnell fall into a river while crossing a bridge that collapses.
Morons are not limited to this White House-the senate and house are filled with them.
My other friends with children in high school can't afford to send their kids to their favorite college. Republican legislators have cut education funding, one of their favorite cuts. Keep 'em stupid so they'll vote against their own interests.
The only way infrastructure will get Republican attention is if Ryan and McConnell fall into a river while crossing a bridge that collapses.
Morons are not limited to this White House-the senate and house are filled with them.
5
"...Sure, Donald Trump is a boob, but that doesn’t explain why Republicans can’t govern from Capitol Hill."
The GOP, under Reagan's leadership decided Government was the problem. And so were taxes, which act as the lubricant that makes Society fonction. And they were against Those people, i.e. Blacks, but also "elites., Liberals, Socialists, takers, moochers, etc.
Then they cozied up to the fanatical Evangelicals, and gun lovers and racists. Some of their heroes are the Bundys and Sheriff Arpaio.
They sure know what and who they hate but that doesn't leave much for them to embrace as individuals and as a consequence, there is nothing they stand for, collectively. And you, Mr Brooks wonder why they can't govern?
The GOP, under Reagan's leadership decided Government was the problem. And so were taxes, which act as the lubricant that makes Society fonction. And they were against Those people, i.e. Blacks, but also "elites., Liberals, Socialists, takers, moochers, etc.
Then they cozied up to the fanatical Evangelicals, and gun lovers and racists. Some of their heroes are the Bundys and Sheriff Arpaio.
They sure know what and who they hate but that doesn't leave much for them to embrace as individuals and as a consequence, there is nothing they stand for, collectively. And you, Mr Brooks wonder why they can't govern?
5
BRAVO! Teg Laer.
Once again, Brooks is on target. Thing is, the GOP can't govern effectively because it has opted to govern by subterfuge, and few of the grass roots understand that. So the GOP has to show shiny objects to their supporters, and the leaders can't agree on or stomach the actual shiny objects. Charles Koch bought into the James M. Buchanan message that the public needs to be hoodwinked into supporting extreme policies of defunding government and privatizing just about everything. The aim is to free capitalists from all restraints. Actually, the GOP is actually doing a heck of a job of bringing all that about. Trump is a useful idiot not only for the Kremlin but also for Kochdom,
2
The poor are not free to choose their favorite college. Or to play their pianos.
4
What Mr. Brooks meant is the freedom not to go to college, the freedom not to play piano, and the freedom not to have healthcare. Perhaps we have too many "freedoms."
1
Republicans believe in nurturing Freedom by detatchment? Like when they say "No, you can't smoke that stuff" and "No, you can't marry that person" and sometimes even "NO, you can't have a sexual relationship with that person", and "No, you can't decide not to complete that pregnancy" and "No, you can't mention global warming in government publications".
Republicans only believe in that kind of Freedom when it conforms to their own personal beliefs about morals, which is to say, they don't really believe in it at all.
Republicans only believe in that kind of Freedom when it conforms to their own personal beliefs about morals, which is to say, they don't really believe in it at all.
4
Mitch McConnell eliminates funding for anesthesia for Medicaid patients, but replaces it with a bottle of Kentucky bourbon and a bite stick.
1
"And if you think G.O.P. dysfunction is bad now, wait until we get to the debt ceiling wrangle, the budget fight and the tax reform crackup."
This Perfect Storm of Greedy, Stupid & Mean is wearing down the morale of the country. The president is a boob with a cognitive disorder, Bannon and the alt-right are in charge, together with FOX news' & InfoWars' low-information voters who are lethally angry because right-wing media tricked them to be afraid of Everything. We've become a nation of frightened victims addicted to kooky reality and cable TV. Many peoples neural pathways now run in a loop of fear all day long, thanks to them.
The Republican Party has committed suicide,
This Perfect Storm of Greedy, Stupid & Mean is wearing down the morale of the country. The president is a boob with a cognitive disorder, Bannon and the alt-right are in charge, together with FOX news' & InfoWars' low-information voters who are lethally angry because right-wing media tricked them to be afraid of Everything. We've become a nation of frightened victims addicted to kooky reality and cable TV. Many peoples neural pathways now run in a loop of fear all day long, thanks to them.
The Republican Party has committed suicide,
3
Oh Dear David
Who is writing this stuff for you. The Republicans have clear priorities in governance. The first is to eliminate taxes on the wealthy and the second is to stuff trillions of dollars into the defense budget so the defense contractors can reap the profits of planes that don't fly and ships that barely float manned by "volunteers" who will go through the meat grinder again in the next republican war with North Korea and Iran. Eliminating health care except for those over 65 is easy because the old goats won't stand for eliminating government paid for health care. The poor who need Medicaid are too stupid to vote in their self interest so their legs will be amputated as they get sick with diabetes from their junk food based diets paid for by farm subsidies for corn sugar and fat. Education via "charter schools" is being privatized and profitized so white people don't have to put their kids in predominantly Black and Brown schools. Women need their vaginas protected from abortionists. Perhaps public education should exist only up to the 8th grade. Then children can save their allowances and put them into education savings accounts to pay for high school and college. Repealing child labor laws will encourage children to work. There are always lawns to mow and cars to wash. The laws to do all of this are easy to pass. And Brooks is considered a "public intellectual"? He is a pseudo intellectual for the 1 percent,
Who is writing this stuff for you. The Republicans have clear priorities in governance. The first is to eliminate taxes on the wealthy and the second is to stuff trillions of dollars into the defense budget so the defense contractors can reap the profits of planes that don't fly and ships that barely float manned by "volunteers" who will go through the meat grinder again in the next republican war with North Korea and Iran. Eliminating health care except for those over 65 is easy because the old goats won't stand for eliminating government paid for health care. The poor who need Medicaid are too stupid to vote in their self interest so their legs will be amputated as they get sick with diabetes from their junk food based diets paid for by farm subsidies for corn sugar and fat. Education via "charter schools" is being privatized and profitized so white people don't have to put their kids in predominantly Black and Brown schools. Women need their vaginas protected from abortionists. Perhaps public education should exist only up to the 8th grade. Then children can save their allowances and put them into education savings accounts to pay for high school and college. Repealing child labor laws will encourage children to work. There are always lawns to mow and cars to wash. The laws to do all of this are easy to pass. And Brooks is considered a "public intellectual"? He is a pseudo intellectual for the 1 percent,
4
BRAVO
(Can I get a Prozac with that?)
(Can I get a Prozac with that?)
No, David, Trump is not a boob. Hie is a total incompetent.
Intellectual/Republican, = oxymoron!
It would be a challenge to find one Republican who would accept the fact they are "flirting with its most humiliating failure" including their leader. They march in lock step to the tune of McConnell and Ryan. Could have, would have, should have is long gone, 8 years gone, and humiliating failure is kicking down the door and it looks like the boob.
It would be a challenge to find one Republican who would accept the fact they are "flirting with its most humiliating failure" including their leader. They march in lock step to the tune of McConnell and Ryan. Could have, would have, should have is long gone, 8 years gone, and humiliating failure is kicking down the door and it looks like the boob.
1
To me, the GOP desire to just let nature take it's course is even more than an extension of the "do more with less" mentality that has been around for decades. But taken to an extreme. The effort the party is taking, led by their Dufus-in-Chief, means actively tearing down rather than building up. It's as if their computer is stuck and they go for the "hard reboot" as a default measure. For the country and the world, that really messes up the whole operating system. And they wouldn't be willing to buy a new computer, either. They'd prefer going back to the clay tablet and abacus.
"Donald Trump is a boob . . And Republicans offer nothing but negativity, detachment, absence and an ax."
David - I find myself agreeing with you more and more. ;-)
David - I find myself agreeing with you more and more. ;-)
Hey Big Don - Wow - David Brooks just called you a boob!
You going to take that sitting down?! ha
You going to take that sitting down?! ha
2
Welfare reform under Clinton was a "detachment" type of legislation. It detached deadbeats from the welfare teat. Liberals felt abandoned when Clinton signed this legislation.
It's taken you until now to realize this? I notice you don't bring up one of the most damning questions of all: How did the GOP turn from Never Trump to Trump can do no wrong as long he supports our anti-American agenda? Trump is not a "boob", an almost affectionate appellation. He is an extremely dangerous and ignorant man who aspires to authoritarianism and knows nothing about how the US government is supposed to work including the limits of presidential power. And the GOP goes along with this. I don't know about you but in my book that makes them complicit in the degradation of our country.
2
This article aptly describes the current Republican Party approach in a corrective but not personally damning way. A good friend of mine, after a comment I made, asked why I made so many negative comments about people. It was a wake up call for me. I knew he was right as soon as he said it. Fortunately negativity was not too much of a habit and because I was more aware.
It looks to be counterproductive to demonize the Republican Party for their errant actions. If you want to encourage someone to change don't ridicule them because then, by the proclivity of human nature, they can't change.
It looks to be counterproductive to demonize the Republican Party for their errant actions. If you want to encourage someone to change don't ridicule them because then, by the proclivity of human nature, they can't change.
Really? So rolling back any regulatory function and unfairly stacking the judiciary is detachment? Tax reform that gives to the rich and takes from the poor is detachment? Enriching themselves illegally as they struggle to get away with it?
They are changing the face of our increasingly hot environment and putting us all in hell. Financially, environmentally and socially. This is your party David.
They are changing the face of our increasingly hot environment and putting us all in hell. Financially, environmentally and socially. This is your party David.
2
The Republican party has for the last 40 years single-mindedly dedicated itself to the goal of privatizing profit, socializing debt, and protecting the profit-takers from everyone else. All the rest of it - the continual gaseous whingeing about debt, the Constitution, God, and country - was just eyewash, a cover story to buy time while they loaded the loot into the trucks. Freedom and Liberty! Those words have been vitiated, constantly invoked and repeated by simpletons who understand them as a single term, roughly translatable as "I should be allowed to do as I please without consequence and government be damned; that makes me a patriot and anyone who thinks otherwise a tyrant. P.S. Government - I have guns to keep you honest."
What the GOP has come to is a great many fine, noble, and ultimately hollow words. The Republican Party is not and has not for a very long time been a voluntary participant in the process of human enlightenment; instead it has unquestioningly followed its own moral and spiritual guidance to a logical endpoint: Donald J. Trump.
What the GOP has come to is a great many fine, noble, and ultimately hollow words. The Republican Party is not and has not for a very long time been a voluntary participant in the process of human enlightenment; instead it has unquestioningly followed its own moral and spiritual guidance to a logical endpoint: Donald J. Trump.
1
They became, exclusively, the party of freedom as detachment. They became the Get Government Off My Back Party, the Leave Us Alone Coalition, the Drain the Swamp Party, the Don’t Tread on Me Party.....if you are white, Christian and male.
If you are a woman seeking an abortion or Muslim building a mosque or a queer trying to marry, or a black man just walking down the street then there is no detachment. Then the Republican party used you as a rallying cry to get their base to the polls and used every mechanism possible within government and public opinion to restrict your life, your way of being.
No, the Republican party wasn't interested in truly governing. It was the party of detachment so it could earn more money for its ruling class, for its elite. But the dirty secret is - The Republican establishment (McConnell, Ryan, Bushes, Cheney) and those who line their pockets (Mercers, Kochs) don't give a damn about ruling except when it comes to making more money for their own kind.
And, if there is collateral damage along the way? Too bad. We, the 98 percent, are the collateral damage. And our democracy.
If you are a woman seeking an abortion or Muslim building a mosque or a queer trying to marry, or a black man just walking down the street then there is no detachment. Then the Republican party used you as a rallying cry to get their base to the polls and used every mechanism possible within government and public opinion to restrict your life, your way of being.
No, the Republican party wasn't interested in truly governing. It was the party of detachment so it could earn more money for its ruling class, for its elite. But the dirty secret is - The Republican establishment (McConnell, Ryan, Bushes, Cheney) and those who line their pockets (Mercers, Kochs) don't give a damn about ruling except when it comes to making more money for their own kind.
And, if there is collateral damage along the way? Too bad. We, the 98 percent, are the collateral damage. And our democracy.
3
The problem with the GOP is that they’re not any of the things you suggest. They want government off the backs of businesses, dismantling regulations that protect actual people, but insert themselves into deeply personal issues (women’s health, gay rights). Same with the “leave us alone coalition”. The GOP want corporations to be left alone, but people can’t choose what to do with their bodies, or whom to marry, or even which bathroom to use. Draining the swamp is the biggest lie. All they do is in the interests of their corporate/wealthy masters. They’ve sold themselves to the highest bidders, and have welcomed only the denizens of the deepest regions of the swamp. And, their chief aim is to tread on everyone other than these masters, including causing hardship and suffering to the masses to ensure low tax rates for those who have taken 100% of the gains from the economy for decades. You’re right that the GOP have destroyed any semblance of a normal legislative process, but that’s by design. How else to ram through policies that help the few at the expense of the many and still ensure re-election? As to building things, the GOP aren’t interested in building anything other than power. Infrastructure spending is a good example. An infrastructure initiative not designed as a massive tax giveaway to corporations would create jobs across the country and benefit everyone. Everyone uses roads and bridges and benefits from dams and levies. But it won’t happen on the GOP’s watch.
3
Stop talking about Health savings accounts as if they are some sort of panacea. People who can't afford health insurance aren't in a high enough tax bracket that a tax free savings account is meaningful. Those who make enough to take advantage of the tax exemption already get at least a portion of the cost paid tax free by their employer if not all.
3
And yet. Where are the smart young Democratic Party leaders making the case for supporting the common good? Only one national party supports public education, parks, libraries, infrastructure, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. The other wants to direct public funds to the wealthy. It's the Democratic Party's issue and they have it all to themselves.
So Democrats, stop talking about Trump and start explaining to people that to have the public good we all have to pay for it and we have to be able to handle seeing people who don't look like us benefit from it!
So Democrats, stop talking about Trump and start explaining to people that to have the public good we all have to pay for it and we have to be able to handle seeing people who don't look like us benefit from it!
2
Dear legislators:
You all, and esp Republicans, seem confused as to what exactly you should be doing. Let me help: Solve problems in the interest of the public good.
It's not about big vs small government -- depending on the problem, federal government might play a big role, or it might be best if it steps aside. Ideological battles are of little use and rarely help to solve problems.
It's baffling that so many Congressmen have forgotten their mission. I hope populace is wise enough to remind them at the voting booth.
You all, and esp Republicans, seem confused as to what exactly you should be doing. Let me help: Solve problems in the interest of the public good.
It's not about big vs small government -- depending on the problem, federal government might play a big role, or it might be best if it steps aside. Ideological battles are of little use and rarely help to solve problems.
It's baffling that so many Congressmen have forgotten their mission. I hope populace is wise enough to remind them at the voting booth.
4
Freedom-as-rhetoric has always been the most popular kind of freedom for the Get Government On Someone Else's Back Party.
2
By trying to facilitate a private insurance in a free market approach to health funding for those not covered under a government entitlement program or an employee benefit program, the kind of funding provided resulted in a huge proportion of people without insurance and with those who had insurance, a lot of people with inadequate coverage when they got sick, and a huge proportion of personal bankruptcies resulting from family members whose medical bills were not covered by insurance. That approach did not produce adequate results for the needs of the entire society. To make it succeed ended up requiring redistributing some wealth to enable most of those not insured to be insured. The Republicans did not squarely confront the situation but instead merely hectored the efforts of the Democrats, bringing up controversial aspects without honestly describing the entire situation. Thus mandates and minimum standards for adequate coverage were presented as tyrannical actions against people's freedoms instead of prudent actions to assure that the plan would serve everyone at the least costs to society. It paid off politically but it distorted the way people perceived the issue, and in the end made the choice between enduring the ACA as is or simply letting the insurance for non-group participants become defunct.
1
"Republicans passed a law giving Americans a new prescription drug benefit, which used market mechanisms to give them more control over how to use it." Yes, and as a result, many seniors have to decide whether to pay for meds or food or rent this month — while people in other countries pay far less for the same drugs. So it's no surprise that the GOP plan for healthcare is ... no plan; you'e on your own.
1
Mr. Brooks, now, which party is it that you belong to? Come over from the dark side . . . The current GOP would probably cll your illustration of "freedoms" as socialist propaganda.
3
Freedom as capacity? Would an example of that be, the freedom to discriminate based on religious preference?
This is just another right wing excuse to twist the real meaning of freedom in an attempt to escape their own accountability.
This is just another right wing excuse to twist the real meaning of freedom in an attempt to escape their own accountability.
2
Mr. Brooks should also put some consideration into the effects that gerrymandering has on a party. In legislative districts all across America you could run an artichoke for Congress, and if it has an R behind its name it will win. More and more the GOP is sending empty-headed, slogan mouthing little men to represent them rather than tough and capable legislators. This new brand of Republican representative is usually lacking in a solid and reasoned foundation upon which to anchor their agenda. They are sheep, and incompetent to boot.
Most disturbing is their lack of understanding of the democratic institutions and norms that have served this Republic for so long. Much of the damage that they've done and yet promise to do can be undone. But only if our institutions and practices remain intact.
Most disturbing is their lack of understanding of the democratic institutions and norms that have served this Republic for so long. Much of the damage that they've done and yet promise to do can be undone. But only if our institutions and practices remain intact.
1
Republicans can't govern. Can't say it enough.
2
the big issue is a point of view problem. the stuff the government gives me and mine is beneficial but the stuff the government gives to everybody else is ruinous.
1
The Republicans have been the party of No and Meanness for so long that they've forgotten how to Get to Yes. Not to mention a loss of mortal courage and a fixation on myths and fairy tales like Voodoo Economics. The sooner those incompetents are out of power the better.
2
'There are many reasons Republicans have been failing as a governing party, but the primary one is intellectual.'
Brain is a wonderful organ but it is also a victim of the old adage, 'if you don't use, you lose it'. Republicans worked carefully for decades to guarantee their victories by gerrymandering the Congressional districts. When you don't have to work for survival, no one will. In this scenario, all the Republicans had to do was to out-do the other Republican in their insanity to cross the primary and they are assured of becoming the people's representative without working for it. Naturally, they lost their brains along the way because of non-usage. The result is a party of non- or even anti- intellectuals. Voters in their districts, even when they realize the con game, are powerless. The loss was for the society in the end.
Brain is a wonderful organ but it is also a victim of the old adage, 'if you don't use, you lose it'. Republicans worked carefully for decades to guarantee their victories by gerrymandering the Congressional districts. When you don't have to work for survival, no one will. In this scenario, all the Republicans had to do was to out-do the other Republican in their insanity to cross the primary and they are assured of becoming the people's representative without working for it. Naturally, they lost their brains along the way because of non-usage. The result is a party of non- or even anti- intellectuals. Voters in their districts, even when they realize the con game, are powerless. The loss was for the society in the end.
1
"And Republicans offer nothing but negativity, detachment, absence and an ax."
For a party that has dedicated itself to the notion that government is always the problem never the solution I am not surprised by their inability to govern when given the reins.
I am really getting tired of the republican repetition of the words freedom and liberty. For one thing, I do not think those terms are necessarily interchangeable; This Nation gained its Liberty from the king so as to have the freedom to govern itself.
I have a real conservative idea for Brooks and his party; try to conserve what is left and best about our Nation and stop trying to give it all away to the koch bothers.
For a party that has dedicated itself to the notion that government is always the problem never the solution I am not surprised by their inability to govern when given the reins.
I am really getting tired of the republican repetition of the words freedom and liberty. For one thing, I do not think those terms are necessarily interchangeable; This Nation gained its Liberty from the king so as to have the freedom to govern itself.
I have a real conservative idea for Brooks and his party; try to conserve what is left and best about our Nation and stop trying to give it all away to the koch bothers.
5
Yes, this is absolutely not Donald Trump's fault. The Republican Congress is fully aware of his limitations. He told them he would sign a bill that they passed and they have failed to pass a bill. They may wish for a President who had more command of policy, etc. but the bottom line is that they haven't done what they promised their voters they would do.
3
My Senator, Al Franken, summed this up more concisely: In order to pull yourself up by the bootstraps, you first must have boots. He sited examples like Pell Grants and the Social Security Survivor Benefits that enabled his mother-in-law to eventually go to college, but we could add many other things like health care, daycare, affordable housing, clean drinking water, breathable air, etc.. These are "boots." Republicans are not just practicing "detachment." They seem to be using our considerable national resources to better shine their expensive wingtips while the middle class grows increasingly shoeless.
6
I think Mr. Brooks has made his point in a very complicated way. From my point of view, the Republicans can't pass bills because their entire point of view is that government is bad and can't ever be beneficial.
Also, many GOP House members have spent their entire time in office doing nothing but opposing President Obama's agenda. Obstruction is all they know how to do. They've never actually attempted to put together legislation.
Happily - at least from where I sit as someone who loathes Republicans - I don't think this will get better. I don't see any reconciliation between GOP moderates in the House and the Senate and their respective "Freedom" caucuses. Let them continue to obstruct each other until the voters wise up and kick them out.
I'm looking forward to the midterms.
Also, many GOP House members have spent their entire time in office doing nothing but opposing President Obama's agenda. Obstruction is all they know how to do. They've never actually attempted to put together legislation.
Happily - at least from where I sit as someone who loathes Republicans - I don't think this will get better. I don't see any reconciliation between GOP moderates in the House and the Senate and their respective "Freedom" caucuses. Let them continue to obstruct each other until the voters wise up and kick them out.
I'm looking forward to the midterms.
Well said. Thanks Dave.
Why repeal? Why not amend?
My language would be sharper, but then I'm not a NYT op-ed writer. I would add that the Republican Party has become a domestic terrorist organization. I'll bet millions and millions agree with me, but that's why David Brooks is the op-ed columnist. Brilliant column. Thank you.
1
First time! I have ever agreed with Mr. Brooks.
1
"They became the Get Government Off My Back Party, the Leave Us Alone Coalition, the Drain the Swamp Party, the Don’t Tread on Me Party. ... Despite all the screaming and campaigns, all the government shutdown fiascos, the G.O.P. hasn’t been able to eliminate a single important program or reform a single important entitlement or agency."
Maybe because none of those have anything to do with actually keeping government out of someone's life. Reforming police conduct, removing abortion and contraceptive restrictions, and repealing state laws restricting home rule would go much further toward such an agenda than lowering someone's taxes to reduce welfare spending.
Maybe because none of those have anything to do with actually keeping government out of someone's life. Reforming police conduct, removing abortion and contraceptive restrictions, and repealing state laws restricting home rule would go much further toward such an agenda than lowering someone's taxes to reduce welfare spending.
"Worse, Republicans have managed to destroy any semblance of a normal legislative process along the way."
That about sums it up. Republicans have spent the last 17 years saying no to effectively anything other than tax cuts. It's blame the Democrats all day, every day. Yes, this is the party of responsibility!
I benefit by virtue of being in the near rich category. So sad...
That about sums it up. Republicans have spent the last 17 years saying no to effectively anything other than tax cuts. It's blame the Democrats all day, every day. Yes, this is the party of responsibility!
I benefit by virtue of being in the near rich category. So sad...
1
Thank you for this column, Mr. Brooks. At this terrible juncture in its history, the nation desperately need voices on the right, like those of you and Sen. Collins, to speak up for sanity and reject the deranged incompetency of GOP extremists. Those of us on the left who understand how democracy works know that compromise and the careful work of good policy-making are essential, and many millions of Democrats and Republicans alike are anxious to see a return to that standard in governance. Keep up the good work in shining a light on sanity!
Best and most honest Brooks column EVER!
1
"And Republicans offer nothing but negativity, detachment, absence and an ax."
It's even worse than that. Not only do Republicans want to take away affordable healthcare for those most in need, they insist on giving tax cuts to those making $250,000 a year, and above.
I'll never understand why the GOP is so insistent on giving tax cuts to those that need it the least, by taking things away from those that need them most.
They are truly lost.
It's even worse than that. Not only do Republicans want to take away affordable healthcare for those most in need, they insist on giving tax cuts to those making $250,000 a year, and above.
I'll never understand why the GOP is so insistent on giving tax cuts to those that need it the least, by taking things away from those that need them most.
They are truly lost.
"Republicans offer nothing but negativity, detachment, absence and an ax." Unless of course you're a millionaire or a billionaire or monopolistic corporation, in which case the GOP is all in for you. Welcome to Putin's Russia, embraced by Trump, and the goal of all GOP legislation.
For republicans it is me, not we. Thanks David, you are spot on.
1
Campaigning is easy. Having thousands cheering your meaningless sound bites is easy. Coming up with a good idea involves critical thinking. Governing and coming up with complex legislation like health care bill is hard. Mr. Trump is no Obama. Paul Ryan is no Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell is surely no Harry Reid. Who knows, maybe President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid will eventually get the credit they deserved on passing Affordable Care Act (ACA) and move way up in ratings in the history books. A Cynical opposition is easy as Mitch McConnell is finding out.
1
The republicans have been so consumed by win-at-all-costs politicking and fighting imaginary enemies that they have forgotten serving the people. Loyalty pledges, fake news and adolescent certainty in being "right" have turned a once great party into a cartoonish mob.
1
“It is about cutting back, not building.”
“Cutting back,” or, as we used to call it, “arson.”
“Cutting back,” or, as we used to call it, “arson.”
1
To paraphrase a line from “Laugh-In,” the 60s TV show: “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the Republican Party!”
Republicans aren't very detached when it comes to controlling women's bodies or oppressing LGBTQ people.
"If you’re a regular American, the main threat to your freedom is illness, family breakdown, social decay, technological disruption and globalization. If you’re being buffeted by massive forces beyond your control, you don’t want legislation that says: Guess what? You’re on your own!"
Some real answers: High taxes on capital income, government "basic income" guarantees for all Americans, and a singe-payer government regulated health insurance system.
Some real answers: High taxes on capital income, government "basic income" guarantees for all Americans, and a singe-payer government regulated health insurance system.
Republicans can't govern, from Capital Hill or anywhere else, when they don't believe in government's ability
All of us belly-ached about earmarks. The reality is that when earmarks went away, the legislative process ground to a halt. I'll gladly support a bridge to no-where if it means that funding for existing bridge repairs gets allocated. Bring back the pork.
Republicans can't pass bills because all they care about is keeping their jobs and The Party. The Party is more important to Republicans in Congress than our country and the people in it.
1
I could NOT be happier!!
If only that freedom as detachment applied to their religious beliefs but it doesn't. In fact the only bills Republicans see fit to pass regularly have Religious overtones. Muslim bans, bathroom bills, ultrasound bills, planned parenthood defunding bills an religious freedom bills that are really bills mandating you follow their religious beliefs. I'm all for freedom as detachment if it means freedom from you phoney religious beliefs, especially since religious people voted for the most immoral man ever to hold high office.
What is wrong with America? The same thing that is wrong with Kansas. Republicans.
3
With every new column, you sound more and more like a Socialist, Mr. Brooks. Or at least, a Social Democrat.
Welcome to the club :).
Welcome to the club :).
1
I used to be in management at a US factory where we doled out a "magnanimous" $13.10 / hour to wage slaves working 12 hour shifts.
"He just walked out on me!" Complained one of the supers one day. "Four days of training, I ask him to take care of ... and he just walks out on me!"
Well, that's his FREEDOM. When you aren't making any money, when you have no assets, and few obligations, guess what! You CAN do anything you want!!
Hmmm... I think someone else already said it better:
Freedom's just another word for
Nothing left to lose....
"He just walked out on me!" Complained one of the supers one day. "Four days of training, I ask him to take care of ... and he just walks out on me!"
Well, that's his FREEDOM. When you aren't making any money, when you have no assets, and few obligations, guess what! You CAN do anything you want!!
Hmmm... I think someone else already said it better:
Freedom's just another word for
Nothing left to lose....
Gee David, many of us have known this for years. Thanks
1
What in the world is a "regular American"?
1
"If you’re a regular American, the main threat to your freedom is illness, family breakdown, social decay, technological disruption and globalization."
Wrong.
The main treat to everyone's freedom including yours David is not the lack of intelligence. It is sophistry, the use of intelligence to further the ends of the ancient illusion that might makes right, that the powerful few are entitled to their wealth, and that those with out are victims of their own weakness and deserve what they get, just as the wealthy and powerful deserve what they get.
The denial of the human right for medical attention when needed is only one of the threats to freedom that have been generated by you, your friends at conservative sophistry tanks which created the big lie of the last century "supply side economics", and ignoramuses such as Jack Kemp to say nothing of Ryan and McConnell.
As for " family breakdown and social decay" if what you mean by that is the destruction of the public schools, the generation of homelessness and the pauperization of the used to be middle class, these are achievements of Republican sophistry.
Globalization is a phenomena which is an unavoidable event of the unfolding of evolution. It signifies that Humanity is becoming consciousness of their Oneness.
As real threats to Freedom, you might have thought of such obvious things as race-sexism, poverty, the lack of gun control.
Oh, and please David, what on earth is a "policy entrepreneur".
Wrong.
The main treat to everyone's freedom including yours David is not the lack of intelligence. It is sophistry, the use of intelligence to further the ends of the ancient illusion that might makes right, that the powerful few are entitled to their wealth, and that those with out are victims of their own weakness and deserve what they get, just as the wealthy and powerful deserve what they get.
The denial of the human right for medical attention when needed is only one of the threats to freedom that have been generated by you, your friends at conservative sophistry tanks which created the big lie of the last century "supply side economics", and ignoramuses such as Jack Kemp to say nothing of Ryan and McConnell.
As for " family breakdown and social decay" if what you mean by that is the destruction of the public schools, the generation of homelessness and the pauperization of the used to be middle class, these are achievements of Republican sophistry.
Globalization is a phenomena which is an unavoidable event of the unfolding of evolution. It signifies that Humanity is becoming consciousness of their Oneness.
As real threats to Freedom, you might have thought of such obvious things as race-sexism, poverty, the lack of gun control.
Oh, and please David, what on earth is a "policy entrepreneur".
2
I like you better this way, Mr. Brooks. A very insightful column.
2
TRUE ENOUGH, BUT NEITHER CAN YOU WRITE ANYMORE!
I assume that Brooks knows Bush Sr had to be coerced into signing the Americans with Disabilities Act
1
Required reading for every trump voter. As soon as they get through See Spot Run.
I wish you and your fellow conservatives would stop touting Health Savings Accounts. I had one; they're useless. Especially for people who don't have much money.
1
Which is a good thing, David, because the bills they would pass would be catastrophic. However, the real news today is that they continue to stand by while we have a Russian puppet, installed by Putin, as President. What is that? Treason? Desertion? Surrender? Republicans won't defend their country when it's attacked. That should be your headline.
Dear David, I know change is difficult, that you feel more secure living in a stable identity, but self reflection is your thing, so why aren't you a Democrat?
Very insightful editorial. I would note, though, that you failed to look at the cause of this shift in freedom of capacity to freedom as detachment. It was the purchase of the Republican Party's brand and its Congressional members by a few rich people (e.g., Koch brothers, Adelson). They had only one interest: reducing their tax bill.
When you are mega-rich, healthcare and the rule of law are not relevant to you. You can afford to work around it. After all, it is not like these people live in the American society. They live in a different world where armed bodyguards protect them, they can afford anything they want, and they can buy their way out of trouble. (it almost sounds like Russian Oligarchs, Drug Kingpins, or Mafia bosses) Their homes are armed castles. Thus, it is not surprising they are completely out of touch with reality.
The same should not be said of the GOP, but their mega-rich owners took care to find people who are not too smart and lacking in backbone or gumption. Unfortunately for them, it is hard to buy every member of the party and most is not enough when you only have a 52-48 majority. It is a sad state of affairs, and the public is blissfully ignorant.
When you are mega-rich, healthcare and the rule of law are not relevant to you. You can afford to work around it. After all, it is not like these people live in the American society. They live in a different world where armed bodyguards protect them, they can afford anything they want, and they can buy their way out of trouble. (it almost sounds like Russian Oligarchs, Drug Kingpins, or Mafia bosses) Their homes are armed castles. Thus, it is not surprising they are completely out of touch with reality.
The same should not be said of the GOP, but their mega-rich owners took care to find people who are not too smart and lacking in backbone or gumption. Unfortunately for them, it is hard to buy every member of the party and most is not enough when you only have a 52-48 majority. It is a sad state of affairs, and the public is blissfully ignorant.
2
Reality check: the Republican party is a minority party with no more the 40%-45% of the vote on a good day. To try to pass legislation such as healthcare which effects all Americans with only Republican involvement in the process is a fools errand. this is as basic as it gets. Healthcare and any other major legislation has to be a bipartisan effort or the public will not be behind it,
Headline: "Republicans Can’t Pass Bills"
Thank God.
Thank God.
Can Brooks take some action to move us away from the freedom-of-detachment Republicans? Perhaps he could help choose a new understudy at the New York Times. The "Just. Cut. Taxes." guy may not be working out so well.
Corollary: And if they could, civic life would eventually vanish.
1
The Republicans don't control "all the levers of power" any more than a 2 year old sitting in the driver's seat controls an automobile.
1
Mr. Brooks is putting lipstick on a pig. The GOP for years has been attempting to reduce the size of government as an absolute rather than strategically removing regulations that no longer work. They have held the government and the country hostage to their ideology and now Mr. Brooks is surprised they can't govern. The Freedom Caucus is driving the GOP further to the right while the President drives the GOP crazy with his tweets and zero sum mindset. Meanwhile nothing gets done and we argue over the tea leaves.
2
You mention the necessities of free to capacity. Your article is bright. Your thinking is, as usual, brilliant. I'm shocked you left out a large capacity any culture needs, and yet I'm not. It is heinously disregarded in this nation: education.
The Republican party has been on its path to destruction since the passage in the 1960s of the civil rights and voting rights acts. The Dixiecrats fled the Democrat party en masse to become Republicans, taking their Civil War resentment, anti-black and anti-federal government mindset with them. With the rise of the Freedom Caucus. the GOP has become the party of the Confederacy. They want to return the country not just to the 1950s, but to the 1850s, when women, African Americans and immigrants knew their place, which was to obey their white male masters. Nothing else explains the perverted mindset of today's Republicans. They're not even conservative. They're nihilists, wanting to destroy anything, such as public education, environmental protections, voting rights, birth control and unions, even the federal government itself, that could get in their way. They dress it up with constant whines about freedom, but it's really about destroying the nation in their quest for (white) power. Take a look at Steve Bannon's agenda for the proof. I guess we should be grateful that they and their new Boob in Chief are proving so totally incompetent.
Freedom can mean a lot of things. The desire to enfeeble government and to not support people who lack the resources to improve themselves both reflect the same kind of aspiration for freedom, freedom from responsibility for things which one does not wish to be. Only when a society accepts as a whole that all who live together share the problems each other experience together and must act together to minimize their affects or suffer as a whole does this wish to escape responsibility becomes seen as irresponsible.
1
KUDOS to david brooks for saying it as IT IS - when it comes to republican governing philosophy ( or lack thereof), and to generating ideas for progress.
trump won his nomination on the vacuous wave of simplistic, populous meaningless slogans which, understandably, won the support of those who voted for him. not much intellectual, creative or progressive thinking there.
Mich McDonnell, paul ryan and their followers have no genuine interest in either
learning from other countries ( God forbid others know better than us ?!)how to put in place even the basics of an effective, functional, caring, humane and yes, fiscally sound healthcare system. the real health needs of real people remain as far from the awareness or interest of the republicans shepherd by McDonnell so
we remain out of the list of 36 countries the world's health organization determined as the " best health systems. that's really making America great again.
trump won his nomination on the vacuous wave of simplistic, populous meaningless slogans which, understandably, won the support of those who voted for him. not much intellectual, creative or progressive thinking there.
Mich McDonnell, paul ryan and their followers have no genuine interest in either
learning from other countries ( God forbid others know better than us ?!)how to put in place even the basics of an effective, functional, caring, humane and yes, fiscally sound healthcare system. the real health needs of real people remain as far from the awareness or interest of the republicans shepherd by McDonnell so
we remain out of the list of 36 countries the world's health organization determined as the " best health systems. that's really making America great again.
2
Every time I read yet another analysis of why the Republicans can't govern (and this one is 'spot on'), I wonder what the rationale is for voting for them. It can't be rational. So it has to be cultural. A vote for Republicans has become ever more a protest vote against a world that is changing whether we like it or not. It must be worth it, somehow, to vote against your own material interests to elect representatives (and presidents) who will at least make a show of standing up for you, but are really beholden to larger, more sinister interests.
danschorr.blogspot.com
danschorr.blogspot.com
15
The GOP has become a loose coalition, if you can call it that, of single interest voters. NRA members, anti-abortion advocates, Conservative Christian based government, taken together, is an incoherent message. That doesn't matter to the individual "Republican voter" as long as their particular issue is supported.
It's the classic Faustian bargain, to which both GOP voters and politicians are eager participants. Candidates will support what ever gets them re-elected. The voters will accept questionable behavior as long as their candidate backs that voters agenda, e.g. guns, guns, and more guns.
It's the classic Faustian bargain, to which both GOP voters and politicians are eager participants. Candidates will support what ever gets them re-elected. The voters will accept questionable behavior as long as their candidate backs that voters agenda, e.g. guns, guns, and more guns.
2
I agree with Mr. Brooks' point about the evolution of the GOP into it's current sorry state, It has become the party of no, ..unless the topic is gun rights or tax cuts for the wealthy. But, lets not let the Democrats off the hook either, (I am a Democrat). We own a great big slice of the dysfunction in government today.
There was a time when both sides could disagree with each other vehemently and yet be civil, sadly that is no longer the case. No longer do our representatives fight for their principles, now it's ideology. This is in fact it's the opposite of governing. And, this is vital to understand because this dysfunction is what got Trump elected. Americans desperately need the government to do their job; address health care, reform the tax code, address Americas faltering infrastructure and provide an atmosphere for business to grow responsibly. What we get is standoffs and recrimination. Sixty million Americans thought Trump was the answer to this dysfunction and failed to see he was a symptom.
Unless and until we restore some sense of order, decorum and civility we will be completely unable to address the pressing issues America faces. This starts with citizens. You can not negotiate with someone AND demonize them. And, citizens must insist on this from their representatives. It's said "In a democracy, people get the government they deserve," I think we deserve better but we need to do our part.
There was a time when both sides could disagree with each other vehemently and yet be civil, sadly that is no longer the case. No longer do our representatives fight for their principles, now it's ideology. This is in fact it's the opposite of governing. And, this is vital to understand because this dysfunction is what got Trump elected. Americans desperately need the government to do their job; address health care, reform the tax code, address Americas faltering infrastructure and provide an atmosphere for business to grow responsibly. What we get is standoffs and recrimination. Sixty million Americans thought Trump was the answer to this dysfunction and failed to see he was a symptom.
Unless and until we restore some sense of order, decorum and civility we will be completely unable to address the pressing issues America faces. This starts with citizens. You can not negotiate with someone AND demonize them. And, citizens must insist on this from their representatives. It's said "In a democracy, people get the government they deserve," I think we deserve better but we need to do our part.
1
Obama was civil and tried to work with the Republicans to no avail. I believe Hillary Clinton would have done the same.
2
Freedom from the fear of going bankrupt, having to sell one's house and all assets to pay for insurmountable medical debt. Now that would be real freedom!
4
It's easy to spend other people's money, as Republicans proved with the 2003 Medicare Part D. The law specifically banned negotiations for volume discounts and patient assistance programs drug companies offered millions of people under the bizarre argument Medicare is welfare instead of an investment. Republicans told drug companies with a patent on expensive medications millions of seniors need the government will pay them whatever they want. Lovely, isn't it?
5
Wow - crystal clear, how you explained it. Thanks for this piece.
1
Republicans are unified with respect to categorically opposing Democrats, cutting taxes, reducing regulations upon businesses, spending lavishly on defense and criminal justice, and reducing spending on anything that equalizes opportunities and reduces great inequities. But when it comes down to specifics in each area many hold mutually exclusive positions.
4
When discussing the concept of 'freedom' I think FDR said it best in his Four Freedoms speech. Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Freedom from want. Freedom from fear. Like most Americans I've always kind of taken the first two for granted but unless you're an Evangelical Christian who insists on saying "Merry Christmas" rather than "Happy Holidays" even these have been challenged. And certainly if you're a Muslim you don't take freedom of worship for granted.
It's hard to be free from want if you're denied a good education or if you fear that pursuing your goals will cause you to amass a mountain of debt. While you may enjoy the freedom of not having to purchase health insurance the price you'll pay is the underlying fear that you're just one accident or illness away from bankruptcy.
It's hard to be free from want if you're denied a good education or if you fear that pursuing your goals will cause you to amass a mountain of debt. While you may enjoy the freedom of not having to purchase health insurance the price you'll pay is the underlying fear that you're just one accident or illness away from bankruptcy.
6
"In 1996, Republicans passed and Bill Clinton signed a welfare reform law that tied benefits to work requirements so that recipients would develop the skills they need to succeed in the labor force." Please, Mr. Brooks, study up on the results from the welfare reform law. Results do NOT include recipients being supported to develop skills to succeed. I was a home visitor then in Cleveland, Ohio's, ghettos, explaining to recipients what the new law would require. Results of the new law: few, if any, jobs which could support a family. Most jobs available, when available, were 20-hour-per-week fast food jobs and Wal-Mart jobs. Result? Families needed food stamps (government money) and Medicaid (government money) to survive. Welfare reform did NOT develop people's skills to succeed; it did add suffering to people's struggle to survive. Multi-million-dollar corporations -- McDonald's, Wal-Mart -- DID receive government welfare that allowed them to pay their workers below-subsistence wages.
15
The problem is everyone in congress has their first allegiance to being reelected. This creates rigid positions geared to constituencies, lack of compromise and renders stalemate inevitable. Imposing term limits - one 6 year term for all members of congress (and the President) would completely change these dynamics and may actually allow the system to work again. The old objection to term limits were 1. they limited voter freedom and 2. experienced congressional members get more done. These objections now appear obsolete and we need to somehow reintroduce term limits into the national discussion.
1
This is a perfect analysis of the Republican Party. A question that comes to mind is: "Who does the Republican Party really stand for"? I will take a wild guess and say it is big corporations and their interests, and not the people who vote for them. Perhaps their failure to govern will finally be evident to those who have given them support and inspire them to demand a functional political party that puts the well being of our people first or be voted out of office. One can only hope.
4
"Republicans can't govern from Capital Hill... (because they) offer nothing but negativity, detachment, absence and an ax." President Abraham Lincoln advised, "If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him you are his sincere friend." The public persona of Capital Hill Republicans strikes many Americans as insincere and unfriendly. The healthcare bills they produced were mean, hateful, hurtful, and uncaring. As one commentator said, these bills are a solution searching for a problem and consequently become the problem. For the GOP to govern better, befriending all Americans and listening is a good starting point; all politicians need to venture beyond their comfort zones to hear real concerns and craft real solutions that benefit Americans.
4
Great writing as always, Mr. Brooks. Hard to understand legislative failure through the prism of political party though. Neither party has been particularly successful at legislating.
Many Americans have decreasing loyalty to parties and increasing loyalty to ideology (whether they name the ideology or not).
The ideology that leads to legislative failure is one that devalues the role of the Legislature. Legislation that passes and is signed by the Executive should be the product of discourse and compromise. If it is, it's more likely to be accepted by more people. However today many individuals prefer rigid ideology, issue by issue, over any compromise. This is true of republicans and democrats--not just the fringe of each party. Under this thinking legislative gridlock and inaction are unwittingly celebrated, i.e., better to have them do nothing than something that's the product of compromise.
I don't agree with this nor think it leads to good results. But many seem comfortable enough with this experiment that they send legislators to Washington not to legislate, but to refuse to compromise.
There's a place for "resistance," or refusal to compromise, but too much resistance is unhealthy for that vast majority of people who want to work together to form a more perfect union.
I recommend Jack Davies' slim but comprehensive book Legislative Law and Process for every person who wants to understand how a legislative body could and should work...warts and all.
Many Americans have decreasing loyalty to parties and increasing loyalty to ideology (whether they name the ideology or not).
The ideology that leads to legislative failure is one that devalues the role of the Legislature. Legislation that passes and is signed by the Executive should be the product of discourse and compromise. If it is, it's more likely to be accepted by more people. However today many individuals prefer rigid ideology, issue by issue, over any compromise. This is true of republicans and democrats--not just the fringe of each party. Under this thinking legislative gridlock and inaction are unwittingly celebrated, i.e., better to have them do nothing than something that's the product of compromise.
I don't agree with this nor think it leads to good results. But many seem comfortable enough with this experiment that they send legislators to Washington not to legislate, but to refuse to compromise.
There's a place for "resistance," or refusal to compromise, but too much resistance is unhealthy for that vast majority of people who want to work together to form a more perfect union.
I recommend Jack Davies' slim but comprehensive book Legislative Law and Process for every person who wants to understand how a legislative body could and should work...warts and all.
3
Related reading: Rebecca Solnit's "The Ideology of Isolation" - https://harpers.org/archive/2016/07/the-ideology-of-isolation/
Great recommendation. Last two paragraphs are very strong. Thanks for sharing
Really well written article with great insight!
1
What really drives the Republican positions is less about which flavor of freedom they are selling than about basing their policy positions on beliefs instead of facts. Republicans have "religionized" their policies. Instead of basing them on evidence or data they turn them into beliefs, e.g., climate change is liberal propaganda or a Chinese hoax. With health insurance, Republicans and especially Trump promoted the belief that Obamacare was awful and failing and that there was an alternative out there that was better, cheaper and would cover more people - it will be beautiful. Because their voters have adopted the "belief" system rather than a "fact" system, they believed that Trump and the Republicans really did have a better plan. Now that it is clear they have zero plan other than "repeal and gut Medicaid" they fail. Stay tuned, this will happen again and again with the debt ceiling, the budget and tax reform.
2
The GOP can't govern, period. They are tone deaf, more interested in satisfying the likes of the Koch Brothers, the Walmart family, the Scaifes, etc. In fact, the GOP shouldn't be allowed to govern any longer. They have shown a depraved indifference to the lives of working Americans for years. They have dispensed favors to their large corporate donors and the rich families that support them while penalizing the rest of us for not being born on third base. They are on the dole more than we are. They are paid through our tax dollars. They get the best health care possible without having to worry if it's affordable. They are wined and dined every place they go except when they hold their rare constituent meetings. And then they have the nerve to resent the questions.
They are free to resign if they don't like it. The truth is that they love the power, the publicity, etc. We get to suffer because of their grandiose ideas about themselves. They think that they deserve to be in power, in charge, and telling us how to live our lives as they wreck them for us. One hopes that they detach themselves sooner rather than later from life in DC. Maybe we can provide a little help by not voting them back into office. Oh, and Mr. Brooks, thanks for the contributions to our current state of idiocracy.
They are free to resign if they don't like it. The truth is that they love the power, the publicity, etc. We get to suffer because of their grandiose ideas about themselves. They think that they deserve to be in power, in charge, and telling us how to live our lives as they wreck them for us. One hopes that they detach themselves sooner rather than later from life in DC. Maybe we can provide a little help by not voting them back into office. Oh, and Mr. Brooks, thanks for the contributions to our current state of idiocracy.
6
"Freedom-as-detachment" has only one cure. Vote them out. More importantly, it should be mandatory to vote in the US. Our dismal voting statistics are outrageous. And, why not vote by mail as we do here in Oregon? Of course, this privilege is only bolstered by continuing vigorous vigilance over the entire voting process.
5
Perfectly articulated... but will the Republicans read it, understand it, and make the necessary changes to become a governing body?
2
In congressional districts throughout the country apparently this the type of government people want. They keep electing Republicans to congress.
1
For Republican's it seems like it is very hard for them to become the party of "yes", when all they've done for the last 10 years is be the party of "no".
3
The column of David Brooks' career.
4
Mr. Brooks' definitions of the two types of freedom has profound implications. Freedom as detachments assumes the existing order is essentially good and only minor adjustments meant to preserve or protect that order are necessary. Freedom as capacity assumes the existing order to be fundamentally flawed and only redressed through challenging the status quo. The latter describes the Democratic party very neatly, but I see historically only an oratorical presence of both aspects in the Republican party, at least in Mr. Brooks' and my generation.
Our system of government, with its three branches, two houses of Congress, our Bill of Rights, and other norms of governance to protect against what De Tocqueville called the tyranny of the majority, cannot function without compromise. And as both the Democratic and Republican parties have become more ideologically homogeneous, compromise has become more difficult. This is especially true of Republicans where under the influence of Fox News, Talk Radio, and other right wing media and activist groups, compromise has become equated with treason. Just consider the viciousness of the attacks that have been launched against the more moderate GOP senators, especially the women senators, who have balked at backing the various versions of McConnell’s health bill.
4
Correct. But the principle reason the Republicans can't govern is fundamental: they don't believe in government.
5
David - all true
And yet the GOP has never been more popular with white voters.
And yet the GOP has never been more popular with white voters.
71
Andrew, statistics please.
Occasionally, when the clumsy swing an ax, it is their own toes which get cut off.
See you in 2018, Republicans.
See you in 2018, Republicans.
4
"Republicans can't pass bills," but they can pass gas.
1
Have you, therefore, left the Republican Party of Lies and Cruelty, Mr. Brooks? If not, what does any of it mean?
1
"If you are a regular American, the main threat to your freedom is" Republicanism.
3
If I recall correctly, the Democrats couldn't pass Bills either!
Seems like the wheels of progress turn slowly because of the government law making legislature and the fact that people - including politicians - who are big shareholders in privately owned Health Insurance companies, are worried about their share prices and dividends going down in value.
Most politicians in the USA will not be making impartial decisions because the USA doesn't have a universal healthcare system.
Seems like the wheels of progress turn slowly because of the government law making legislature and the fact that people - including politicians - who are big shareholders in privately owned Health Insurance companies, are worried about their share prices and dividends going down in value.
Most politicians in the USA will not be making impartial decisions because the USA doesn't have a universal healthcare system.
Thanks be that they can't!! We'd be in a heap of trouble if they could pass all of the mess they've been proposing! Your Republican roots are glaring like a sixty year old whose dark red dye job is three weeks over due. I celebrate every defeat they have as a win for Americans.
1
freedom . . .. from reality
1
Guess what David? You’re on your own!
Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose
The only freedom republicans know is that which pertains to them and no one else.
2
Fear and hate of one black man is an insufficient governing platform? Who knew?
11
"Over the past few decades Republicans cast off the freedom-as-capacity tendency."
Please point to any of your writings "over the past few decades" where you highlight with alarm this trend? These days you refer to "The Republicans" like they are some foreign group of people to you. You know, those Republicans, way over there.
Please start writing as if you have been part and parcel of the growing atrocity of the Republicans "over the past few decades".
Please point to any of your writings "over the past few decades" where you highlight with alarm this trend? These days you refer to "The Republicans" like they are some foreign group of people to you. You know, those Republicans, way over there.
Please start writing as if you have been part and parcel of the growing atrocity of the Republicans "over the past few decades".
1
Outside of the ADA, all these creeps have done is enrich themselves and harm the general population. They deserve no credit.
Truest thing you've ever written...
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 was passed by a democratic congress... All 8 "No" votes came from Senate republicans:
Armstrong (R-CO)
Bond (R-MO)
Garn (R-UT)
Helms (R-NC)
Humphrey (R-NH)
McClure (R-ID)
Symms (R-ID)
Wallop (R-WY)
Armstrong (R-CO)
Bond (R-MO)
Garn (R-UT)
Helms (R-NC)
Humphrey (R-NH)
McClure (R-ID)
Symms (R-ID)
Wallop (R-WY)
16
Republicans did exactly what they set out to do: leave Obamacare on life support, let it wither and die in agony. Oh, did they forget to mention it's still Obama's fault, like the past 8 years? Gosh, they tried for 6 whole months but Obama's voodoo made it impossible to take apart. He also booby-trapped it so if you cut the wrong wire 20 million will lose healthcare and 200,000+ will die.
That dastardly Obama cuffed the entire GOP and now millions of innocent Americans will suffer greater hardship. Got to elect more Trump-hugging GOP senators and representatives so we can tear apart Obama's temple of mixed gender, leather-clad, dainty snowflakes, politically correct poor, aging takers who actually think their petty lives matter.
And now they demand that Americans who make America great -- the producers, givers, successes, heirs, winners -- pay for the health care of losers, takers, freeloaders, the weak and hopeless. So not MAGA.
There's was never any percentage in a GOP Repeal and Replace. They know the best defense is a scorched earth, fire and brimstone offense. Obamacare has been their straw man for 9 years. It's the devil they know. And will keep.
Why would they dynamite their chance next year to hold majority by owning a care-less health law that does exactly what every doctor is forbidden to do by the Hippocratic Oath? GOPcare causes harm, which will hurt their election prospects.
It was all for show. Fake.
They'll wait until 2019 for the nasty stuff.
That dastardly Obama cuffed the entire GOP and now millions of innocent Americans will suffer greater hardship. Got to elect more Trump-hugging GOP senators and representatives so we can tear apart Obama's temple of mixed gender, leather-clad, dainty snowflakes, politically correct poor, aging takers who actually think their petty lives matter.
And now they demand that Americans who make America great -- the producers, givers, successes, heirs, winners -- pay for the health care of losers, takers, freeloaders, the weak and hopeless. So not MAGA.
There's was never any percentage in a GOP Repeal and Replace. They know the best defense is a scorched earth, fire and brimstone offense. Obamacare has been their straw man for 9 years. It's the devil they know. And will keep.
Why would they dynamite their chance next year to hold majority by owning a care-less health law that does exactly what every doctor is forbidden to do by the Hippocratic Oath? GOPcare causes harm, which will hurt their election prospects.
It was all for show. Fake.
They'll wait until 2019 for the nasty stuff.
9
Amen, Mr. Brooks.
1
So the question is, David, how do you look at yourself in the mirror and still call yourself a Republican? The party is not coming back to you so where do you go from here, Don Quixote?
1
Freedom of capacity vs. detachment glazes over the other disturbing trend that has taken root in the republican party. Maybe this is off topic, but I think the republican party has become the party of dog-whistle racism. Look at the ideas and actions mainstream republicans have rallied behind: the momentum to obstruct everything Obama touches is supported across the board, "you lie" during Obama's formal speech is shrugged off, the pitch to build a wall along our southern border to keep out Mexicans who might rape or murder you is the lead issue, a message to the world that we will ban Muslims from entering our country because they might blow you up is aggressively supported, draconian drug laws that unfairly prosecute blacks and Mexicans is good governance ("opioid" abuse by whites in rural areas is a social issue; "crack" abuse in ghettos is a scourge to be attacked). When non-whites threaten power the republican party whistles in code: build that wall, you lie, travel ban, incarcerate, pull yourself up by the boot straps in a rigged system while we lower taxes for the richest, the whitest, the most connected.
To just saying the republican party has become a party of freedom-as-detachment overlooks the disturbing racist tinge supported in their ideas and actions. The G.O.P has also become the party of insular, paranoid, fear-based, myopic ideas that isolate and scapegoat minorities.
To just saying the republican party has become a party of freedom-as-detachment overlooks the disturbing racist tinge supported in their ideas and actions. The G.O.P has also become the party of insular, paranoid, fear-based, myopic ideas that isolate and scapegoat minorities.
3
Ideological purity does not feed people. It does not employ them. It does not create a stronger nation.
All it does is give narcissistic sociopaths the ability to portray themselves as standing for something other than themselves.
All it does is give narcissistic sociopaths the ability to portray themselves as standing for something other than themselves.
3
I see the pitchforks for the 'Republican Party', but I disagree that it is a 'party' problem. It is a Conservative problem.
The only good idea on the Right is to make sure we have cannon-fodder. Everything else is garbage.
The only good idea on the Right is to make sure we have cannon-fodder. Everything else is garbage.
"And Republicans offer nothing but negativity, detachment, absence and an ax."
...and you're a Republican, David. (Or did you forget that?)
...and you're a Republican, David. (Or did you forget that?)
2
Did David Brooks just wake up from a 9-year sleep?
And??
What do we do about this insidious state of affairs?
Any ideas there?
And??
What do we do about this insidious state of affairs?
Any ideas there?
1
GOD I wish we had Hillary.
5
Amen.
"Freedom as capacity" and "freedom as detachment, followed by light-weight "philosophical" analysis. Why does this steady stream of made-up concepts from this author that have the brevity of life of an anti-matter particle get under my skin so? It's like Rice Crispy squares - you eat them and afterwards think "What was the point of that?"
Still think there's nothing to this Russia thing David?
Yes, Mr. Brooks.
YOUR Republican Party can't do anything...except destroy the rule of law in our country.
YOUR Republican Party can't do anything...except destroy the rule of law in our country.
2
See, you didn't need Pierre Bourdieu to figure this out, did you?
Bravo! Brook's last sentence says it all: "... Republicans offer nothing but negativity, detachment, absence and an ax". I couldn't agree more.
OK, this does it. David Brooks is no longer a Republican. He's barely even a conservative.
1
Mr. Brooks is wrong when he says that Republicans no longer practice both "freedom as capacity and freedom as detachment." Republicans provide the rich and powerful with the capacity to extract money and labor from the weak and powerless while also providing them with detachment from any responsibility for their actions. Corporations are free to wreck the environment, fleece customers but force them into company-controlled arbitration, call employees "managers" so they don't need to pay overtime, knowingly sell mortgages to people without the means to pay them and then blame them when they default AND get bailed out, collect health insurance premiums for decades and then cut people off when they get too expensive to cover, etc. Poor and powerless individuals get only detachment - pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.
2
There is only one "flavor" of freedom: not having to have somebody else in a self-appointed, superior position of authority, "give" you or "advise" you, or provide "space" to do your own "thing." Or take away things that are crucial to you.
Freedom is the ability to make one's own decisions about one's own life and the capacity to act on them. The GOP imprisons the poor in their poverty, working or not, the "takers". It restricts the rights of women and workers. It denies health and life and well being, and sticks our money into the pockets of their cronies and now, with this GOP president, their own businesses. The GOP garbages the environment, pillages the landscape, poisons us. It would restrict the vote and throw millions of good, valuable young people out of the country. Instead of the ADA, this GOP gives us a president who mocks disability.
It's not new. Your party has been at it for three plus decades, Mr. Brooks. When do you think you might consider leaving it?
Freedom is the ability to make one's own decisions about one's own life and the capacity to act on them. The GOP imprisons the poor in their poverty, working or not, the "takers". It restricts the rights of women and workers. It denies health and life and well being, and sticks our money into the pockets of their cronies and now, with this GOP president, their own businesses. The GOP garbages the environment, pillages the landscape, poisons us. It would restrict the vote and throw millions of good, valuable young people out of the country. Instead of the ADA, this GOP gives us a president who mocks disability.
It's not new. Your party has been at it for three plus decades, Mr. Brooks. When do you think you might consider leaving it?
3
It's quite convenient to start the Republican accomplishments with the "kinder and gentler" Bush. You omitted the whole Reagan revolution and the government is the problem malarkey. The government that had to be shrunk so that it could be drowned in a bathtub. We are living the consequences of all that David no matter what freedom package you try to present it in.
2
They are a cabal of empty suits and Reagan wannabes, who, in the end, had no ideas and no skills beyond shouting slogans, trash talk and obstruction. Now they are in a ditch with a maniac at the bottom of the 50 year slippery slope that began with the 'southern strategy.'
1
The lack of effective campaign finance laws has allowed a near unlimited flow of money that will corrupt the legislative process. The lack of any possible consensus on any matter is a direct result of every member being bought off by multiple interests......making decisions impossible
Human nature people....
No matter the "freedoms" involved in being able to petition government, you can still do it without "paying" for it
Human nature people....
No matter the "freedoms" involved in being able to petition government, you can still do it without "paying" for it
1
Did it really take you all this time to figure this out? All of what you have said here was clear when Ronald Reagan was pushing it.
1
I find the idea of "negative freedom" useful. When I first heard it I was confused, but just a bit of reading took care of it. Denying women the right to vote was a negative freedom, and universal suffrage removed this negative freedom--and yes, expanded women's capabilities. This is good in and of itself, and also because it enables women, and by default society, to function more efficiently and equitably.
I think this is an especially good example, as Republicans move to restrict voting rights under the guise of enhancing election integrity. This move does not seem to fit either version of Mr. Brook's freedoms, but it does touch on capabilities, unfortunately in a negative sense.
I think this is an especially good example, as Republicans move to restrict voting rights under the guise of enhancing election integrity. This move does not seem to fit either version of Mr. Brook's freedoms, but it does touch on capabilities, unfortunately in a negative sense.
The greatest gift Republicans have given we Liberal Dems is Trump. When under any other circumstance, they should be cleaning our clocks, dismantling every progressive move made by our beloved President Obama, at this six-month mark, they have nothing to show for it. Forget that Goresuch nonsense. The only reason he sits on the Court is because of the never-ending obstructionism of Mitch the Turtle. One can be assured when the Republicans lose their majorities, and they will, they will have Hades to pay for their transgressions. What goes around eventually comes around.
DD
Manhattan
DD
Manhattan
2
I'm reading about TR right now. He is rolling over in his grave.
1
What does anyone expect? After all, we have the best Congress that money can buy.
1
I'm so sick hearing of health savings accounts as a "freedom"-------only those who don't live pay check to pay check would benefit, i.e.. the top 50%----they don't need another deficit creating handout!
128
"Sure, Donald Trump is a boob, but that doesn’t explain why Republicans can’t govern from Capitol Hill." Umm yes it does. Donald Trump's election as presidential candidate is exhibit A in why the Republican Party has become dysfunctional: an elitist ignoramus divorced from the reality of ordinary Americans peddling ideologically and tribally attractive slogans that benefit his elite class...
Sounds about right as a description of the party as a whole...
Sounds about right as a description of the party as a whole...
For the super-rich, the GOP offers the freedom to become even more rich, and the freedom to poison water and kill workers with impunity.
For the rest of us--poverty and death.
It's incredible to me that GOP voters have swallowed this for so long--but I guess if you wrap this atrocious deal in Jesus and the flag, some foolish people won't look at the details.
For the rest of us--poverty and death.
It's incredible to me that GOP voters have swallowed this for so long--but I guess if you wrap this atrocious deal in Jesus and the flag, some foolish people won't look at the details.
So, David, now that you'v accurately articulated this, how about doing something about it? The only way to reverse this destructive direction for our country is to identify those responsible by name and organization (the Kochs, Grover Norquist, Paul Ryan, and the others) and expose them by name and deed. Shed light on what they are doing, like shining a flashlight under a rock, to scatter these little insects, like they are, and for you to leave the Republican party.
2
you are a misleading party. You will do anything to get in power and then you remember, hey we don't know what to do now except for tax cuts. You block everyhing good or bad. Your lies to your voters in the middle of country makes the country resent each other. Your party takes advantages of the people in the middle of the country to vote against their self interest. Your party deserves an Oscar for this. You exploit your voter's prejudice to to get in power, stay in power and block everything from the other side. That is the reason you can not govern. Now with Trump it is just emberrassing to be a republican. But you will write a very nice column when they pass the tax cuts and you and Ross will say they've got their mojo back.
"Drain the swamp party??????" Pulease, the Republican Party is the Swamp. Look at the corruption in the second Bush administration (just on example: firing two auditors for bringing to the light of day Shell Oil's underpayment for leases in the Gulf). Look where we are right.....now. Right smack in middle of the swamp, right where the quick sand is.
Comparing the ADA and Welfare to Work is a false analogy. One program created protections for the most vulnerable people in our society; the other was an all-out assault on the most vulnerable. Welfare to Work is one of the most shameful aspects of the Clinton years, and should not be cited as a governmental achievement. The ADA, on the other hand, was a great success and something all Americans can be proud of. But when we have a president who mocks the disabled--specifically, a disabled reporter from this newspaper--it is difficult to imagine that anything like the American with Disabilities Act could be passed in our current political climate. When is the NYT editorial board going to submit these pieces to greater rigor in editing? I am fed up with David Brooks' weak reasoning and sham rhetoric, in column after column. If Brooks is meant to pander to the right, he could do so more effectively if his columns had the weight of cogent and logical argument.
1
The main threat to freedom is poverty.
141
Thank goodness the Republicans can't legislate! How could they possibly arrive at a favorable outcome when virtually all their core beliefs are false:
Cutting taxes will reduce the deficit and create employment.
Climate change is a hoax.
More guns will make us safer.
Military force is the best way to make the Muslim world stop hating us.
Under-employment is due to regulations.
Private enterprise ALWAYS resolves every problem better than government.
Corporations are persons.
Cutting taxes will reduce the deficit and create employment.
Climate change is a hoax.
More guns will make us safer.
Military force is the best way to make the Muslim world stop hating us.
Under-employment is due to regulations.
Private enterprise ALWAYS resolves every problem better than government.
Corporations are persons.
5
In simple terms: the current Republican failure to create good health care legislation entitles it to be sent out to pasture. Incompetence deserves nothing less.
1
You say 'regular Americans' have specific issues that they fear and then you mention a list of items, including globalisation, as threats.
Hmm! I guess I am outside of "regular America'. Does that mean I am a lesser human being who must expect being treated like an outsider for not being regularly American.
Am I still allowed the freedoms you talk about? Or David, do I have to sign some kind of form to become a 'regular American'?
You should ask for a job in the White House as you seem to harbor Bannonite ideas of the difference and separation of those with American citizenship who do not hew to the neo-nationalism haunting my country.
Hmm! I guess I am outside of "regular America'. Does that mean I am a lesser human being who must expect being treated like an outsider for not being regularly American.
Am I still allowed the freedoms you talk about? Or David, do I have to sign some kind of form to become a 'regular American'?
You should ask for a job in the White House as you seem to harbor Bannonite ideas of the difference and separation of those with American citizenship who do not hew to the neo-nationalism haunting my country.
3
Pablum for breakfast again Mr. Brooks?
Clinton's welfare legislation and the 2003 prescription drug legislation were both highly flawed. There were far better alternatives available. Politics intervened and people--mostly poor, sick and vulnerable--were harmed.
The problem is not that Republicans can't pass bills. The problem is that these bills reflect the GoP's moral bankrupt and how much they are in thrall to big money corporations and individuals --the only beneficiaries of their miserable legislative proposals.
And after ignoring the assault on Obamacare, alt news, the ridiculous Mr. Trump, attacking Ms. Clinton and generally facilitating a Republican victory you are now obfuscating the GoP's moral bankruptcy with half truths?
People will sicken and die from Obamacare repeal, Mr. Brooks. Morbidity, lost work, family finances and retirement savings destroyed, mortality --that is what your party and their failed bills are about. All of this so rich people can reap 95% of the benefits of a huge tax cut that will result in a bare bones budget destined to do irreparable harm to millions more.
Republicans can't pass bills because these bills support premeditated murder, assault with a deadly (legislative) weapon, manslaughter. They are anathema to most Americans
The real question is why Brooks and Republicans cant or wont call out these murderously flawed bills for what they are.
Clinton's welfare legislation and the 2003 prescription drug legislation were both highly flawed. There were far better alternatives available. Politics intervened and people--mostly poor, sick and vulnerable--were harmed.
The problem is not that Republicans can't pass bills. The problem is that these bills reflect the GoP's moral bankrupt and how much they are in thrall to big money corporations and individuals --the only beneficiaries of their miserable legislative proposals.
And after ignoring the assault on Obamacare, alt news, the ridiculous Mr. Trump, attacking Ms. Clinton and generally facilitating a Republican victory you are now obfuscating the GoP's moral bankruptcy with half truths?
People will sicken and die from Obamacare repeal, Mr. Brooks. Morbidity, lost work, family finances and retirement savings destroyed, mortality --that is what your party and their failed bills are about. All of this so rich people can reap 95% of the benefits of a huge tax cut that will result in a bare bones budget destined to do irreparable harm to millions more.
Republicans can't pass bills because these bills support premeditated murder, assault with a deadly (legislative) weapon, manslaughter. They are anathema to most Americans
The real question is why Brooks and Republicans cant or wont call out these murderously flawed bills for what they are.
3
Keep in mind that a significant motivation behind the drive to repeal the Affordable Care Act is the GOP's desire to erase as much as possible any evidence that Barack Obama was ever president.
2
So, when the Republicans want to pass legislations forcing women to give up control over their own bodies, do the Republicans do it in the name of freedom as capacity or freedom as detachment?
4
How can the GOP govern constructively when they have sold their souls to Grover Nordqvist, the Evangelicals and an alphabet soup list of "institutes" and think tanks?
As former Mayor once said "This isn't reality TV, this is reality"
As former Mayor once said "This isn't reality TV, this is reality"
2
Republicans are angry emotional and greedy. They don't want to share and they don't want to help those "less worthy". They are busy trying to further their careers and thats their interest, Follow the money. They have no overall olan except to fight those nasty liberals, take away any and all help from the "takers' and propagandize their base. Passing legislation that will accomplish something is not their goal they are the destroyers of legislation .
1
One way to understand this is to posit that there are no Republicans.
And in the opposition to "Obamacare" discussions no one ever seems to want to touch the sensitive topic that racism is one of the reasons for opposition to "Obamacare."
1
Don't forget, they are also against the freedom to have a child or not, disregarding your personal circumstances.
2
You forgot to say that the GOP has been the party of NO for almost a decade. No positive positions on anything -- just No, No, No! A very dumb refrain from a party without positive leadership or even a positive vision. Very sad that this party of largely old men has tried to railroad through legislation that would decimate women, the elderly and even the unborn by denying care to those who need it and needy folks who seek it. I guess it will be up to the women to show the way the GOP can get back to being a party worth supporting. Susan Collins for President!
4
Mr. Brooks, you need to know and understand how so many, thousands upon thousands, of us Americans feel right now...leaderless. One can write and write political analyses of what Republicans can and can not do. But it's just a waste of words unless we make our voices heard. Right now we can be seen as victims - no other way to describe it - on a ship a sea with no captain and no ship mates to guide us into safe waters. In political terms, with this disgrace of a president and self-serving GOP-led Congress our Constitution is becoming dangerously threatened. And I am not being pedantic.
1
Republicans who installed such a uniquely unqualified boob in the White House can't pass a simple sanity test let alone a bill. For years McConnell, Ryan and Co. preached that when they finally took over Congress they would give people the "freedom to choose whatever health care plan they wanted." Surprise, surprise, the people chose Obamacare instead of Wealthcare. So the GOP had better fund it like it was supposed to be funded instead of allowing Trump to sabotage it simply out of pique.
1
Terrific article to the end: "Sure, Donald Trump is a boob, but that doesn’t explain why Republicans can’t govern from Capitol Hill."
Actually, it sorta does explain it. There are plenty of problems with both parties, but one of them is in lock-step with the boob. They supported the boob. They continue to support the boob. And now what is left to be seen is whether or not the Republican party will choose the rule of law over the rule of the boob.
Health care is important. Entitlement reform is important. Tax reform is important. But all of those important things will continue to be subverted, neglected, or destroyed under the regime of the party led by the boob.
Actually, it sorta does explain it. There are plenty of problems with both parties, but one of them is in lock-step with the boob. They supported the boob. They continue to support the boob. And now what is left to be seen is whether or not the Republican party will choose the rule of law over the rule of the boob.
Health care is important. Entitlement reform is important. Tax reform is important. But all of those important things will continue to be subverted, neglected, or destroyed under the regime of the party led by the boob.
2
Somehow, David, you always manage to convince yourself the current Republican regime is what it is because of some failure of intellect. It is what it is because it is a working force for greed. As a man ever concerned with vice and virtue, you should be looking through the short list of seven deadly sins for explanations of the Republican demise.
3
The issue here is that a modern society adapting to living on our fragile planet in the 21st century has to come together to live successfully and prosperously!
We need modern infra-structure to help consumers efficiently acquire the goods and services they need, have modern energy efficient, affordable housing... the 21st Century is the century of the global consumer! No turning back!
As a lapsed East coast Republican (like David Brooks?), I cannot support the white racist female-phobic GOP of today. We cannot go back to the 19th Century. In the '60's the Democratic Party controlled the South, as Democrats became more inclusive, the white racist Democratic congress folks were replaced by or became (Storm Thurmond?) Republicans... the South is trying to take us back to the world of plantations, very rich, African American men were 3/5 of a white person... a horrible world where prosperity depended on slavery and racial superiority. Science, through genetics has shown this to be nonsense. We are all genetically the same.
We have a congress and the Trump brand, who believe that we can pay for 200 coal mining jobs in the private bankrupt coal industry by laying off thousands of scientists. These government employees are working to make civilized life in the US better for all by helping all understand the benefits of scientific progress/reasoning - Science does not care what any individual may believe! Provable facts only.
Back to the past?
We need modern infra-structure to help consumers efficiently acquire the goods and services they need, have modern energy efficient, affordable housing... the 21st Century is the century of the global consumer! No turning back!
As a lapsed East coast Republican (like David Brooks?), I cannot support the white racist female-phobic GOP of today. We cannot go back to the 19th Century. In the '60's the Democratic Party controlled the South, as Democrats became more inclusive, the white racist Democratic congress folks were replaced by or became (Storm Thurmond?) Republicans... the South is trying to take us back to the world of plantations, very rich, African American men were 3/5 of a white person... a horrible world where prosperity depended on slavery and racial superiority. Science, through genetics has shown this to be nonsense. We are all genetically the same.
We have a congress and the Trump brand, who believe that we can pay for 200 coal mining jobs in the private bankrupt coal industry by laying off thousands of scientists. These government employees are working to make civilized life in the US better for all by helping all understand the benefits of scientific progress/reasoning - Science does not care what any individual may believe! Provable facts only.
Back to the past?
Republicans are holding themselves to their own campaign rhetoric. They demanded to "repeal and replace." Turns out, that's not gonna work. If they had been smart they would have pulled a TRUMP and simply pivoted their position to "repair and rename." They could have simply done the right thing and fixed the ACA, and they could have claimed that their change warranted a new name, "Republi-Care" or something stupid like that. Or TRUMP-Care. He so likes putting his name on things.
They could have depended on the total lack of memory of their constituency.
All the regretful TRUMP supporters who have now found respect for the ACA. Where was their rationality back when it counted?
They could have depended on the total lack of memory of their constituency.
All the regretful TRUMP supporters who have now found respect for the ACA. Where was their rationality back when it counted?
1
Intellectually, on an individual basis, Republican's are no different than Democrats. They can be smart or stupid, swarmy or on-point, educated and then not so much. But somewhere in the last couple of decades they forgot how to govern. They went off into an ideological bog and seem unable to get out of it. Why is this the case?
You'd think somebody on their side would shout out "I've had enough of digging this (my) grave and am now choosing to turn around and get out of it." But nope, I see no signs of this. As a group they have taken leave of their senses and reside somewhere out there beyond Pluto in relation to the needs of average America.
Why they cannot see this is beyond me. But you know what? At this point I care less. I say 2018 cannot come soon enough for my vote to remove them from the bastions of leadership and privilege in which they are clearly overly comfortable, yet also clearly inept at performing. And this is not to say the Dem's are secure. Give me a good independent as a 3rd way and I say out with them all!
John~
American Net'Zen
You'd think somebody on their side would shout out "I've had enough of digging this (my) grave and am now choosing to turn around and get out of it." But nope, I see no signs of this. As a group they have taken leave of their senses and reside somewhere out there beyond Pluto in relation to the needs of average America.
Why they cannot see this is beyond me. But you know what? At this point I care less. I say 2018 cannot come soon enough for my vote to remove them from the bastions of leadership and privilege in which they are clearly overly comfortable, yet also clearly inept at performing. And this is not to say the Dem's are secure. Give me a good independent as a 3rd way and I say out with them all!
John~
American Net'Zen
Yes. Fealty to one set of ideas no matter what is death. Step one: Tell Grover Norquist to go away.
And it might be said that in their zeal for "no government" and "freedom", the Republicans have also poisoned and rent the political and social fabric.
1
The beginning of the end of the modern day Republican Party: the ascendancy of the intellectually bankrupt, screaming Tea Party which birthed the know-nothing national embarrassment Sarah Palin, and other low or no information "leaders". Now this obsequious "party" lies prostrate before its billionaire Koch funders and a second generation screaming minority "base" whose legislative extremists, the self-described Freedom Caucus, willingly carries it along to its final denouement. The Palin ignorance characteristic now finds its ultimate ideal in the election of the non-Republican, Republican Trump.
1
Well put, David, but let's not forget those who sold millions of Americans on this miserable bill of goods; spinmeisters like Frank Luntz, R. Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, and the rest of the right-wing rat pack led by none other than that patriotic Aussie himself, His Majesty Rupert Murdoch I. Their brainwashing of much of the American public has been going on for decades, and is now so entrenched in the national psyche that it will take decades more to flush out. The shame of it all is that too many people are so desparate to believe rather than think, and the propaganda ministers of the right know exactly how to exploit this. So we're going to be stuck with republican negativity, detachment, absence and axes for some time to come.
when all you have to campaign on is spiteful rhetoric of rage against the common good with fear and loathing while buffering the rich pirates of private sector control with yet more swampy people to ensure their lobby power over democracy- then sooner or later it all comes home. They- REpublicans -exist in their spacesuits floating around each other with an air supply tied to a few plutocratic isolationist enttites who depend on a low wage surrogate workforce to further enrich their swamp.
2
It's important to note the when Republicans talk of freedom, they aren't referring to either of your freedom of capacity nor freedom of detachment. They only value the freedom of the moneyed elite to exploit the worker, rape the environment and impose religious restrictions on the masses. Through that lens, all of their "freedom" policy proposals make perfect sense.
2
Republicans have been spewing hatred of government (remember "starve the beast"?) for quite a few decades. That has directly, not indirectly, given rise to the Tea Party & Trump. The party has been extremely effective at denigrating the state and the free press. Think how great America would be had all that venomous negative effort been spent on positive solutions!
The Republicans are now the party of Palin, Nugent, Kid Rock, Louie Gohmert, Steve King, and of course DJT, among others. To expect ideas from these people is like hoping to get water from a stone.
Brooks list legislative accomplishments of Republicans over the last 30 years and calls them a success. A closer exam would reveal that not to be the case at all. He also fails to mention how the USA ended up in the Iraq war, how President Clinton handed Bush a balance surplus which Bush turned into the largest deficit. He didn't talk about how John Kerry was smeared as a war criminal, how Willie Horton got the first Bush in office, Ronald Reagan's failure
to mention the AIDS crisis unfolding on his watch, so there really hasn't been a big change in Republican thought for nearly half a century
to mention the AIDS crisis unfolding on his watch, so there really hasn't been a big change in Republican thought for nearly half a century
and the republicans are willing to countenance the treasonous behavior of Trump and his many minions. So not only are they useless legislatively they refuse to defend us against our enemies which will be a moral cowardice they will never live down.
1
Well you wanted a 'bidness' man to run the country. You got it. The corruption of American business leads the Republican Party. These Bid'ness men then think they are Demi gods for making a widget sick society. Mr. Brooks has finally seen the light.
The GOP's intellectual leaders (Rush, Levin, Hannity & others) & their financiers (Koch Bros) won't let the GOP members work with the "evil" Democrats, because they practice "socialism". It's really that simple.
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You can contort yourself into all sorts of intellectual boxes, Mr. Brooks, but the fact is that this is all too complicated by half. The Republican party is simply a criminal enterprise in need of complete eradication.
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Pass bills?! If these guys weren't already expert at it, they wouldn't even be able to pass gas. They never should have passed Go.
Donald Trump is a "boob"? No, David Brooks's typically milquetoast characterization notwithstanding, Donald Trump is a morally depraved political thug who has the capacity to do severe damage to the American political system, the international order, and the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Brooks would like to think that the principal failure of Republican governance is a lack of "vision" and "imagination." Like a former 1950s teenager whose romantic imagination is still attached to the strains of "Heartbreak Hotel," contemporary conservatives like Brooks still believe that there was "vision" in Ronald Reagan's evocation of a "shining city on a hill." In fact, the failure of Republican governance rests on the simple reality fact that the degree of sheer corruption among Republican senators and congressmen is of a totally different order of magnitude than that of their Democrat counterparts. Conservatives like Brooks insist on disregarding that it is a very different thing to be beholden to the needs of millions of struggling middle- and lower-class people than it is to be beholden to the needs of the wealthiest and most entitled people in this country. Trump's moral depravity is just the tip of the Republican iceberg. In terms of whose needs and interests they represent, people like John McCain and Paul Ryan are not one whit different than Trump. Like Reagan, they simply package their utter venality in more appealing personal narratives.
"And Republicans offer nothing but negativity, detachment, absence and an ax."
Ax is the key word here. Republicans have devolved into anarchists who threaten the very idea of America as a land of equal opportunity. They are mostly non-thinking ideologues now.
Ax is the key word here. Republicans have devolved into anarchists who threaten the very idea of America as a land of equal opportunity. They are mostly non-thinking ideologues now.
Most in the GOP today do not believe in government. So how can any Democrat or Independent sit down and talk to someone about a legislative priority, when the agenda is to make like you're really stupid and not wanting to enact anything ?
Yet, people in a democracy get the government they deserve and far too many voters are willfully uninformed, misinformed and far too angry to make rational choices in the voting booth.
Yet, people in a democracy get the government they deserve and far too many voters are willfully uninformed, misinformed and far too angry to make rational choices in the voting booth.
Re-submitted with erroneous ” placement corrected:
It is worthwhile to acknowledge whom to credit for Republicans casting off the freedom-as-capacity tendency and becoming instead the Get Government Off My Back Party. It was Ronald Reagan. He fed Americans the “government is the problem” garbage and Republicans gobbled it down.
It is worthwhile to acknowledge whom to credit for Republicans casting off the freedom-as-capacity tendency and becoming instead the Get Government Off My Back Party. It was Ronald Reagan. He fed Americans the “government is the problem” garbage and Republicans gobbled it down.
Destroy government! But first, allow me to build a decades long career there.
The party of "No" spent so many years saying "No" that now they don't know how to say "Yes" anymore.
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Perfectly articulated Mr. Brooks. The party of nihilism. A presidency built on a cult of lying and ignorance. How far we have fallen with this awful group of raiders, Traitors and con men.
Thomas Jefferson said that democracy demands an educated and informed electorate.
Republicanism demands an ignorant and misinformed electorate.
And by that metric, the Republicans are indeed wildly succeeding.
Republicanism demands an ignorant and misinformed electorate.
And by that metric, the Republicans are indeed wildly succeeding.
1
Mr. BROOKS has never had a gift for sharp, perceptive political reporting. "Ce n'est pas son violon d'ingres!"Have written this several times: His best writing is from the heart and about affairs of the heart. Fundamental error in this piece is that Brooks views the GOP as monolithic, which it is not, but a party riven by factionalism, made up of :groupuscules, each of which has a different agenda:extreme conservatives,"rhinos" who went along with virtually everything that Obama proposed to Congress, and moderates, whose efforts to pass legislation which was in the interests of the American people, were frustrated by Sen. Majority leader Reid. So to talk about a party as if it were united around the same core values is erroneous.Likewise for Democrats, where you have the extreme, socialist left selling its supporters a false bill of goods, Sanders's groupuscule, and more moderate Dems.Brooks should also avoid name calling, which EB itself has advised commenters to eschew. The Donald is no boob, but a brilliant businessman and politician, whose properties are to be found throughout the world. Try evaluating his achievements: confirmation of SP Justice, cracking down on illegal felons,support for Kate's Law, raising awareness of citizenry to threat posed by int. terrorism, and for all the petty bourgeois out there with 401 k's, spike in stock market due to new confidence shown by business leaders in the C-in-C.
"A party operating under this philosophy is not going to spawn creative thinkers who come up with positive new ideas for how to help people. "
What makes you think the Republicans want to help people? Unless they are rich...? This is what happens when the Koch brothers own the congress.
What makes you think the Republicans want to help people? Unless they are rich...? This is what happens when the Koch brothers own the congress.
When you spend eight years doing absolutely nothing but obstructing the President, even when he is trying to pass legislation you created (the Affordable Care Act had all the elements of Romneycare and the Heritage Foundation's health insurance model), you tend to forget how to come up with your own policies and your own legislation.
And when you have so much racial hatred for that President (as Trump and McConnell certainly do; I think Ryan's hatred is more about losing an election to him) that even when you control all the levers of power you can only focus on attempting to erase from the history books that a black man was ever President, a forward-looking, positive agenda is the first casualty.
Until Republicans can get over their Obama Derangement Syndrome, I wouldn't count on their getting much of anything constructive done, regardless of their underlying philosophy of "freedom."
And when you have so much racial hatred for that President (as Trump and McConnell certainly do; I think Ryan's hatred is more about losing an election to him) that even when you control all the levers of power you can only focus on attempting to erase from the history books that a black man was ever President, a forward-looking, positive agenda is the first casualty.
Until Republicans can get over their Obama Derangement Syndrome, I wouldn't count on their getting much of anything constructive done, regardless of their underlying philosophy of "freedom."
A party that governs with ideology rather than intellect is doomed to failure.
This should be apparent to anyone who has their eyes open and is paying a modicum of attention to the goings on in Washington. When you throw out all solutions to a problem that don't fit into your rigid ideology you quite possibly have thrown out the baby with the bath water. I see very little chance that the current version of the Republican Party has the ability to recognise this fatal flaw let alone effect a change.
This should be apparent to anyone who has their eyes open and is paying a modicum of attention to the goings on in Washington. When you throw out all solutions to a problem that don't fit into your rigid ideology you quite possibly have thrown out the baby with the bath water. I see very little chance that the current version of the Republican Party has the ability to recognise this fatal flaw let alone effect a change.
The statement today's Republican failure is primarily "intellectual" is ridiculous and blind to today's political reality. This thick skulled conservative can't bring himself to approach the truth, which this is all about the billionaire rich increasing their fortunes
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For the most part, a useful analysis Mr. Brooks. But the intellectual vacuum occupied by the current crop of Republicans is inexplicable without factoring in their intrinsic racism.
The funniest concept in this piece is the middle class is in decline and the republicans are doing nothing about it. Hello!! The middle class is in decline because that 'is' the republican's plans and what they have been working on for the last 37 years!
"Sure, Donald Trump is a boob, but that doesn’t explain why Republicans can’t govern from Capitol Hill. The answer is that we’re living at a time when the prospects for the middle class are in sharp decline. And Republicans offer nothing but negativity, detachment, absence and an ax"
You wrote it David.
You wrote it David.
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When I was in university (shorter after the earth cooled), we learned about viewing the parties in terms of positive and negative rights.
Negative rights is govt leaves people alone (out of the bedroom, out of my business) and govt's only role is to protect/defend country.
Positive rights says, you do that, but you also offer a social safety net to people, and create legislation that relieved suffering (SSI, civil rights bill, ADA, Obamacare). Pretty easy way to distinguish the Dems and GOPs back then.
I think things went whacky is when so-called "Moral Majority" hijacked GOP and tried to affect social engineering (prayer in school, pro life, etc), the NRA expanded their agenda and then the mother of all BAD law came along: citizens united. To bushes credit, he passed the ADA, but it proves how muddy GOP was getting...dipping its toe in positive rights.
The GOP is having an extreme existential crisis. With swirling ideologies in a multi-generational congress that doesn't look like America (mostly white males), prioritizes different facets of an unarticulated, shifting party position, is it any wonder they're so impotent and their "chosen" brain dead leader is such a hot mess?
Negative rights is govt leaves people alone (out of the bedroom, out of my business) and govt's only role is to protect/defend country.
Positive rights says, you do that, but you also offer a social safety net to people, and create legislation that relieved suffering (SSI, civil rights bill, ADA, Obamacare). Pretty easy way to distinguish the Dems and GOPs back then.
I think things went whacky is when so-called "Moral Majority" hijacked GOP and tried to affect social engineering (prayer in school, pro life, etc), the NRA expanded their agenda and then the mother of all BAD law came along: citizens united. To bushes credit, he passed the ADA, but it proves how muddy GOP was getting...dipping its toe in positive rights.
The GOP is having an extreme existential crisis. With swirling ideologies in a multi-generational congress that doesn't look like America (mostly white males), prioritizes different facets of an unarticulated, shifting party position, is it any wonder they're so impotent and their "chosen" brain dead leader is such a hot mess?
Lord save us.
Despite the blatantly obvious and undeniable imbecility of the concept of "health savings accounts" in an America where about half of America has zero (and about 20% has a negative) net worth, and where 60% of the population is just one paycheck away from insolvency, it is apparently impossible to get through even one single Publican / conservatoid article on healthcare finance reform without some mention thereof.
Maybe we could get Franklin Graham to convince all these pinhead pundits that every time they say or write the words, "health savings accounts," it makes the Baby Jesus cry?
Despite the blatantly obvious and undeniable imbecility of the concept of "health savings accounts" in an America where about half of America has zero (and about 20% has a negative) net worth, and where 60% of the population is just one paycheck away from insolvency, it is apparently impossible to get through even one single Publican / conservatoid article on healthcare finance reform without some mention thereof.
Maybe we could get Franklin Graham to convince all these pinhead pundits that every time they say or write the words, "health savings accounts," it makes the Baby Jesus cry?
The GOP has lost coherence as a party. Why? Well, in its scorched earth opposition to President Obama, the establishment Republicans welcomed aboard what I will politely call "low information voters." The GOP happily exploited and incorporated into its ranks the birthers, the science deniers, the gun nuts, the nativists, the Tea Partiers and, yes, the racists in its all-out knee jerk assault against anything that President Obama did or tried to do.
The phrase "sow the wind, reap the whirlwind" comes to mind. The GOP has embraced the aforementioned select group since 2008, and now they're part of the family. In many respects, they ARE the GOP and it is no wonder that the "establishment" Republicans can't get anything done.
The phrase "sow the wind, reap the whirlwind" comes to mind. The GOP has embraced the aforementioned select group since 2008, and now they're part of the family. In many respects, they ARE the GOP and it is no wonder that the "establishment" Republicans can't get anything done.
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The Republicans have championed the wrong influencers, such as Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Steven Bannon, to the detriment of their Party and our country's welfare. Call it brainwashing or a really good sales pitch but the message put forward by these influencers is negative and angry. "Drain the swamp" is a euphemism for "get rid of anyone with experience who will point out our ignorance". "Lock her up" is actually translated as "make women shut up". It is obvious now that the Republican leaders are excellent complainers but lousy at getting the real work done. When you hold such an extreme position (that favored by the bad influencers) then it is inevitable that you will experience a long, slow slog to defeat.
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Mr. Brooks, you are missing the obvious reason for the Republican incompetence. They are pursuing the Koch mandate. See, if government just stops with all the useless protecting the environment and promoting healthy living nonsense, the Kochs and other billionaires will lead us all to the promised land. We don't need elections, we need the blessed billionaires to show us the way. Now all I have to do is inherit a bundle of money like the Kochs and Trump and I too will be able to prosper and lead.
Bravo!The party of the grownups has become the party of the unconscionable.
So a minor point, the republican party is all about getting out of peoples business unless of course they don't agree. I have found it rather hypocritical that they insert themselves into states rights whenever the states try and do things like gun control, or reproductive health, or right to die or a myriad of other issues that could best be described and personal decisions. My biggest wish is that politicians in general could get together and work on their leadership and future vision skills instead of position via polling and decisions only to the next election cycle. The biggest programs that would benefit everyone requires a longer term vision than anyone seems willing to discuss.
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The election of President Trump is the result from Republicans inability to govern.
In order to pass legislation, you first have to be able to write legislation that makes sense and you have to read it and be able to understand it. Many of the Republican "lawmakers" are just door stops that hold the door open for any legislation coming through the halls and the people writing the legislation are incompetent partisan hacks. Just look and President Trump and that is all you need to know about the Republican party.
Senators Collins, Murkowski, Caputo, and Heller should consider joining Senators King and Sanders as Independents. They would caucus with (and empower with the majority) the party that is most solutions oriented, most willing to compromise and most open to fixing things that don't work. Heck, Manchin and Heitkamp may find the Independent label more compelling in 2018. Voters in their states value getting things done more than ideology. And this block of indies could get nearly anything done.
Mr. Brooks, the Republicans don't want to help people. They've embraced the idea that the poor are that due to a character flaw or some other failing and are therefore takers - takers from the rich, who, by din of their own hard work and talents are being sapped by the takers in the form of taxes that pay for social programs to help the takers. This mean-spirited philosophy saw its most effective launch pad in Ronald Reagan and has been a cancer on our country ever since.
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Thank you David for as always providing a cogent,salient perspective of the issue. It appears that the Republican party has abandoned its role as public servant to willingly be the shill of big money. I applaud Senator Collins and the others who have stood with her to put the public good front and center.
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Mr. Brooks, an easy experiment please: go to Washington, ask a Republican congressmember whether the job is good, fulfilling, rewarding, etc. My guess is, off the record, most will say they hate it.
It's plenty easy to tar and feather GOP congressmembers as self-centered knuckleheads doing only what it takes to get re-elected each term, and the time-tested Republican from formula for doing so is DO NOTHING: if you're against everything, you can't be blamed for anything.
That is, if the foolish Democrats vote in a program and it fails, you get to wag the finger. If it succeeds, you still get to wag and call it "wasteful spending." Easy. Can't lose.
That's the extent of the GOP playbook today, and it worked very well for years. But it never anticipated the possibility they would own both Congress and the White House. Is it any wonder, then, that they have no talent for actual governing? They fail at their own legislation because they can't bear the risk of being blamed if it passes!
This is institutionalized into the Party, cemented by their embrace of loud-mouth talk media and extremists. Except in a few districts, acting rationally will only lead to being raked over the coals by Tea-Party primary challenges and Tweets by their own President. Mr. Brooks, they days of a reasonable GOP are gone, and it's not coming back.
It's plenty easy to tar and feather GOP congressmembers as self-centered knuckleheads doing only what it takes to get re-elected each term, and the time-tested Republican from formula for doing so is DO NOTHING: if you're against everything, you can't be blamed for anything.
That is, if the foolish Democrats vote in a program and it fails, you get to wag the finger. If it succeeds, you still get to wag and call it "wasteful spending." Easy. Can't lose.
That's the extent of the GOP playbook today, and it worked very well for years. But it never anticipated the possibility they would own both Congress and the White House. Is it any wonder, then, that they have no talent for actual governing? They fail at their own legislation because they can't bear the risk of being blamed if it passes!
This is institutionalized into the Party, cemented by their embrace of loud-mouth talk media and extremists. Except in a few districts, acting rationally will only lead to being raked over the coals by Tea-Party primary challenges and Tweets by their own President. Mr. Brooks, they days of a reasonable GOP are gone, and it's not coming back.
1
The rabid hate of Anything Obama may have been the reason the GOP has become a non-functioning entity, along with the extremist right wingers such as Lee, Cruz and Rubio, you know, the architects of the $25B-plus shut down fiasco temper tantrum.
For seven years all I heard from my Members of Congress was all the bad things Obama was doing while ignoring the fact they, the GOP, did very little themselves and were less effective than Obama.
The party of Lincoln has become the party of the swamp, a swamp that must be drained of the entrenched party first politician which includes the extreme right wing toxic stew that does little to contribute to the country.
For seven years all I heard from my Members of Congress was all the bad things Obama was doing while ignoring the fact they, the GOP, did very little themselves and were less effective than Obama.
The party of Lincoln has become the party of the swamp, a swamp that must be drained of the entrenched party first politician which includes the extreme right wing toxic stew that does little to contribute to the country.
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Trump's boobishness may not explain WHY Republicans can't govern, but the Republican Party's race to distance itself from science, from the common sense of the Constitution's prohibition of giving religion a favored seat at the table, to look at Americans as "We" instead of "Us vs Them," does explain Trump. He is the natural, the unavoidable, the inevitable result of the Republican revulsion toward "We, the People."
The Republican Party took advantage of the disadvantaged, and look where it has gotten them. They are the unwitting suitor who chased the one thing they lusted for until they had that thing right where it wanted them.
The Republican Party took advantage of the disadvantaged, and look where it has gotten them. They are the unwitting suitor who chased the one thing they lusted for until they had that thing right where it wanted them.
The anti-government policy of the Republican Party is a terrific strategy if you want to keep a wealthy oligarchy running a country. The largest obstacle to this system is a well informed public. The almost complete detachment from the truth by right wing news outlets keeps half the electorate dumb enough that they willfully vote against there best interests. It is a cyclical strategy that keeps itself going with very little effort from the top once it starts moving. Just keep on telling people the same garbage over and over making them more paranoid. The government is sending jobs overseas,is going to take your guns,is going to take away your healthcare,blah blah blah. Makes ignorant people distrust government so much they are blind to the benefits that government provides and can provide if only the people they elected cared about them. Then comes the cherry on top. The belief that taxing the wealthy, who have far more than they will ever need, is bad policy because it is government policy.
3
Brooks attributes the GOP with a failure in vision: failure to see government as enabling, not just restricting. Unfortunately, the GOP failure is much less intellectual and more ordinary: the GOP has sold out its constituents and been bought out by big donors who, they hope, will buy their re-election.
The evidence for this sellout is the Ryan/McConnell unending push for "healthcare" bills that are widely recognized by experts of all sorts to be unworkable, destructive, and that are very unpopular with voters. This push includes speeches by Ryan/McConnell that simply are an unbelievable pablum of counterfactuals and illogic.
The GOP problem is not limited vision; it's unlimited venality.
The evidence for this sellout is the Ryan/McConnell unending push for "healthcare" bills that are widely recognized by experts of all sorts to be unworkable, destructive, and that are very unpopular with voters. This push includes speeches by Ryan/McConnell that simply are an unbelievable pablum of counterfactuals and illogic.
The GOP problem is not limited vision; it's unlimited venality.
3
The only thing currently giving me hope in America right now is the Republicans inability to govern. If that changes, I will lose all hope for America as a forward looking, compassionate nation.
I feel the GOP thinking is this: Everyone must pull themselves up by their bootstraps. If you're not fortunate enough to have bootstraps then you have to pull yourself up by your socks. If you don't have socks, then pull yourself up by your feet. If you don't have feet, too bad, we don't want you anyway because you'll just be a drain on society.
I sense no empathy or compassion from the Republican Party. It is all about cutting taxes for the very wealthy to help the economy through trickle down economics, all run by this famous invisible hand of capitalism.
I just want this famous, GOP quoted, invisible hand to come trickling down and remove the party from American politics.
I feel the GOP thinking is this: Everyone must pull themselves up by their bootstraps. If you're not fortunate enough to have bootstraps then you have to pull yourself up by your socks. If you don't have socks, then pull yourself up by your feet. If you don't have feet, too bad, we don't want you anyway because you'll just be a drain on society.
I sense no empathy or compassion from the Republican Party. It is all about cutting taxes for the very wealthy to help the economy through trickle down economics, all run by this famous invisible hand of capitalism.
I just want this famous, GOP quoted, invisible hand to come trickling down and remove the party from American politics.
"If you’re a regular American, the main threat to your freedom is illness, family breakdown, social decay, technological disruption and globalization. If you’re being buffeted by massive forces beyond your control, you don’t want legislation that says: Guess what? You’re on your own!"
That's a fairly good analysis, though I'm sure each of us would list a few other threats as well. But GOP rhetoric is - and has been for decades - that the big threats to our freedom are taxes and government regulation, and that everything else is trivial. Thirty-five years of propaganda has left much of America convinced of that, at least up to the point that the real threats have personal impact.
That's a fairly good analysis, though I'm sure each of us would list a few other threats as well. But GOP rhetoric is - and has been for decades - that the big threats to our freedom are taxes and government regulation, and that everything else is trivial. Thirty-five years of propaganda has left much of America convinced of that, at least up to the point that the real threats have personal impact.
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David is very generous, suggesting the GOP problems are intellectual. A failure of vision.
That is not the major problem, which is a moral failure. The specious double-talk of Ryan/McConnell is not expressive of a lack of vision; it's fact-free, logic-free pablum dished up to obscure defects in policies decried by constituents and outside agencies alike.
This disreputable, disgusting act is the disguise put on by politicians who have sold out their constituents to gain the backing of a few very rich sponsors who, it is hoped, can pay for campaigns that will pull the wool over voter's eyes.
It's not about vision, it's about venality.
That is not the major problem, which is a moral failure. The specious double-talk of Ryan/McConnell is not expressive of a lack of vision; it's fact-free, logic-free pablum dished up to obscure defects in policies decried by constituents and outside agencies alike.
This disreputable, disgusting act is the disguise put on by politicians who have sold out their constituents to gain the backing of a few very rich sponsors who, it is hoped, can pay for campaigns that will pull the wool over voter's eyes.
It's not about vision, it's about venality.
Mr. Brooks left our one scary aspect to this story. The monsters in Congress are faithfully representing their constituents. We live in an idiocracy now. We deserve everything we get.
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Churchill had a quote to the effect - "I like America because after exhausting all alternatives, Americans eventually get it right". I do believe American voters will eventually figure out the Republican scam and will correct itself. The question is how long will it take and how many people will be hurt in the process. I'm guessing it will take years and millions will be hurt. Learning is slow and painful.
The party of "No" when out of power, has becomes the party of "Huh?" when in power. Generating rage to get people to the polls works, but you end up with a mindless platform without any hope of compromise (least the rage be turned against you.)
A similar problem exists with the Democratic party, they will latch on to anything and anyone to gain a victory. Identity politics has been their "rage machine".
We need a third way.
A similar problem exists with the Democratic party, they will latch on to anything and anyone to gain a victory. Identity politics has been their "rage machine".
We need a third way.
Excellent piece, David Brooks.
The GOP has been the party of No, of obstruction, and all they can think is tax cuts. While I don't agree with most of your ideas, and think you need to step into this decade, I applaud you for calling it like everyone sees it.
I remember senators like Dick Lugar, Arlene Spector - real statesman that were Republicans and understood compromise as good, the greater good as more important than party control. but weren't the burn-it-down tea party crazies. If there were more Republicans like them, the GOP would be in much better stead. (and would get more votes.) Perhaps the moderates in the GOP will wake up.
At any rate, take a bow, sir.
The GOP has been the party of No, of obstruction, and all they can think is tax cuts. While I don't agree with most of your ideas, and think you need to step into this decade, I applaud you for calling it like everyone sees it.
I remember senators like Dick Lugar, Arlene Spector - real statesman that were Republicans and understood compromise as good, the greater good as more important than party control. but weren't the burn-it-down tea party crazies. If there were more Republicans like them, the GOP would be in much better stead. (and would get more votes.) Perhaps the moderates in the GOP will wake up.
At any rate, take a bow, sir.
So what does it mean to identify oneself as a moderate Republican today, David, if you don't approve of the "freedom as detachment" approach? Isn't your continued affiliation with the GOP your own form of detachment?
You can't keep saying "no" to the GOP leadership's actions and choices while saying "yes" to membership in the party. I know many fine people who identify as Republican but refuse to defend the actions of the current leadership. I don't understand the ethical choice they seem to be making when they continue to affiliate themselves with the GOP while distancing themselves from the President and his champions.
What do "moderate Republicans" really stand for, today, if all they engage in is ineffectual hand-wringing in the face of their party leadership's deliberate, methodical enactment of stated campaign promises? How can one identify as Republican when the party leadership's pursuit of its agenda undermines or contradicts one's deeply-held values?
You can't keep saying "no" to the GOP leadership's actions and choices while saying "yes" to membership in the party. I know many fine people who identify as Republican but refuse to defend the actions of the current leadership. I don't understand the ethical choice they seem to be making when they continue to affiliate themselves with the GOP while distancing themselves from the President and his champions.
What do "moderate Republicans" really stand for, today, if all they engage in is ineffectual hand-wringing in the face of their party leadership's deliberate, methodical enactment of stated campaign promises? How can one identify as Republican when the party leadership's pursuit of its agenda undermines or contradicts one's deeply-held values?
1
Government is a design problem. Elected officials design the systems in which we live and work.
The first step of any well-designed product or service is having empathy for the people who will use it.
The majority of our elected officials--on both sides--lack genuine empathy for the American people. Empathy just isn't part of the Republican vocabulary, and Democrats too often err on the side of sympathy.
I'd love to see more professional product and service designers run for office. People who have been using genuine empathy as the foundation of their work.
I'd also be curious to see how a company like IDEO or would tackle some gnarly problem like our current healthcare crisis. I guarantee their solution would be way more workable and fruitful than anything being concocted in the halls of congress.
The first step of any well-designed product or service is having empathy for the people who will use it.
The majority of our elected officials--on both sides--lack genuine empathy for the American people. Empathy just isn't part of the Republican vocabulary, and Democrats too often err on the side of sympathy.
I'd love to see more professional product and service designers run for office. People who have been using genuine empathy as the foundation of their work.
I'd also be curious to see how a company like IDEO or would tackle some gnarly problem like our current healthcare crisis. I guarantee their solution would be way more workable and fruitful than anything being concocted in the halls of congress.
As Trump voters demonstated they are very happy to have government help. To go back to the Tea Party "keep government's hands off my Medicare" has become the trope of ignorance.What seems to drive Republican besides greed is keeping people of Color getting government benefits that Republicans themselves want.
Dear Mr. Brooks, I say this sincerely, as an idea for a creative and capacity creating solution to today's Republican problems: Get together with Joe Scarborough and talk about his ideas for creating a third political party.
We can now appreciate that "Statesman" was an actual SKILL.
The GOP turned itself into a giant "Fist of Falseness" and every problem was dealt with as something that hate radio hacks could define and solve for them.
That they threw away actual governing skills is really pathetic.
The GOP turned itself into a giant "Fist of Falseness" and every problem was dealt with as something that hate radio hacks could define and solve for them.
That they threw away actual governing skills is really pathetic.
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Mr. Brooks, your attempt at finding a philosophical way to explain the Republican Party is very good but ultimately fails because of the Party's overarching goal: to ensure wealthy white men remain wealthy and become even wealthier. Everything else is subservient to this goal. No slogan, no philosophy can mask what the Party is about. Happily there are enough Americans with loud enough voices to prevent the Party from enacting what it really wants to enact - at least for now.
Where have you been? For years the gop has been the party of nihilism, reaching its pinnacle at the Obama inauguration, and continuing unabated thereafter. And while you could have used many examples of positive gop legislation, I think it's interesting that you chose a "health benefit" that was actually a gop pay back and corporate welfare for big pharma. People's access to prescription drugs was an incidental consequence to the goal of boosting pharmaceutical stock prices. The old gop was actually interested in our health and in the environment. Use those passe' examples instead.
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Trump would take years to make a cross country road trip. He can't pass anything.
"For example, there is freedom as capacity and freedom as detachment."
With this clunky and obtuse framing (people do not use such descriptions in everyday conversation) it appears Mr. Brooks may have returned to eating at his vaunted fancy deli. It does not serve him as well as simple, clearer language might have. Why does an editor not help him shape his prose into better form?
But the bottom line is that the one freedom that too many Republicans seem to value most is for the wealthy and corporations to have the freedom to basically do whatever they want. And that freedom often proves devastating to everyone else who does not hold it, but who is held hostage by the actions of those who do.
With this clunky and obtuse framing (people do not use such descriptions in everyday conversation) it appears Mr. Brooks may have returned to eating at his vaunted fancy deli. It does not serve him as well as simple, clearer language might have. Why does an editor not help him shape his prose into better form?
But the bottom line is that the one freedom that too many Republicans seem to value most is for the wealthy and corporations to have the freedom to basically do whatever they want. And that freedom often proves devastating to everyone else who does not hold it, but who is held hostage by the actions of those who do.
Very good analysis by Mr. Brooks. But he leaves out the fact that the ACA was passed without a single Republican vote. That was mistake #1. Having been shut out, and regardless of the merits of the ACA, Republicans' battle cry was "Repeal it, repeal it!!" How dare the Democrats pass major legislation without a single Republican vote?
It turns out that the ACA for all its faults,was worth keeping, with some amendments and modifications. The issue is one of hurt pride, and our politicians are very prideful people, with oversized egos.
Bury the pride, bury the egos, make this work for all Americans, just be fair and do the right thing.
It turns out that the ACA for all its faults,was worth keeping, with some amendments and modifications. The issue is one of hurt pride, and our politicians are very prideful people, with oversized egos.
Bury the pride, bury the egos, make this work for all Americans, just be fair and do the right thing.
Let's face it:
Our legislative situation is what the American people want, or the electoral system is flawed.
Our legislative situation is what the American people want, or the electoral system is flawed.
This past election cycle has show us what is truly the mantra for the Republicans: increase their corporate sponsor wealth to the expense of everything and everyone else. All else is a smokescreen.
Brooks lurches from philosophy (capacity) to policy (AHCA) without ever stopping to look at process. In a nation which once proposed to be one of "laws, not men," the GOP attacked process and destroyed it, first. By focusing on disenfranchisement through voter purges and delegitimatizing the ballot box, it silenced those it could not convince. Recently, by abandoning regular order, denying hearings, and engaging in secret meetings unilaterally, they denied the legitimacy of bipartisanship, without explanation. Then they blamed the Democrats for failing to participate, after barring the door. Call it what it is: Silencing those who might disagree, whether voters or colleagues. What about process, Mr. Brooks? Are we a nation of laws and traditions, or a raucous carnival led by a barker?
This column is dead on, although it fails to mention the moral and ethical vacuum in which most of the Republican legislators are trying to legislate. I personally hope every "solution" they propose to foist on us is dead on arrival.
Kudos to Mr. Brooks but many of us came to this conclusion years ago. Unfortunate that it took so long for it to dawn on him.....
This is the gift of Mr. McConnell.
This is the gift of Mr. McConnell.
David, the worst kept secret in America is that the GOP and a large portion of the the "donor class" has already given up on America as an ideal and Americans as a people.
They got as much productivity out of us as possible by holding down wages. This caused us to work more than one job and draw down our savings. When this ran out, we were "encouraged" to borrow against our dwellings because CDOs would "dissipate the risk in the housing market." Now that that great idea failed there is nothing left to squeeze out of Americans.
Now it's all about grabbing your payout and quickly getting inside the walled community.
They got as much productivity out of us as possible by holding down wages. This caused us to work more than one job and draw down our savings. When this ran out, we were "encouraged" to borrow against our dwellings because CDOs would "dissipate the risk in the housing market." Now that that great idea failed there is nothing left to squeeze out of Americans.
Now it's all about grabbing your payout and quickly getting inside the walled community.
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You can call it whatever you want, Mr. Brooks. However, the Republican platform is all about resentment and nothing else. It is therefore no surprise that the Republicans haven't accomplished anything because nothing ever is successfully accomplished out of resentment. Ever.
Good column, Mr Brooks. But commentators are right to point out that freedom from government regulations benefits, above all, certain donors - the most savage class of entrepreneurs. Freedom to suck up natural resources, to use & discard workers as they see fit. And in the case of the financial sector, to buy up companies, load them with debt, strip their assets, & exit with the loot. As for the millions of their casualties - they're losers, and don't deserve our help.
"So now we have a health care bill that everybody hates."
Does "everybody" really, really hate it?
Is that why this turkey of a bill would pass but for a few decent GOP women senators (Capito, Collins & maybe Murkowski) who are the sole possessors of the very last distilled, precious drops of conscience and empathy that the GOP still have?
Sounds like there's a lot of people that don't hate it, and it will become law despite your "17 percent approval rating (as if that ever stopped the GOP before)" if they somehow are convinced to change their minds about it.
An old Neil Young song titled "Campaigner" had the fairly well known line "Even Richard Nixon has got soul".
I've pondered over the years whether that's a true statement or not, and have waffled back and forth.
What I do know, however, is that he surely has more "soul" than this current GOP, which seems to be proud of and indeed revel in the fact that they have none.
Does "everybody" really, really hate it?
Is that why this turkey of a bill would pass but for a few decent GOP women senators (Capito, Collins & maybe Murkowski) who are the sole possessors of the very last distilled, precious drops of conscience and empathy that the GOP still have?
Sounds like there's a lot of people that don't hate it, and it will become law despite your "17 percent approval rating (as if that ever stopped the GOP before)" if they somehow are convinced to change their minds about it.
An old Neil Young song titled "Campaigner" had the fairly well known line "Even Richard Nixon has got soul".
I've pondered over the years whether that's a true statement or not, and have waffled back and forth.
What I do know, however, is that he surely has more "soul" than this current GOP, which seems to be proud of and indeed revel in the fact that they have none.
You have shed a definitive light on why I have completely abandoned the Republican Party and their take on our modern world. The freedom as detachment example is a perfect description of evrything that is wrong with the GOP.
As an educator, involved community member, world traveler, and good naighbor who wants to see us all protect what we hold dear and want to sustain, I cannot see anything about the Republican caucus that is of a high caliber intellectually or shows any amount of empathy for people or our planet.
I think a good "compromise" would be for all these extreme right wingers to go and form their own political party and get out of the way. They are holding us back from progress, sullying the name of our country worldwide, and are indeed the most selfish people one can imagine. How dare they claim to be good Christians; Christ himself would label them sinners if they were his contemporaries.
How do we ever go about ridding ourselves of their bileous leadership?
As an educator, involved community member, world traveler, and good naighbor who wants to see us all protect what we hold dear and want to sustain, I cannot see anything about the Republican caucus that is of a high caliber intellectually or shows any amount of empathy for people or our planet.
I think a good "compromise" would be for all these extreme right wingers to go and form their own political party and get out of the way. They are holding us back from progress, sullying the name of our country worldwide, and are indeed the most selfish people one can imagine. How dare they claim to be good Christians; Christ himself would label them sinners if they were his contemporaries.
How do we ever go about ridding ourselves of their bileous leadership?
Finally, a substantive, useful commentary having nothing to do with The Obsession. That's one useless party called to task, now for the other. A pox on both their houses, I say--both are hiding behind the pointless headlines and outdoing each other avoiding the duties they were elected to perform. At this point it's going to take a courageous pair indeed to reach across the chasm that used to be an aisle.
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Let's get one thing straight, Mr. Brooks. The only "freedom" the GOP truly cares about is the freedom of the economic elite to exploit the rest of us. Everything else is just window dressing.
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Some of Mr. Brooks' columns have gotten a little shaky for me lately--it's tough to be ideologically committed to the indefensible--but this one was right on. I also read some of the comments and found many that were quite insightful. "“Gay people are icky” and “Women’s plumbing confuses us.” are memorable.
Now I'm looking for a column explaining how Republicans keep winning elections. Their actions that are clearly harmful to all but the rich seem to have no political consequences.
Now I'm looking for a column explaining how Republicans keep winning elections. Their actions that are clearly harmful to all but the rich seem to have no political consequences.
Republicans are reaping what they have sown for four decades. They achieved their unstated goal of making a handful of very wealthy people vastly more wealthy, but in doing so the failed to look at the long game, and so find themselves immobilized; contorted by their own politics.
Note to Mr. Brooks; When are you going to finally jump ship?
Note to Mr. Brooks; When are you going to finally jump ship?
Wasn't nearly every Republican in Congress today elected on one and only one issue, to obstruct and obliterate every accomplishment of the previous president? Of course they don't know how to legislate constructively. That's not a skill that's important to them.
David Brooks' distinction is too shallow. The reason for detachment, as he argues it, is to enable others to have 'their own space' and 'do their own thing,' and that converges with freedom as capacity. If only that captured Republican party thinking! But the real posture of Republican leadership, from the GW Bush administration in its relation to Clinton and Gore through Senator McConnell's relation to Obama, has been not detachment from but, rather, obstruction of government. And that, both because it allows the formation of unholy alliances of those who agree only in what they oppose and because it squelches creative problem-solving thinking, is a recipe for the inability to govern.
This is not only going to effect the Republicans. If we continue to have gridlock in Washington, both the Democrats and Republicans are going to get hammered. You can't be a party of just "NO." I see where the Democrats are starting to develop a legislative plan, that is a good first step, they then need to build support for it around the country and find a way to get it passed.
Please God, keep the Clinton's away from all of this, you would lose more people than you would gain. Trump would use them as a gift to distract from his lack of performance. I would also suggest that rather than attack Trump personally, the Democrats attack his record. "He made these promises, and can't follow through" "He is not effective" "We will be."
Please God, keep the Clinton's away from all of this, you would lose more people than you would gain. Trump would use them as a gift to distract from his lack of performance. I would also suggest that rather than attack Trump personally, the Democrats attack his record. "He made these promises, and can't follow through" "He is not effective" "We will be."
kinder than i would be. from where i sit, the republican party has been making claims, or offers, to the working class ( prosperity for all, ban abortions, yada yada yada)so that they could get support in reducing taxes on the wealthiest. It was a scam. Now those promised want the reward that republicans never really intended to provide. political thought , to be pragmatic , must be adaptable to facts on the ground. Philosophical dogma,( or brain washing by fox news) is not that pliable.
So, why would Republicans in Congress vote for a healthcare bill that they all despise?
You are overlooking the answer. Republicans actually love that healthcare bill. They don't despise it.
What Americans need is a healthcare system that provides essential healthcare services to every American -- not just catastrophic care. What Americans need is not free and it must be paid for. It's the paid for part that Republicans hate and reject.
You are overlooking the answer. Republicans actually love that healthcare bill. They don't despise it.
What Americans need is a healthcare system that provides essential healthcare services to every American -- not just catastrophic care. What Americans need is not free and it must be paid for. It's the paid for part that Republicans hate and reject.
Why can't republicans govern from Capitol Hill? They don't want to. Their philosophy now, and has been since Obama was elected, seems to be to always do as little as possible because that will keep you safe and get you reelected. Unfortunately, that's the philosophy that has led to them being unable to do anything even when they do want to, like the healthcare bill mess. It has also led them to care not one whit for the people they govern. So people die under a new healthcare bill? Good. Depletes the surplus population and probably gets some democrats off the voter roles.
Well, Mr. Brooks, you were born with a sharper mind than mine, and even if I had been to college, I would be knowledge-deficient because like Trump, I am 'intuitive'. A free spirit? A friend, a brilliant international health expert, who is becoming more American than Americans by the day, deemed extraordinary by The Government when securing a Green Card a few years ago.
Scott Fitzgerald would be able to write a classic novella of a second-rate businessman who becomes President and addresses the Country like a poorly educated and spoiled 9 year-old.
The Republican Party crashed. This was pre-Trump, it was resting in convalescence, while some of the Democrats were feeling concerned that 'The Eagle' was not going to be able to soar with one damaged wing.
Butterflies are free to fly, but these Republicans are reminiscent of an irritated political hornet's nest hanging at the front entrance of one's door where you call in an expert to have it removed from the premises.
Far more serious, and at the peril of taking you into the doom and gloom, but hope is fading here for the rural inhabitants who have worked hard all these years to give a future to their children. We are on the Fair Trade Exchange Program. College is out of reach. Few jobs are available for those able and willing. A long line of patients of all ages is to be found at the local convenience store, and Republicans are tampering with our Health Care.
Freedom is when you have Nothing.
Scott Fitzgerald would be able to write a classic novella of a second-rate businessman who becomes President and addresses the Country like a poorly educated and spoiled 9 year-old.
The Republican Party crashed. This was pre-Trump, it was resting in convalescence, while some of the Democrats were feeling concerned that 'The Eagle' was not going to be able to soar with one damaged wing.
Butterflies are free to fly, but these Republicans are reminiscent of an irritated political hornet's nest hanging at the front entrance of one's door where you call in an expert to have it removed from the premises.
Far more serious, and at the peril of taking you into the doom and gloom, but hope is fading here for the rural inhabitants who have worked hard all these years to give a future to their children. We are on the Fair Trade Exchange Program. College is out of reach. Few jobs are available for those able and willing. A long line of patients of all ages is to be found at the local convenience store, and Republicans are tampering with our Health Care.
Freedom is when you have Nothing.
Mr. Brooks is right to bring up past Republican achievements such as the ADA (American with Disabilities Act). I had a conversation with a co-worker who was a very conservative, Rush Limbaugh listening Republican who voted for George H. W. Bush instead of Clinton in 1992. This same man predicted that the ADA would be George H. W. Bush's crowning achievement and create a lasting legacy. He was correct. However, two decades later, the Republican Party of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh listeners would never pass the ADA. "What? the government tells me I have to have disability friendly accommodations in my business? Don't tread on me. Government is the problem. Get the government off my back, drain the swamp, etc."
It's hard to pass legislation under the guise of improving the lives of the poor and the middle classes when your only true philosophy is to lower the taxes of the wealthiest people. Word gets out.
I like the insight David Brooks has provided where the Republican party has moved from freedom of capacity to freedom of detachment. That sums up nicely the pent up anger that saw Trump elected and his continuing confrontational style in a ..house of cards.Not only is our house not in order but as a retiring director of ethics so aptly put it: we have become the laughing stock of the world.
For the first time in many years, Brooks finally wrote something that forthrightly describes Republicanism/Conservativism without any deflective excuses:
"The freedom-as-detachment philosophy is a negative philosophy. It is about cutting back, not building. A party operating under this philosophy is not going to spawn creative thinkers who come up with positive new ideas for how to help people. If you’re being buffeted by massive forces beyond your control, you don’t want legislation that says: Guess what? You’re on your own!"
Thanks for finally admitting that your party has been bereft of any positive ideas for the past two decades.
"The freedom-as-detachment philosophy is a negative philosophy. It is about cutting back, not building. A party operating under this philosophy is not going to spawn creative thinkers who come up with positive new ideas for how to help people. If you’re being buffeted by massive forces beyond your control, you don’t want legislation that says: Guess what? You’re on your own!"
Thanks for finally admitting that your party has been bereft of any positive ideas for the past two decades.
The EPA was Richard Nixon's baby. You didn't go back quite that far, so I thought I'd bring it up. Things didn't work out too well for him, but he deserves kudos for the EPA.
The days of rational, moderate, Republicans are gone, David, and I'm glad you recognize that. But I disagree with your litany of "main threats" to the freedom of "regular Americans" in its entirety. Illness is something we all must endure, along with death. The stuck-up elites in Washington have nothing to do with that, but it was a stuck-up elite in Washington, a person named Barack Obama, who did try to get people some help. Family breakdown? Other folks' lifestyles are none of anyone's business. That's one of our greatest freedoms: not having the government tell us how to live. If you want to maintain your own nuclear heterosexual family unit, you are free to do so. Social decay? What does that even mean? Technological disruption and globalization? Progress is inevitable, and it has never been a threat to "freedom." It is only a threat in the minds of those who refuse to face it.
"Regular people" have been brainwashed. Your party did this deliberately so they could get their way like spoiled brats, their way being a tiny federal government imposing no regulations and levying no taxes except as necessary to support the military. Like you say, we're all on our own. It's exactly what Republicans wanted all along. That they can't get it done makes me smile every day.
The days of rational, moderate, Republicans are gone, David, and I'm glad you recognize that. But I disagree with your litany of "main threats" to the freedom of "regular Americans" in its entirety. Illness is something we all must endure, along with death. The stuck-up elites in Washington have nothing to do with that, but it was a stuck-up elite in Washington, a person named Barack Obama, who did try to get people some help. Family breakdown? Other folks' lifestyles are none of anyone's business. That's one of our greatest freedoms: not having the government tell us how to live. If you want to maintain your own nuclear heterosexual family unit, you are free to do so. Social decay? What does that even mean? Technological disruption and globalization? Progress is inevitable, and it has never been a threat to "freedom." It is only a threat in the minds of those who refuse to face it.
"Regular people" have been brainwashed. Your party did this deliberately so they could get their way like spoiled brats, their way being a tiny federal government imposing no regulations and levying no taxes except as necessary to support the military. Like you say, we're all on our own. It's exactly what Republicans wanted all along. That they can't get it done makes me smile every day.
"If you’re a regular American, the main threat to your freedom is illness, family breakdown, social decay, technological disruption and globalization. If you’re being buffeted by massive forces beyond your control, you don’t want legislation that says: Guess what? You’re on your own!"
Thanks for this gem David. Unfortunately too many folks in our country can't get enough of what they don't want.
Thanks for this gem David. Unfortunately too many folks in our country can't get enough of what they don't want.
Getting Republicans to pass legislation is akin to throwing a moving car's transmission from reverse to drive. They are obstructionists. They do not know how to change direction to do positive things for the country.
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The new Republicans are creative in their propaganda and that is about it. At some point, their product has to meet the standards they have established for their opponents but unfortunately, they have nothing but another Contract on America.
David, I don't normally agree with you, but, you have identified the difference between my Republican grandfather's brand of Republicanism and what we have now. He was a ward committeemen in a NY district for many years in the fifties. I distinctly remember him at his dining room table helping neighbors, even democrats, with jobs, with applications to college, with a heating problem...I could go on, but, he was all about building capacity. He also had the uncanny ability to detect and honestly say to a constituent that the problem was not capacity, but one of detachment. If he were alive today, he would not recognize the party of Ryan and McConnell. As for Trump...you fill in the blank.
Bravo. Brooks' best column of the year. The irony of the current Republican party is that they want to be elected to run our federal government while professing hatred of it. They tell us that they hate regulations, they hate benefits (except their own generous ones), they hate immigrants, they hate universities, they hate compulsory vaccinations, they hate half of the American population,. Where does this end? Why are they in government if they hate government? Let's elect public policy advocates to work on public policy. How about that for a start.
Well said. When will these "leaders" stand up and do the right thing for the people they represent, rather than just feed their own egos?
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Interesting: The Republicans are the party of " Get Government Off My Back Party, the Leave Us Alone Coalition, etc." and "the absence of coercion, interference and obstacles" unless a woman's reproductive organs are involved. Then they need government to force women to have needless trans-vaginal scans, to limit access to day after pills, and to allow companies avoid covering contraceptives (while the same companies happily pay for Viagra).
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>
Not true!
What they can't and don't pass are bills that benefit the wider spectrum of humanity. This is because when their facades are peeled back its is proven that they represent the tiniest spectrum of humanity.
Not true!
What they can't and don't pass are bills that benefit the wider spectrum of humanity. This is because when their facades are peeled back its is proven that they represent the tiniest spectrum of humanity.
But why did Republican's move from capacity to detachment? I suggest Republicans lost their way with Reagan and Reaganomics and "government is the problem".
With Reaganomics, aka, trickle down, aka, voodoo, they stole from the poor and middle class to give to the rich who in turn would fund their elections based on lies and hate.
"government is the problem" is how they justified cutting government services such as education, medicade, welfare, job training, etc, that mainly benefited the poor and middle class to free up still more money to give to the rich.
"Follow the money".
With Reaganomics, aka, trickle down, aka, voodoo, they stole from the poor and middle class to give to the rich who in turn would fund their elections based on lies and hate.
"government is the problem" is how they justified cutting government services such as education, medicade, welfare, job training, etc, that mainly benefited the poor and middle class to free up still more money to give to the rich.
"Follow the money".
Mr. Brooks, the Republicans have become the Freedom from Reality party. They are little more than a mechanism to give voice to the primal screams of angry white men who see their power slipping away.. They are little more than a party that thrives on taking away from the poor, the middle class and those same angry white men to give to their donor class. They are unable to pass any bills because anger and obstruction are not a governing philosophy and that, frankly is all they have left. Their golden rule, enshrined by St. Ronnie, is that tax cuts for the rich and removal of all regulation cure all ills. Too bad that this formula hass failed every time and everywhere it has been inflicted on the people....except for the fact that it makes the donor class richer every time it's imposed....even as it fails.
Again and again the Republicans are unable to logically explain why they refuse to support their constituency. They were not elected to serve only the wealthy. When will they wake up? When will their destructive efforts be seen as even remotely compelling to me, as an 80 year-old, and the rest of America, when the best they offer is being deprived of health care support when it is needed?
Should the Republicans be renamed the Fraudlicans? YES!
Should the Republicans be renamed the Fraudlicans? YES!
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Their prcatical propblem is that Reagan was simply wrong. The problem with government is not government; the problem is having it run by people who want it to fail. And right now--need more be said?
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It's not only a question of which freedom you support, but how much a party removes itself from reality in order to hang on to its fact free ideology. How easy was it to repeal Obamacare when there was no consequence to the vote, other than a veto threat? More than 60 times easy! How many years spend on repealing votes without any effort to develop an alternative? Seven years!
The disaster of legislative impotence was bound to happen, when your party platform is based on what people like to hear in their day dreams and not what they need to hear to make their lives better
The disaster of legislative impotence was bound to happen, when your party platform is based on what people like to hear in their day dreams and not what they need to hear to make their lives better
Trump may be a boob, but people elected him because they believed he was going to make government work for them, because they yearn for "freedom of capacity". Of course, as soon as Trump got into office he was swarmed by all these modern Republicans armed with their axes and their "detachment" agendas, and nothing for the people will get done. It will be interesting to see in 2018 whether voters so scorned will respond with axes of their own.
I agree with Mr. Brooks,"Donald Trump is a boob." Yet over the last six months, the Republican representatives,senators,and even the cabinet have been on display fawning over this fraud. I have watched religiously hoping to find in that group some glimmer of courage and honesty, only to be disappointed by the now morally and intellectually bankrupt GOP. I hope I live long enough to read the judgment of history when it tells the sad story of a once grand old party that allowed itself to be led to irrelevance for lack of courage, honesty, and patriotism.
To describe Republicans as embracing “freedom of detachment” is simplistic at best. Ask why they do this and you can see that they are not detached at all, but are very attached - to corporations and special interest groups. And in service of those corporations and special interests they do very much employ “coercion, interference, and obstacles.”
This is a good analysis of what is wrong with the Republican approach -- such as it is -- to governing. However, I think you're wrong that positive thinkers like Jack Kemp are missing entirely. You probably couldn't have known it was coming, but J.D. Vance, in a column today, offered some ideas about how to approach health insurance legislation that are worth vigorous debate. The problem here is that national Republicans are both way too conservative in the worst possible ways and way too arrogant to listen to actual ideas.
Republicans have lied to their base about Obamacare for the past eight years, and their base has bought it. The biggest risk now, to the Republican party, is admitting that they were lying all along. Of course, they were. But to admit it means destroying the remaining faith their base has in their campaign promises. So what do Republicans keep doing? They have another lunch with Trump, and promise another vote, soon. Endless votes, to stave off the reckoning.
What Republicans should do is pass a bill to rename the ACA, maybe call it the WROTID ("we repealed Obamacare, this is different"). They could even patch up Obamacare while they were giving it a snazzy new name. Their base would be happy, and Republicans could move on to making taxes more regressive, or adding bloat to the Pentagon - stuff they are dying to do.
What Republicans should do is pass a bill to rename the ACA, maybe call it the WROTID ("we repealed Obamacare, this is different"). They could even patch up Obamacare while they were giving it a snazzy new name. Their base would be happy, and Republicans could move on to making taxes more regressive, or adding bloat to the Pentagon - stuff they are dying to do.
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Wait until they renege on the promises made on US Savings Bonds.
>>the G.O.P. hasn’t been able to eliminate a single important program<<
A Brooksian Freudian slip or just standard gop revisionist history in complete measure?
Republicans have, in my lifetime, never prioritized freedom of capacity, unless it involved defense and the military establishment. The only possible exception being Eisenhower and possibly a fleeting moment from Bush 41.
The Swamp Party today is the logical outcome of decades (at least since Reagan) of pursuing the least creative, least intellectual, most demagogic agenda possible. Cut Medicaid and lower taxes for the wealthiest among us, appoint the least qualified to leadership, is simply the ne plus ultra of the corporations are people party.
However, to give David his due, he is certainly correct when he sums up by saying "And Republicans offer nothing but negativity, detachment, absence and an ax." Welcome to the real world, David.
The question for the rest of us is how to drain the swamp of THESE people.
A Brooksian Freudian slip or just standard gop revisionist history in complete measure?
Republicans have, in my lifetime, never prioritized freedom of capacity, unless it involved defense and the military establishment. The only possible exception being Eisenhower and possibly a fleeting moment from Bush 41.
The Swamp Party today is the logical outcome of decades (at least since Reagan) of pursuing the least creative, least intellectual, most demagogic agenda possible. Cut Medicaid and lower taxes for the wealthiest among us, appoint the least qualified to leadership, is simply the ne plus ultra of the corporations are people party.
However, to give David his due, he is certainly correct when he sums up by saying "And Republicans offer nothing but negativity, detachment, absence and an ax." Welcome to the real world, David.
The question for the rest of us is how to drain the swamp of THESE people.
Lord Brooks is extolling Medicare Part D as a legislative achievement? Now THAT is some magical thinking.
He delusionally thinks that our senior citizens, some with serious dementia issues are going to shop the pharma market to get the best deal? What a crock.
When my mother-in-law took a serious fall and my wife and I took over her affairs, after about half a year, I started looking into Medicare Part D plans to see if I could save some money for her. I am mature, college educated, and with a history of straight As in math from sophomore year of high school through both calculus and accounting. It was spectacularly, intentionally confusing. But eventually I found that the top of the line plan that she had, "endorsed by AARP," was costing her over $2000 more per year in exhorbitant premiums ($88/month) and copays than another plan offered by the same company "endorsed by AARP." Her premium dropped to $22/month, and the only copays that increased were for tier 4&5 drugs, only two of which she uses.
And still there are complications, like when her glaucoma specialist prescribed a second drop for her eyes, and the concentration he prescribed was not on the formulary, causing a $100/month copay, but a slightly different concentration (0.2% vs. 0.15%) was on the formulary at a $15/month copay.
This is Lord Brooks' version of a Republican legislative "achievement?" I'll go with a "no" here.
He delusionally thinks that our senior citizens, some with serious dementia issues are going to shop the pharma market to get the best deal? What a crock.
When my mother-in-law took a serious fall and my wife and I took over her affairs, after about half a year, I started looking into Medicare Part D plans to see if I could save some money for her. I am mature, college educated, and with a history of straight As in math from sophomore year of high school through both calculus and accounting. It was spectacularly, intentionally confusing. But eventually I found that the top of the line plan that she had, "endorsed by AARP," was costing her over $2000 more per year in exhorbitant premiums ($88/month) and copays than another plan offered by the same company "endorsed by AARP." Her premium dropped to $22/month, and the only copays that increased were for tier 4&5 drugs, only two of which she uses.
And still there are complications, like when her glaucoma specialist prescribed a second drop for her eyes, and the concentration he prescribed was not on the formulary, causing a $100/month copay, but a slightly different concentration (0.2% vs. 0.15%) was on the formulary at a $15/month copay.
This is Lord Brooks' version of a Republican legislative "achievement?" I'll go with a "no" here.
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I used to think of Republicans as the "cut taxes for the rich" party. Now they're the "look the other way while Trump sells the country to Russia" party. Sure, they're still saying they're the "anyone but Clinton" party, but no matter which of these three versions is most accurate, their souls are dead.
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No. Republicans can't pass laws. Because Republicans don't know how to make them.
Sitting behind closed doors, in secret circles is no way to get it right -- and that's just what they did with this catastrophic health bill.
They don't know how to play with others.
They can't even play amongst themselves.
But this time, that worked for AMERICA.
Sitting behind closed doors, in secret circles is no way to get it right -- and that's just what they did with this catastrophic health bill.
They don't know how to play with others.
They can't even play amongst themselves.
But this time, that worked for AMERICA.
Freedom as capacity and as detachment aka 'From each according to his ability and to each according to his need' is the essence of socialism.
Indeed it is the fundamental nature of humble humane empathetic Christian faith that identifies Jesus with the poor, hungry, thirsty, sick, naked, homeless, imprisoned and despairing in Matthew 25: 31-46.
There is no mention of party aka faction as a partisan political governing entity in our Constitution. Indeed, the Founders decried and feared faction as contrary to the enlightened better angels of our nature.
Republicans inability to pass bills is akin to constipation reflecting a paucity of ideas that culminated in the 'election' of the ignorant, immature, incompetent, inexperienced and insecure President Donald Trump. Governing requires effective competent government operatives.
Passing bills is not governing. Passing bills like the 60 Republican repeals of Obamacare is like diarrhea.
Indeed it is the fundamental nature of humble humane empathetic Christian faith that identifies Jesus with the poor, hungry, thirsty, sick, naked, homeless, imprisoned and despairing in Matthew 25: 31-46.
There is no mention of party aka faction as a partisan political governing entity in our Constitution. Indeed, the Founders decried and feared faction as contrary to the enlightened better angels of our nature.
Republicans inability to pass bills is akin to constipation reflecting a paucity of ideas that culminated in the 'election' of the ignorant, immature, incompetent, inexperienced and insecure President Donald Trump. Governing requires effective competent government operatives.
Passing bills is not governing. Passing bills like the 60 Republican repeals of Obamacare is like diarrhea.
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Consider taking the steps neccessary to eliminate House of Representative
(saving big bucks) and leaving the Senate as it stands? what do the political scientist think?
(saving big bucks) and leaving the Senate as it stands? what do the political scientist think?
Why would anyone expect the GOP to accomplish anything? As a core principle they want to do away with government, and as an operating principle each of them is really only interested in themself.
The GOP is proving by example that government is the problem.
Interesting how the list of Republican accomplishments sounds like it could have been a list of Democratic accomplishments. I just wonder how many democrats in congress voted for these. I am guessing MANY!
That's the way our government used to work - the needs of the people were the goal and the parties fought hard to provide solutions to these needs by way of their unique philosophical politics.
Ahh - the good ole dayz..........................
That's the way our government used to work - the needs of the people were the goal and the parties fought hard to provide solutions to these needs by way of their unique philosophical politics.
Ahh - the good ole dayz..........................
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Mr. Brooks you wrote "Sure, Donald Trump is a boob, but that doesn’t explain why Republicans can’t govern from Capitol Hill." I would go one step further and say that Trump, a man short on ideas or a clear vision, would prefer that Republicans govern from Capitol Hill. Trump just wants to put check marks in the win column. It does not matter what the consequences are.
The republican party reminds me of the dog that caught the car. For years, it barked a lot but showed little interest in governing. Now that it controls Congress and the White House, I hope it can find a dog that knows how to drive.
"If you’re a regular American, the main threat to your freedom is illness, family breakdown, social decay, technological disruption and globalization. If you’re being buffeted by massive forces beyond your control, you don’t want legislation that says: Guess what? You’re on your own!"
Precisely.
Precisely.
Mr Brooks, the bottom line is what I learned from my immigrant grandparents so long ago. The Republican Party has always been a party of the Rich, bought by the rich and for the Rich. As our nation has evolved, your party's elders used various schemes to gain the votes of poor and middle class whites-- most especially in the South--to get the necessary levers of government to enact disastrous policy for these very people who can't afford to see a doctor. Your party has slyly used race, gender, and human sexuality as ways to further divide us. I will go on record to say as a single gay man living in the south, I get asked out by endless numbers if gay men still married to a woman. Perpetrators of bigotry from the floors of government are wreaking financial havoc (AIDS comes to mind) for which many in your party, including trump, Romney, and McCain, haven't a clue.
We need a center right party and a center left party. Both parties are in chaos. Let's just hope that some of us can foster intellectual curiosity and respect for education before the country sinks to even lower levels. The GOP needs to come clean with us all, bring itself into the 21st century, and admit that the ACA was a step in the right direction. If all the GOP wants to do is shred the nation's first African-American president's legacy (as we on the left feel it) there will be more leaders like trump ahead for you!
We need a center right party and a center left party. Both parties are in chaos. Let's just hope that some of us can foster intellectual curiosity and respect for education before the country sinks to even lower levels. The GOP needs to come clean with us all, bring itself into the 21st century, and admit that the ACA was a step in the right direction. If all the GOP wants to do is shred the nation's first African-American president's legacy (as we on the left feel it) there will be more leaders like trump ahead for you!
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Nothing says "the government is good for me, but not for you" than the career of Paul Ryan, the current Speaker of the House.
He received social security payments upon the death of his father that he was able to save for his college expenses. Presumably, he didn't "need" them because he saved them, but he got them anyway.
But he wants to trim your social security. Your Medicaid. Your Medicare.
He's been paid by federal government employers practically his whole working life, except for a few stints at casual employment and a year working at a company owned by his relatives.
He has golden health care coverage and a good salary. And yet he leaves his family at home in Wisconsin and sleeps in his office at taxpayer expense. Using taxpayer funded electricity and heating, showering at taxpayer expense in the gym, and eating for free at all those working lunches and fundraising dinners.
This guy is a poster child for the freeloader that the Republicans have demonized. In his case, his freedom of detachment involves a heck of a lot of self-capacitizing at your and my expense.
What's good for the goose, self-righteously on his part, is not for the gander.
He received social security payments upon the death of his father that he was able to save for his college expenses. Presumably, he didn't "need" them because he saved them, but he got them anyway.
But he wants to trim your social security. Your Medicaid. Your Medicare.
He's been paid by federal government employers practically his whole working life, except for a few stints at casual employment and a year working at a company owned by his relatives.
He has golden health care coverage and a good salary. And yet he leaves his family at home in Wisconsin and sleeps in his office at taxpayer expense. Using taxpayer funded electricity and heating, showering at taxpayer expense in the gym, and eating for free at all those working lunches and fundraising dinners.
This guy is a poster child for the freeloader that the Republicans have demonized. In his case, his freedom of detachment involves a heck of a lot of self-capacitizing at your and my expense.
What's good for the goose, self-righteously on his part, is not for the gander.
HEalth Savings Accounts don't work. First, you have to have money to put in them.
This has been going on since Reagan told us that government is the problem, and Republicans have been proving it every chance they get.
Here's hoping Reagan's motto of "government is the problem" will finally be debunked. We need government. Make it work for the American people!
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"Look at the Republicans’ major legislative accomplishments of the past 30 years."
Mr. Brooks, I see you are continuing your training in stand up comedy.
Yes, let's look at Republican accomplishment in the last 30 years.
1. The conversion of the USA from one with nearly zero debt, (under Carter) to a huge debtor nation (Reagan's tax cuts combined with massive giveaway to military contractors).
2. "Star Wars". The trillion dollar program where the money was all spent, further rocketing the USA into debt, but, nothing was delivered. Welfare for managers at military contractors.
3. The Iraq War against what nobody knows.
4. Torture of people who were innocent of any wrongdoing.
5. The War against something in Afghanistan, but, nobody knows what.
6. No bid contracts to Haliburton in the "Iraq War".
7. No bid contracts to Blackwater Security in the "Iraq War"
8. The complete destruction of a stable society in Iraq where girls went to school, hospitals functioned, shops sold goods, and people lived lives. Now? Look at Mosul. Totally destroyed by US occupation.
Yes indeed Mr. Brooks, keep up your training in comedy. It is more and more humorous to read.
Mr. Brooks, I see you are continuing your training in stand up comedy.
Yes, let's look at Republican accomplishment in the last 30 years.
1. The conversion of the USA from one with nearly zero debt, (under Carter) to a huge debtor nation (Reagan's tax cuts combined with massive giveaway to military contractors).
2. "Star Wars". The trillion dollar program where the money was all spent, further rocketing the USA into debt, but, nothing was delivered. Welfare for managers at military contractors.
3. The Iraq War against what nobody knows.
4. Torture of people who were innocent of any wrongdoing.
5. The War against something in Afghanistan, but, nobody knows what.
6. No bid contracts to Haliburton in the "Iraq War".
7. No bid contracts to Blackwater Security in the "Iraq War"
8. The complete destruction of a stable society in Iraq where girls went to school, hospitals functioned, shops sold goods, and people lived lives. Now? Look at Mosul. Totally destroyed by US occupation.
Yes indeed Mr. Brooks, keep up your training in comedy. It is more and more humorous to read.
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Today, the Get Off My Back Party Governor of New Hampshire eliminated 1600 legislative rules. He, no doubt, thinks this a great accomplishment.
Those legislative rules did not come from nothing. That is 1600 citizen protections that have been taken away.
So, not only is the Republican Party the Get Off My Back Party .. it is also the You Can Now Take Advantage of Your Neighbor Party.
Those legislative rules did not come from nothing. That is 1600 citizen protections that have been taken away.
So, not only is the Republican Party the Get Off My Back Party .. it is also the You Can Now Take Advantage of Your Neighbor Party.
1
"we’re living at a time when the prospects for the middle class are in sharp decline. And Republicans offer nothing but negativity, detachment, absence and an ax."
Well done, Mr. Brooks. Well done. Now you sound like one of the great proponents of the Democratic Party, and democracy at its best.
The big question is - how do we fix this mess?
Well done, Mr. Brooks. Well done. Now you sound like one of the great proponents of the Democratic Party, and democracy at its best.
The big question is - how do we fix this mess?
1
Heh. Republicans (and Dems) can't govern because they are the Greed is Good coalition. Nothing matter more to them than money and power. Courtesy of Big Business.
They can't govern because they don't care. Governance is just something they tinker with while they are serving their corporate masters.
They can't govern because they don't care. Governance is just something they tinker with while they are serving their corporate masters.
And now the facts:
"These legislative accomplishments were about using government in positive ways to widen people’s options". Only is "positive" is used here to mean "active", not "good." These were pathetic policies -- unfunded drug policy (like unfunded wars), job requirements without the jobs . . . .
Republicans "relied on less top-down mechanisms to get there". I think you mean they relied on "trickle down mechanism" fantasies to get there.
"They became the Get Government Off My Back Party." No, they became the Corporate Welfare, Otherwise Mean-Spirited Trick-the-People Party.
Republicans distorted some very imperfect (libertarian, invisible-hand, private property) ideologies, selectively used them when it served their purposes (whose land are we living on here?, who fights wars?) and then did what they could to expand the rights of corporations and minimize the rights of real people.
Concealing your support for these diversionary self-serving tactics under some pseudo social science?
"These legislative accomplishments were about using government in positive ways to widen people’s options". Only is "positive" is used here to mean "active", not "good." These were pathetic policies -- unfunded drug policy (like unfunded wars), job requirements without the jobs . . . .
Republicans "relied on less top-down mechanisms to get there". I think you mean they relied on "trickle down mechanism" fantasies to get there.
"They became the Get Government Off My Back Party." No, they became the Corporate Welfare, Otherwise Mean-Spirited Trick-the-People Party.
Republicans distorted some very imperfect (libertarian, invisible-hand, private property) ideologies, selectively used them when it served their purposes (whose land are we living on here?, who fights wars?) and then did what they could to expand the rights of corporations and minimize the rights of real people.
Concealing your support for these diversionary self-serving tactics under some pseudo social science?
Support most of this column but the Drug deal of 2003 under Tom Delay's leadership was bogus, a handout to big Pharma.They broke all the procedural measures to pass this disaster, which contributed strongly to our current high cost of drugs, highest in the world economy. When you have to go back to the to the 1990's for examples of achievements, that's a problem.
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And when one of the examples of "Republicans’ major legislative accomplishments" is George H.W. Bush signing the Americans With Disabilities Act which was passed by the 101st Congress which had Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate.
I love how Clinton's welfare "reform" and the Medicare part d give-away are two of the top three legislative "achievements" of the GOP for the past 30 years.
You forgot the Authorization to Use Force. That's the gift that keeps on giving!
You forgot the Authorization to Use Force. That's the gift that keeps on giving!
in terms of governing, the Republican party has become the dog that caught the car. We've seen and heard all the barking we need. I hope they can find at least one dog who can drive.
The Republican Party only knows how to blow things up and has been this way for a long time. This has been a winning strategy for the party so there is little reason for it too change. Votes matter.
Republican governing philosophy can be summed up in one sentence: The rich do not have enough money.
All Republicans need to do to bring their party back to life is propose a Medicare for all bill. This is what the public actually wants. The current GOP has become a a kooky lodge brotherhood of ideological outliers who believe their legislative duty is to punish the poor and the middle class for not being the affluent, who they want to richly reward. In fact they're so kooky and out of touch they think their constituency actually wants to be punished in this way.
Mr. Brooks is a regular punching bag in my (skewing liberal) twitter feed. But I really don't get all the hate. I find him to be the most insightful of the columnists here. In the Trump era it's so easy to just carve out a following bashing Trump or other Republican leaders. On a daily basis they throw up a dozen laugh out loud moments. So I think most liberal columnists and opinion makers have it easy now. And most Republican commentators have either united with the liberals in their Trump hate or are stuck in the humiliating position of trying to defend him. But Mr Brooks is the grown up in the room. He's as embarrassed as the rest of the country by all this, but he has a consistent philosophy that's deeply out of fashion these days. And he uses it to make insightful diagnoses for what's ailing our political system and prescribe interesting alternatives. I often don't agree with his solutions but at least he engages my thought more than yet more tweets about how stupid Trump is.
1
No modern society has ever thrived on the model today's Republicans propose. More guns, more fear, more hate, more inequality, more selfishness, and zero compassion. Where does that take us? Straight to a failed state and misery at levels that will make us pine for the early 21st century.
Dear David, You're very good at trying to rescue your side of the aisle but in fact the problem is that your side of the aisle is simply Anglophilic and we are a nation where all of the cultures and peoples of the world are represented.
We require healthcare in order to have the physical capital to do difficult things beyond ourselves. Six out of the seven social domains of Art, Religion, Trade, Education, Government, Science and Health, are not for profit. Only the market is for profit and is built not on plenty but scarcity. In order to have the other six you need plenty of capital because they have costs greater than income. In economic terms "Productivity lag," but they are crucial to a civilized society and the capital required for individuals to be creative. Remember, it wasn't until Europe declared an Imperialistic war on the rest of the world's cultures that they had the capital to have that blossoming of culture that happened, as if by magic, since 1492. But the "magic" was mass murder and chaos in the rest of the world for "plenty" to exist in Europe.
Today your President will simulate that capital by doing away with programs meant to encourage the capital necessary for civilization other than simple Peddling or speculation. All freedom requires capital of one sort or another. Your economic theory is your religion. You should think about that. Doesn't that constitute a problem with the first of the ten commandments from your heritage?
We require healthcare in order to have the physical capital to do difficult things beyond ourselves. Six out of the seven social domains of Art, Religion, Trade, Education, Government, Science and Health, are not for profit. Only the market is for profit and is built not on plenty but scarcity. In order to have the other six you need plenty of capital because they have costs greater than income. In economic terms "Productivity lag," but they are crucial to a civilized society and the capital required for individuals to be creative. Remember, it wasn't until Europe declared an Imperialistic war on the rest of the world's cultures that they had the capital to have that blossoming of culture that happened, as if by magic, since 1492. But the "magic" was mass murder and chaos in the rest of the world for "plenty" to exist in Europe.
Today your President will simulate that capital by doing away with programs meant to encourage the capital necessary for civilization other than simple Peddling or speculation. All freedom requires capital of one sort or another. Your economic theory is your religion. You should think about that. Doesn't that constitute a problem with the first of the ten commandments from your heritage?
2
There is one area which Republicans have strongly supported government interference and control. If only they would use their detachment philosophy with respect to my body, and those all women.
1
The GOP has been trying to stretch their big tent to include both the tradition moderates ("We want something better than ACA.") like Susan Collins, Lindsay Graham and John McCain, and the Tea Party extremists ("Why should I have to pay for someone else's healthcare?") like Cruz, Paul, etc. McConnell and Ryan just found out that the tent just doesn't stretch that far.