Extremely good column. One reason the Republicans are re-embracing Roy Moore is because their very leader stands accused of similar sexual offenses. In other words, if too much light is shed on Moore by Republicans themselves, then it makes it all the more likely people will begin to ask questions about the Republican "elephant in the room" (Trump) and the multiple allegations he faces. More victims might even come forward. Avoiding dealing with Moore allows the Republicans to portray sexual abusers as primarily democrats (Weinstein, Franken, et al.), rather than acknowledging how broken and disturbed a figure currently occupies the Oval Office.
74
Milton Friedman (hailed as someone to admire in this article) also gave us the rationale for the Ford Pinto calculation of measuring whether a cheap fix to millions of cars would cost more than paying off a relatively few plaintiffs in personal injury and wrongful death cases. (It did, and profit legally won over the horrendous injuries and deaths that resulted.) I posit that his standards are nothing to be admired.
74
"I am homeless. I am politically homeless"! That describes me and my family perfectly David. Your column is absolutely correct. I do not see the Republican party changing course. The tide seems to have turned and they are past the point of no return. If they are able to turn back the tide, it will be a very long time from now. I changed my party affiliation to independent with a very heavy heart 6 months ago.
89
The despair of the rational and principled conservative is evident in this piece. It speaks volumes that virtually the entire political GOP is silent and complicit in the dismantling of America. If Putin were writing the script, (which he may be), the destruction of the American experiment would not be better planned.
My one quibble with Mr Brooks is the continued conservative myth of supply side. the tax cuts in the 80s and later were not really supply side -- it was covert Keynesianism. By driving the deficit to astronomical heights, it remained a demand side stimulus that was papered over with a silly napkin.
83
Trumpian politics has revealed a malignant stream of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and cognitive dissonance that does not define America, but does define politics. Clearly, politics does not have the answers.
52
In the 1960s, as LBJ created one new and expensive government program after another, establishment Republicans and their most cherished governing principle faced an existential threat: It was only a matter of time before their historic base -- the rich and the self-employed --wouldn't contain enough voters to carry a low-taxes platform; they were going to need a bigger tent.
Hence, Nixon's Southern Strategy, which turned out to be only the first step in their lamentable march to corral the rest of the single-issue "deplorables" vote: People who judge others by their race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation, value assault rifles more than children or are indifferent to whether the working poor have decent medical care.
It was inevitable that some opportunist like Trump would realize that the deplorables had come to outnumber the establishment; frankly, I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner. But the establishment is still getting what they value over everything else: Money.
135
Well said and unfortunately true. Let us also not forget that Mitt Romney sold his soul early, although I do agree he has recovered it some. He lost it when he stopped his relentless criticism of Trump when the President appointed Romney's daughter-in-law the party chair.
I am 72 and voted for thd Republican candidate for President starting in 1968 up until 2008 for Obama. I was ready to vote for McCain until he contributed to our present mess when he named Palin his running make. The Republicans have gotten progressively worse since then.
The GOP will self-destruct hopefully prior to destroying the country.
181
I'm usually not a fan of David Brooks but he absolutely nailed it today.
167
The GOP has now lost Brooks, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Jennifer Rubin, and Bill Kristol, all Republican journalists who have in the past, defended almost all Republican legislation, good and bad.
When the rot begins to stink so badly as to lose these lifelong conservative pundits, it signals the end of a party which can no longer claim to be the party of Lincoln.
With Trump as their exalted leader, House and Senate Republicans have abandoned all sensible norms in pursuit of their zest to reward their donors at the expense their own values. No longer does the deficit matter, or healthcare, or education, or infrastructure. Only favors to donors and the business class count.
Neither the House or the Senate used regular order which would include hearings and participation by the Democrats to reach consensus. Instead, it was all about passing a piece of legislation before year's end to satisfy the donor class, not the middle class as they exclaimed.
247
I remember when the Republicans in my state were more like Mitt Romney and less like Donald Trump. For example, I remember Iowa Governor Robert Ray welcoming refugees to Iowa. He didn't talk about walls; he talked about inclusion and welcoming.
Maybe it's time for all the non-Trump Republicans to try to form another Republican Party. Maybe, it's time for the Republican-controlled Congress to impeach, convict, and remove Trump from office. But no new Profiles in Courage will ever be written about these Republicans. They have truly sold their souls.
203
David - In the optimistic words of Victor Lazlo. "Welcome back to the fight. This time I *know* our side will win."
It is going to take time. And we are going to lose more fights. But we will win,
We have to.
106
Thank you Mr. Brooks for setting the record straight no matter how much it hurts you to say and for those Republicans that want to embrace real change and not this populist racists war mongering venom! It takes a big person to admit that what they believed and supported is truly rotten to the core and a sham being perpetrated toward an inevitable destructive end.
We must hope that Mr. Mueller is able to finish his assigned duties/job and if he is :fired" by The Dolt, that will be the moment of truth for the GOP. They will either rail against The Dolt, not allow him to do it and reverse it so that the nation can finally see just what a cretin is inhabiting the White House!
THE WORLD IS WATCHING!
205
When (not if) Trump fires Muller and pardons everyone, including himself, what then? Certainly Brooks is right that Congress will do nothing. Will people take to the streets? If so, count on Trump to rile up his blood and soil supporters to respond with Second Amendment remedies. And when the rubble is cleared at the CNN and NYT offices, there will be a long list of people and groups to blame. Don’t think Charlottesville. Think the burning of the Reichstagg. Then the real fun begins.
43
"You don't save Christianity by betraying it's message."...do you really think any political party (or individual politician) should be in the business of saving Christianity (or any other religion)?? I decidedly think not.
52
Powerful testimony, David. Trump's rise and his election to office were made possible by a GOP who were already committed to a government for its benefactors, by its benefactors. Between Citizens United, ALEC (its legislative arm), the NRA, and its coterie of funders, the GOP has had as its mission to provide a steady quid pro quo to those that support them financially. During the Obama years, they became "the Party of No," culminating in the refusal to allow hearings for Obama's Supreme Court pick. Now, no longer constrained by the opposition party, they give rein to their most craven impulses as they attempt to cement the divisions that sustain their power. That Trump should lead them is an administrative inconvenience, but by no means a strategic error. In many ways, he is the embodiment of their highest aspirations--a "leader" unafraid to exert power for the benefit of the few.
67
Bertolt Brecht supposedly welcomed the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolt in the 1950s because it showed what the Soviet Union was really about. It was the reality principle on display. Trump is the same. He is doing what every president has done - lied to us, conducted personal vendettas using government power, acted in self interest under the guise of national policy. It is refreshing to see this for what it is in real time, rather than having the reveal come 50 years later. The evil is not in one man, but in a country too rich and too powerful.
13
The Republican party is an abject failure when it comes to governance. It demonstrates literally no moral-ethical awareness. And it supports the most incompetent, dishonest president in the country's history. Those who support the current version of the party — moderate Republicans have left to become independents — are no better. Republicans deserve to be voted out of office by the rest of us. That's the lesson they need...rejection.
Eclectic Pragmatism — http://eclectic-pragmatist.tumblr.com/
Eclectic Pragmatist — https://medium.com/eclectic-pragmatism
42
Starting with Sarah Palin and the spread of Fox News?
Here's your William F. Buckley arguing *against* allowing blacks to VOTE!!! https://youtu.be/oFeoS41xe7w?t=52m48s
Yes, indeed, Mr. Brooks, it was an honorable party until Trump showed up...
58
So David, have you re-registered as a Democrat yet?
41
One of your very best, David Brooks. Now, please volunteer for Sean Hannity's show on Fox News and take on the mouth piece for the defenders of, no, the prime time salesman, ROT.
Thanks.
22
Rotting and getting away with it
Bringing the country down the rabbit hole, hook line and sinker.......
And no one is doing anything about it
35
Welcome to reality Mr Brooks, may you never turn back to your previously held fantasies about the GOP.
31
When are you going to acknowledge that the United States is dead, Mr. Brooks?
#calexit
16
David,
2,500 comments... and counting... when there should be 2,500,000 comments...
And the GOP and Democrats should be gathering... to blow out what's there and start all over again...
Dear Sir... how do we get that done?
Sandy
7
Pence, you do not speak against vile, unrepentant depravity. Your silence clamors to high heaven.
Pence, you are the most manifest, profound, and conspicuous hypocrite America has yet suffered.
You have been made mad by your willful self-deceptions, your eager association with mendacity and hatefulness. You, above all men, are unfit to lead.
Shame upon you, all who excuse you, associate with you, and profess your false faith.
You cannot but descend into deeper sin without immediate repentance and atonement. Else, you will be cast out of the society of the righteous. You will wander in the desolate wilderness of despair; the Fiend will prey upon you, and perdition will dog all your days until you face our Lord’s righteous wrath.
56
Can there be a more morally bankrupt group of public officials than the Republicans in Congress?? I think not. Do anything to keep your job;give huge tax breaks to the rich;when the stench gets too bad put a clothespin on your nose Pretend you are doing something important for America Its time to look in the mirror and say Trump is ruining our democracy and I am helping him!! So much for honesty and integrity!! They are shameless and gutless !!
50
I guess those SNL TBD Republican heroes that saved the country are never going to show their faces.
1
Xanadu, Citizen Kane's ugly, empty castle, welcome your new owners the Republican Party.
12
All dems and republicans when referring to FOX.....FOX is divided into two categories: (1) Opinionators and (2) News.
Bret Bair's 6-7pm news is the most honest news program on television. ABC, CBS, and NBC continually use "sensationalist" type headlines when reporting about Trump, his activities and Republicans in general. If one wants to know what's really happening in DC, Bret's your guy. The rest are democrat shills.
Brooks last paragraph should read: "The rot afflicting Reublicans and Democrats is comprehensive....."more and more Americans wake up every day and realize: We are homeless. WE are people without a country. And without an honest judicial system. The few bad apples running the DOJ, FBI, and NSA have tainted the organizaitons, and have caused deep pain and distrust for the thousands of good apples employed by these organizations."
8
Mr. Brooks, are you finally awake and smelling the coffee?
Democrats, liberals and moderate Republicans have been saying this for nine + years. The party of NO, McConnell, Ryan, that of a a stolen Scotus seat have lied, obfuscated and made our constitution a mockery
You have the opportunity to use your platform, not only on the TImes but your Friday evenings on PBS to atone for your initial support and inertia. Will you take advantage of it? or just write platitudes to salve your soul? Will you rally other republican journalists to face the issues?
Most thinking Americans recognized that Trump wanted to be president simply to destroy this country. He has made a good dent in that with his cabinet appointees and twitters tirades.
More than pointing that out to us is not enough. Th country is paying the price. The time has come for op-ed writers to us their bully pulpit to rouse members of government and to make valid suggestions that carry weight, and can be executed.
And if you cannot do that, stay home and write your memoir because your op-eds are out dated and vacuous.
31
Thank you, David Brooks.
9
You broke it. You own it, Mr. Brooks.
43
Though I have never been tempted to join the Republican Party, I have indeed voted for Republicans now and then when I felt you guys had clearly put up the better candidate. It was easy to do - I love my country and my city.
I sensed a change when Obama was elected. It was slow and insidious, but then built steam. You guys had way more racism in your ranks than I suspected and your reactions to a black president, Obamacare and Obama's entire presidency was feral. The birther movement, shouting "You lie" at him during a joint session of Congress, blocking Obama's pick for Scalia's seat and the increasingly disrespectful tone of your discourse (comparing the relative size of your male genitals during a debate!) was sad enough, but choosing Trump as your standard bearer was actually signing your own death warrant. Not only politically, but spiritually you are committing suicide. Many Evangelical young people are stunned at what is going on.
You have managed to harden the heart of a 60 year old retired Democratic teacher who voted 7 times in her life in presidential, mayoral and gubernatorial elections for the GOP candidate. I think your party needs to end or split. You have devolved to the point where you might actually seat a pedophile in the United State Senate. Any pretense that your healthcare or tax plans are anything other than payback to your rich donors is laughable.
You failed the test I passed. You hate Democrats more than you love your country.
130
Rules for being a christian
1. have no God above God in heaven!
(this includes money!)
2. Love one another as he loves us!
(This includes feed the poor, clothe the naked, do not judge)
Why are so many confused?
35
So well said David...thank you for continued efforts to speak the moral high ground in this sewer!
8
Orwell saw this coming in “1984.” I think the following describes today’s Republican party pretty well:
“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
86
And what about You mr Brooks?Still a republican?
10
David - I read your thoughts every day. Why did it take you soo long to express this?
15
Hear, Hear!
If there are any honorable Republicans left (there appear to be), and they really want to make a difference for the better before they retire, they should do what the late Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont--declare that this is no longer his (or her) party, go Independent, and when it serves your purpose, caucus with Democrats! That would be a damn sight better than abetting the thoroughly dishonest and hypocritical behavior and policies of the present House and Senate majorities.
37
Thank you, Mr. Brooks.
4
So, Mr. Brooks has been let down by his party.
My question is, what are you going to DO ABOUT IT besides write your little column?
20
Sorry Mr. Brooks that NOW you feel homeless. You helped burn the home down, if not with active support like the rest of the republican "leadership", but by your silence and perhaps more damagingly by your erudite writings.
26
Mr. Brooks, you just get better and better! Thank you.
4
This is a eulogy. The title should have read: the GOP has rotted. Is our country next?
7
Im enjoying your work more and more
3
Past tense, Mr. Brooks.
5
OK, Mr. Brooks--so when are you going to leave the party?
6
The party sold its soul to AIPAC and Murdoch in 2003.
9
You mean - "rotten". Or "rotted".
4
Seems to becoming to a head: How much longer can you (David) continue to identify as a Republican?
4
So are you now a former Republican, David?
5
It started with Rush Limbaugh.
20
Yes, the stench of the G.O.P. corpse is poisoning everything.
11
A thoughtful, astute and accurate column, for all the good it will do. We are now living in Hell. Hell. Reason and intelligence and compassion don't work here anymore. Because we live in Hell. How else can one possibly characterize how vile and mean and hateful life in America has become? It is Hell. We live here. Trump's supporters don't read, and they don't think, and they love their guns, but they do vote. And that is all that matters. And it has given us what we now have: Hell.
28
Rage, rage, against the dying if the light.
10
The Republican Party needs to be put down like a mad dog. After decades of questioning everyone else's "patriotism," the GOP is up to its ears in treason. After decades of trumpeting its superior morality, Republicans are perfectly okay with child molesters and sexual predators like Roy Moore, Donald Trump and many others. After decades of cheering for the military, the GOP routinely insults veterans and cuts their benefits. If the Republican Party were deliberately and aggressively trying to damage the nation, what would they do that's any different from what they are doing? Face it: the Republican Party is a criminal conspiracy – corrupt and dishonest to the core – working tirelessly on behalf of fascists, racists and oligarchs against the broader interests of the nation. The GOP has truly become an "enemy domestic" that the Founding Fathers warned us about.
55
The party of McCarthy, Nixon and Gingrich has been rotten for decades
27
I don't think you are a bad republican David, on the contrary one of the better. But as you admit there is much rot, could you quit being an enabler for said rot and deception? Also, without being crucified by an Intentionally frenzied and misled R base? When you get it, as Senator Flake does, will you be as courageously outspoken for the truth?
11
I don't think the G.O.P. are rotting they are rotten to the core and have been for a long time. The rot is just seeping out more since they are not bothering to hide it. Senator Grassley saying everyone would be able to invest and save 15M if they didn't waste their money on booze, women and movies. What? Really!
19
"There is no end to what Trump will ask of his party. He is defined by shamelessness, and so there is no bottom."
Just like the mafia.
15
As a Democrat that does not support Hillary, I am just as homeless.
8
Mr. Brooks, Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of your party.
4
You could have written this 2 years ago and helped prevent this disaster. Thanks for nothing , David -come-lately.
21
Poor David Brooks your facts are all wrong - it should read the rot of the Democratic Party. Why is it that the Dems under Obama could not wait to spend spend and spend more regardless of of deficit which rose to over 20 trillion under Obama. But now all of a sudden they are concerned about deficits
4
Yes let’s get rid of any democratic supporter from the Mueller team.
Or anyone for that matter who dislikes Donald Trump. That leaves us with about 30 percent of the population that can be on Mueller’s team. They are the only ones that can be trusted to be fair. In fact why don’t we just let FOXNews investigate this witch hunt. After all 70 percent of the population can’t be trusted. They don’t like Donald Trump how can they not be biased. Maybe we should let Putin investigate it. Now there is a Republican supporter.
22
Thank you for articulating my homelessness
2
The title should simply be: 'The GOP is Rotten.' I can reach no other conclusion after reading this column.
3
Trump may not be perfect, and I don't care for all of his faults, but given the alternative I'll take Trump all day long.
If you'd take your hate glasses off Dave, you might get my point.
2
The column head proclaims that the GOP is rotting. Metastasizing is more like it.
12
What did David Brooks say when Sarah Palin was placed on the GOP ticket in 2008?
13
Very excellent and I’m afraid spot on Mr Brooks
Paul S, Fayetteville, Pa 17222
4
When talking about Roy Moore, and Donald Trump for that matter, please stop with the "alleged" qualifier. The correct rendering is "credibly accused": credibly accused child molester, credibly accuse sexual abuser.
16
It is still not too late for the conservatives like Brooks to stand up and demand that the Republican Party save itself. They can refuse to donate to the current madness. I knew the minute Palin appeared on the scene that something horrible had happened to the Republicans. She was so stupid and crass that what came out of her ignorant mouth was garbage. Their treatment of President Obama was disgusting even mocking him on the floor of Congress during his State of the Union. Many decent people are Republicans but not this traitorous bunch of loonies.
31
David, what we have now is a United States of Trump. period.
==============================================
It is becoming a monarchy of sorts. And the idea may spread around the world.
We have to find ways to fight back, to take the spirit of American democracy back, while there is still time to do so.
First of all, I think we have to stop the endless ramblings and come up with catchy phrases and instant messaging and gestures to hit back at Trump.
You and the NY Times show your concerns with long winded essays that may easily be forgotten. Why not try to find hard hitting slogans and gestures, too?
I suggest the OK sign that is Trump's trademark gesture. Why don't people use it to tease Trump? Try it with both hands, perhaps.
Try something for impact?
====================
OK, OK, OK ?
7
As I have said before, David Brooks should run for President - with his colleague Gail Collins as VP.
3
The "liberal" democrats subjected Al Franken to Star Chamber proceedings, then to an attainder, then he was politically and publicly hung, drawn and quartered. Is that what you consider to be an alternative? The GOP might be rotting, but the Democrats are ROTTEN.
2
The GOP and the neoliberal Democrats are both rotting and their leaders apparently don't care. America needs a do-over.
4
“Excellence” has unfortunately been reframed successfully by Fox News and others on the right as “Elitism.”
11
Cry me a river. Where are these fantastical Republicans you describe? Their silence is deafening.
3
The Republican Party is no longer an American political party. For it to be considered American, it would have to represent more than 1% of the people, more than just the bigots, racists, so-called "evangelicals", the misogynists, the xenophobes, the misbegotten. David Brooks is just discovering this?
8
But her emails.
15
So thankful to have access to news and opinion sources that challenge this utter nonsense.
1
Whilst not religious myself, I have long thought that the ideology promoted by many on America’s evangelical right, these days so influential in the GOP, is a sick perversion of the teachings and philosophy of Jesus Christ and not something he could comprehend being promoted in his name, were he ever to return to Earth. People like Paul Ryan, who wear their Christianity on their sleeve, are not really Christian at all. They should be called out more for the imposters they are.
23
Honest,truthful article,thank you David.
I would only remove one word.Trump would have to crawl up considerably to reach “mediocrity “.
I’m not a republican,and I’ll never be,however ,I look forward to a time when once again there is a loyal opposition,not one steeped in cowering ,
quivering obedience to a sick,ignorant woman hater who is proud of it.
4
Ministers to the souls in Alabama,
Say to the souls in your care: Keep to the Path of Righteousness.
No being can serve two masters. Turn away from what the world promotes but is detestable in our Lord’s sight. Love only our Lord and what our Lord has ordained. Though you may experience confusions, trials, and tribulations, be patient, have faith – the Lord will not lead you into the snares of the Fiend. Live in the state of perpetual prayer. Ask only for our Lord’s grace that you may be faithful and follow ever more closely in the footsteps of Christ. Know the Lord is with you always.
Do not omit to say these things lest the face of every child becomes unto you a rebuke, an accusation, and a reminder of your own perdition.
Say to the souls in your care: Rejoice! Our Lord is attentive to those who follow the path of His righteousness. Our Lord provides grace sufficient to sustain you who follow only the path to Him.
Gabriel, Archangel
1
Mr. Brooks, please, for the love of the God you espouse, and if you dare: tell us more about supply-side economics. You know, because Nobel prize winning economists who write in your newspaper laugh at the concept. And rightly so. Stay out of ideas you know nothing about!
6
But Mr. Brooks, you are the one who called the faux-populist racist homophobic anti-intellectual Rush Limbaugh "a good Republican who just wants to win"! You celebrated that "huckster" and cheered on the Tea Party only because it brought you a Congressional majority that would oppose Obama on everything, even though that election was based on rampant immoral gerrymandering, against which you never spoke a word. We all, it seems, have had our "end justifies the means moments" -- even you. So now we have the GOP lead around by the nose by Roy Moore (who of course enjoys Limbaugh's unabashed support because -- as you put it -- he "just wants to win"). You now doubt cringe when he celebrates slavery times as the best days of America because "families were together" (even in servitude). You reap what you have sown.
22
Right wing media, slogans, fake news and a President who is an idiot savant at division, are at the root of this problem. Will be interesting in time to see when those deepest into the morass recognize their folly, and whether they feel the shame they should.
5
Abraham Lincoln is rolling in his grave. Government for the people, of the people and by the people is dead. It has been replaced by government by the 1% and large corporations. I firmly believe a revolution like the French is inevitable. The 1% is sowing the seeds of its own destruction. The collateral damage will be terrible. The idiots driving this should reconsider that their that their kleptocracy will destroy them.
9
Rotting and smiling.
These are horrible human beings.
12
Years ago during the McCarthy era, Carl Sandburg gave a warning to congress that is relevant to today. "When you play with dung, no matter how careful you are, some of it sticks to your fingers"
8
Oren Hatch and Paul Ryan in the picture with Mitch McConnell in the middle with his head down. Hatch justifying his votes and his wealth by claiming to
come from a house with no toilet. Ryan once claiming to be a Catholic and
now bucking his bishops and Mitch contemplating accepting Moore---David is right--when dealing with a black-mailer it never stops and if you don't watch out you'll sink lower than him.
5
The G.O.P. died decades ago. What we're seeing now is THE DAWN OF THE LIVING DEAD G.O.P.! We all know there's only one way to get rid of a G.O.P. Zombie.
3
Trump's base is rapidly boiling itself down to the faction with no more political ambition than to make a liberal's head explode. Unfortunately, that faction is pretty large because the Republican party prepared the hate-your-government ground so long and well. It's treachery and treason, really.
12
You still don't get it, David: You can't trade your soul for a tax cut. If that's all you wanted in the first place, you never had a soul to begin with.
9
Mr. Brooks I hope your thoughts, which I agree with completely, lead to a an uprising against what is currently being forced down our throats. Let us hope that what we are seeing is the natural course of things and that the pendulum swings the other way with a force that can't be reckoned with. It's the only hope I have left.
12
Wow, strong words form a life long republican. I would be completely shocked if Republicans will just live with firing of Muller. At some point, even the current crop of Republican hopefully care a little about America and not just their political futures.
8
The Republican Party started its slide long before Sarah Palin appeared.
Its heart began to die when Newt Gingrich brought the country his "war" in 1994.
Or if you like, Ronald Reagan presaged Gingrich with "trickle-down" economics that only served to enrich the wealthy by mortgaging the country's future.
25
we Republicans have "leaders" who are unwilling to stand up to the Bully.where is Ryan's sense of right and wrong .I will be voting Democratic just to get these guys our of power,as much as I can not stand Pelosi.If the Dems had given us an viable alternative to the Donald he would not be in the White House
8
When the masters of hierarchical excellence control politics and governance in such a way that the common people feel that the game is fixed. Fixed in a horrible way, but in a way the common people can't explain. The common people come up with all sorts of conspiratorial theories. Their theories may be off, but their premise is true.
When the common people find themselves in such a predicament, their SOP is the pitchfork and reset the system. Anyone can destroy their enemy that the common people cannot pinpoint but knows is there are going to be supported.
As brilliant as the masters of knowledge, wisdom, and righteousness have been over the decades and centuries, they have collectively lead us to here, where pitchforks are flying everywhere.
Yeah, right. All the fault lies with those hurling the pitchforks.
1
Brooks perpetuates the myth of the good GOP laying just under the surface of the present corruption. His diagnosis doesn't go deep enough. Trump's faux patriotism echos the jingoism of Joseph McCarthy. Trump's racism is the logical extension of the southern strategy that was adopted in the GOP as far back as Goldwater.
Brooks cites the virtue of Romney as if unaware that Romney is the inheritor, perhaps the only one left, of the mantle of Rockefeller Republicanism. But the Rockefeller Republicans themselves were already fighting to defend the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt's Republicanism against the more libertarian branch of the party that extends back to Taft, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover.
Brooks imagines that the republicanism of his youth was pure. But it already contained within it the rot that now grows so prominent that he is able to recognize it.
26
Thank you David Brooks, for your well thought opinion piece. As a life-long Republican you have captured my feelings exactly.
8
We can be grateful that this very incremental rotting process has accelerated, thanks to Donald Trump who represents the flagrant core of it. This is good. Women have been too silent, men overly confident. Women smarter strategically, men ignorant tactically. This means the revolution continues to accelerate and surprise us all. Trump will symbolize this rot of which he has been proud all of his life and which eludes him to this day. With no moral compass he has led his minions to their ruin in Evangelism and the GOP.
2
The "Rot" was always in the Republican alliance with big business and against labor and social spending, Its natural progression was to its current racism and religion. That came from Nixon and Regan and continued by the Bushes.The Republican success will continue unless and until the Democrats offer public support for health care, education, labor, and roads, power, and science.
14
The issue goes deeper than that. The republicans are betraying their country. What the Tweeting Toad is doing is not "shaking the tree" as was put by a more optimistic person, it is putting an ax to the stem. If this country survives him, it will be tremendously damaged, in the view of the world and internally. The Tweeting Toad is a deep set racist, it may not even realize it itself, but it promotes racial tensions in its acts and speech. It is ignorant of global politics so it destroys what America has build up over the years, it has no respect for culture and diversity, so it cuts funding for many such programs. Republicans are just standing there and watching him. Abominable and revolting.
21
The hypocrisy, oh the hypocrisy. Have the GOP no shame? All in the name of short term goals. Is there no one out there, patriotic enough, to call these clowns out? And I include democrats in this too. Where are the politicians who put country first? Society first? Have they no pride?
18
Greed. Monstrous greed.
It’s time to sweep them away. They got the treasure they came for. Tell them to go home now, these loathsome things, never to return.
13
Don't taint populism with your rant about the Republican Party and Trump. Lies about helping the poor and the middle class are not populism. They are simply lies.
10
Well while some members of the GOP may feel politically homeless, because of current GOP policy as a US citizen I feel culturally homeless. Thanks.
15
To understand the depth of the rot you need to look at not just what Republican 'have gone along with' with Trump, but why they have gone along with him. There is a 'rotten bargain'.
2
Yes, Republicans have shown an amazing capacity to swallow whatever comes from Don the Con--all in the interest of tax cuts for the 1%.
7
The Republican platform *IS* greed, narcissism, sexual patriarchy, class division, intolerance, racism, nationalism, income inequality. It’s what they *run on*. There is also a negative side.
16
Mr. Brooks, its time to re-register Independent. The Republican party has become a loathsome creature of the plutocrats. It is going to burn down the country before it finally releases its death grip.
6
I keep posting: The Republican Party, at this in time, deserves an equal measure of blame for whatever Trump does.
15
The fact that “You could sort of float along in the middle, and keep your head down until this whole Trump thing passed“ should disturb you in the first place. But it doesn’t. It isn’t rotting—it rotted entirely a long time ago.
10
Thank you for writing that! We used to be Republicans.
JFC
5
I’m pro choice not because I like abortion,but because forced childbirth is worse. I’ve been involved with two abortions ( not mine ) helping the young women with money. The first before Roe the second after, both difficult but for the young women the right choice. We must not go back to befor Roe, evangelicals, unchristian evangelicals be damed.
16
While I strongly believe in the need for a conservative—not reactionary—party, perhaps the republicans have never been as virtuous as you thought.
6
The Democratic Party is also rotting. Trump won because the Democratic party is full of weak, feckless narcissists fully addicted to Clinton cash. They have no vision, just apologies. You can blame the Republicans all you want if it makes you feel better, but one look in the mirror and you will see a far more grotesque sight. If Trump is Sauron and the party his army of orcs, then the Democrats are Gollum.
2
I too am a former Republican set adrift by the ascent of Trump and the subjugation of the party to evil.
5
Et tu, Mr. Brooks?
20
The GOP has simply followed its moral compass and reached the nadir of decency just slightly faster than most of us expected.
There is nothing new to see here. It was always headed in this direction.
And it seems Republican voters - excepting Mr. Brooks - feel this is what makes our country better.
Why is anyone surprised?
48
I'm glad to read that David Brooks, who has been a staunch supporter of all things GOP, an apologist for Bush and Cheney, and a relentless critic of Obama has finally come to his senses and joined us in the real world. Yes the Republican Party is in shambles, but it didn't happen all at once, and now we know Mr. Brooks's limit: it's okay to steal the 2000 election, it's okay to go to war with Iraq on false pretenses, it's okay to dog-whistle your way into the White House, but, to his credit Mr. Brooks draws the line at taking away children's healthcare, and putting (an accused) sexual predatory behavior in the Senate. Good to know.
106
Two thoughts. Supply side is a myth with no real economic evidence. The only evidence that supply create its own demand is limited to products like opiates, crack cocaine, and religion, but not to normal economic activity. Second, if Trump did not exist the Republican would have invented him to divert from their rot which started much earlier during the Gingrich revolution and accelerated with Palin and the tea party.
45
For a rotting party it seems to be doing quite well for itself. It member hold both houses of Congress, the White House , and many state and local positions. What you call rotting others call aging and maturing, like fine wines and cheeses. Once you acquire a taste for them, all else seems so unappealing.
4
One of the best pieces I have read in a long time...
18
Never heard of Say's Law before. Your column was OK - until you mentioned Say's Law. You are lucky that economic ups and downs don't affect your food / clothing / shelter. If Say's law was true - and quoting you (which "Say" did not "say", I read!) "supply creates its own demand" then if I start selling horse drawn carriages - they will all be bought up - the more carriages I build - the more demand there will be. Could you try a different justification for Supply-Side economics? Say's law does not convince me.
18
As a former Republican and a former Democrat, I encourage anyone who is interested in the common good and disappointed in our two major parties' inablity to act on it to consider the American Solidarity Party. Its principles of dignity for all people, caring for our neighbor and for the environment, seeking peace between all nations, and supporting families have given me great relief in having found a political home.
22
You write as if this is something new, not the end result of a long, long period of decay that was never based on a very solid intellectual foundation. Did you _just_ notice when Trump was nominated?
35
The American Dream was alive and well in the 80s as I came of age as a Republican. I was a believer because there was a place in the party for the less fortunate ready to sacrifice to achieve - from the infectious optimism conveyed in describing America as 'a shining city upon the hill' to specific policies promoting social-economic advancement. This was a party that believed in our - in my - potential, while the Dems believed the best they could to do was ask for more handouts to simply maintain. As time passed, I valued & promoted these ideals while increasingly feeling orphaned by the party who instilled this ideals. I figuratively scratched my head. When did we begin to believe one religion over another was more deserving to be on 'the hill'? When did we decide putting more restrictions on minorities served the interest of helping people, and therefore the country, advance? I woke up one day and recognized the meritocracy I believed in was no longer the ideal, certainly not by the party of my younger days. The Rep party lost its way, and lost me, years before Trump. Trump was made possible by a party that lost its vision for how to invest in America's spirit and its people and instead allowed a small, hateful, narrow-minded collection of anti-institution and anti-intellectuals who believe in a zero-sum game dominate their agenda. It often takes a crisis to force change; let's hope the Rep Party can can recognize a crisis even if it isn't reported on Fox News.
41
The decline was not, as Brooks would have it, precipitous coinciding with the rising stars of Palin and Fox News. Rather it was a gradual sell-off of values which can be traced back at least to 1964 when the Republicans saw the opportunity to appeal to southern whites disaffected with Democrats because of the passage of the Civil Rights Act. He succeeded, keeping his own state and winning 5 in the deep south. Thus began the slippery slope through Nixon's Southern Strategy, Reagan opening his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, Bush Sr. raising the scary specter of Willie Horton, through Palin and the Tea Party and Fox News and down to Trump with his birtherism, rapists, biased "Mexican" judges and the famous wall that Mexico would pay for.
It has taken a half century, but the Republican Party, which christened itself as the party of disaffected white folks has followed a straight line ever since. Palin and Fox were not, as Brooks would have it, the cause of the moral rot of the Republican Party. They were its consequence some 40 years along the road.
The honorable people of whom Brooks speaks were people able to make peace with their party's war on blacks, immigrants, the poor, women and gender minorities in pursuit of some higher moral purpose. The moral compromise polluted the entire party and now is all that remains.
70
I could never have predicted that David Brooks (the conservative!!) would become one of my favorite columnists
(I commend him for embracing his role as the moral conscience for the now extinct fiscally and morally conservative Republican Party...)
11
I don't understand how someone as intelligent and thoughtful as David Brooks routinely gets things so wrong.
The country's plight can be traced back to the early 90's, when Republicans learned that they could enjoy election success without doing anything for their voters.
As long as they tinkered around the margins or maintained the status quo for their *true constituents* (wealthy donors), they received the money to run yet another campaign. Tribal voters jumped on soundbites and slogans like trout on nicely tied flies, not seeming to care that they got no sustenance from the transaction.
It was in the run-up to the 94 midterms that lead then Democratic Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell to exasperatedly say that the recalcitrant Republican caucus' view was to "tear down the institution so we can inherit the rubble."
It turns out that their calculations were correct and Republicans have been playing amongst the detritus of their own nihilism for worst part of the last 20+ years, able to distract their base with inflammatory (often implicitly race-baited) deflection allowing them to avoid retribution when they, for instance, sat on their hands during the Great Recession, unwilling to consider even theretofore Republican initiatives, in the hopes of realizing McConnell's dream of a one-term Obama presidency.
Republican voters suffering through +10% unemployment were held hostage yet rewarded their captors with a return to power.
Trump is a symptom, not the cause.
30
Mr. Brooks' intelligent, thoughtful, almost painful, soul-searching never ceases to amaze me. Wish the power brokers in his party would pay some heed. But it looks to me like the rotting GOP are inheriting the earth on the despicable terms he has described so well.
9
I remember the GOP when I was growing up. My parents were Democrats but in our house good men from both sides of the aisle were revered.
Both are gone now. I'm sure neither of them would recognize today's GOP.
What was once about issues and country has deteriorated to winning elections, no matter what you have to say or do.
It's sad and like rotting fish, the bad needs to be thrown out.
Attacks on education, women, children, liberals, blacks, latinos and lantinas, gays. immigrants and LGBT people have divided us. That was the goal for the GOP and they've achieved it along with gerrymandering and one issue value voters. Even the evangelicals have shown their hypocrisy.
So here we are in the age of Trump where standards and ideals are bygones and ignorance is heralded.
From the wreckage perhaps a more in tune and revitalized GOP can rise once Trump is gone. The party of Trump will self destruct and leave room for the real Republicans to rebuild.
I can only hope that among the ones who survive they can reclaim who they once were. It is a nice memory.
10
Thank you David Brooks! You have shown more courage and better insight into this dreadful conflagration called politics than any person I have read. Please continue to call it what it is. We need more like you if we are going to make any changes.
6
I grew up in a Tom Dewey household when Republican meant efficient, honest, and pragmatic.
6
Best column I have seen from David Brooks in a long time. Often I feel like he is stretching to present an idea that isn’t quite fully formed.
Not this one. Clear and focused. It is obvious that rot in the Republican party is something he has been noticing for a long time.
10
The rot of the GOP began with Nixon's southern strategy.
15
The tragedy of all this is that the left in this country is far too disorganized, apathetic and undisciplined to take advantage of the corruption and excess we've seen with the Republicans. The GOP just elected a reality tv star to the nation's highest office, and the liberal activists are still whining about single payer and Debbie Wasserman Shultz. America had a good run.
6
This is going on a plaque:
"Populism abandoned all that — and had to by its very nature. Excellence is hierarchical. Excellence requires work, time, experience and talent. Populism doesn’t believe in hierarchy. Populism doesn’t demand the effort required to understand the best that has been thought and said. Populism celebrates the quick slogan, the impulsive slash, the easy ignorant assertion. Populism is blind to mastery and embraces mediocrity."
I think you meant to say this before. David. But, you would not have had any other columns left to write.
9
"Is Rotting"?
Are those words really in the subject of this article?
The GOP has been rotten for as long as it can be remembered; does Mr. Brooks really think this is a new phase for the GOP?
11
Populism = the president is no sharper than the guy sitting on the next barstool and spouting off the same stuff, just changing the names of the countries, for the last 30+ years.
8
In February, 2016, after his initial confusion and shock faded, David Brooks finally came to the realization that we indeed were facing a fundamental cancer growing from within. His opinion piece was titled, "The Governing Cancer of Our Time." published February. 26, 2016.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/opinion/the-governing-cancer-of-our-ti...®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region
Brooks pointed out the fundamental cancer within government by writing:
"We’re now at a point where the Senate says it won’t even hold hearings on a presidential Supreme Court nominee, in clear defiance of custom and the Constitution. We’re now at a point in which politicians live in fear if they try to compromise and legislate. We’re now at a point in which normal political conversation has broken down. People feel unheard, which makes them shout even louder, which further destroys conversation."
Trump deliberately continues to decay the governing processes by his daily diminishment of human dignity, by his blatant untethered arrogance and narcissistic selfishness --- and still, his enablers remain silent, sometimes defending the defenseless, like Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
By seeking the endorsement of White Supremacists, Trump has forever degraded America's historical legacy. There is absolutely no forgiveness here.
And, Huckabee Sanders calls herself a Christian.
22
What would Lincoln think? Is political power worth any price?
www.thewaryouknow.com
2
Well finally, Brooks writes an article without any false equivalence between the Republicans and Democrats. It's a miracle.
19
"Those cuts were embraced by Nobel Prize winners and represented an entire social vision, favoring the dispersed entrepreneurs over the concentrated corporate fat cats."
That statement is so boneheaded as to border on psychotic. The Reagan era tax cuts were a deliberate effort to steal revenue away from social programs that helped the less wealthy. Ketchup is a vegetable...remember that? The rot in the GOP began long, long ago, and has metastasized over the years into the raging cancer we are now experiencing. Sarah Palin, Limbaugh, et al, were merely signals that the turbochargers were kicking in.
18
It should be an immediate cause of termination of employment at the Times or any other newspaper of news channel if the author or journalist or op-ed columnist or news analysts refers to Trump or any other member of the GOP as "populist".
Trump has been and will always be about as populist as King Louis XVI!
There may have been a recent tax cut that's passed that will show how "populist" Trump and his party are.
3
Hucksterism goes back to Jesse Helms ('72), was elevated to God-like status with (ah shucks) Reagan (80's), then hit its nasty stride with Newt Gingrich and Tom Delay (90's). Squeeze in a little "W" for good measure (Weapons of Mass Destruction) and you get the Gulf War, begetting the Big Bang of Trump. If there was a middle-ground in the Republican Party, it must have been a shadow
11
Good column. In his column today, Eugene Robinson wondered aloud if the Republicans in Congress have enough ethics remaining to impeach Trump even if it's proven he colluded with the Russians in the election. Sadly, I fear there is no ethical bottom for these Republicans.
11
Rather than reiterate the many cogent and thoughtful comments already offered to David Brooks' excellent opinion piece here, I wonder out loud what must we do, as a nation, to change this despicable course before the seemingly inevitable endgame of a rotted political soul becomes our fate. History offers numerous case studies of how painfully and violently empires and smaller scale societies can, and repeatedly, have come to decrepit ends when similarly repugnant "devil's bargains" were embraced as supposed public policy. No doubt many of the propagators of our current disgusting state will publicly argue that America is different, that we are immune to such ignoble collapse- and isn't willful denial, until the bitter end, a hallmark of the ignorant?
So, in the face of such rejection of what seems beyond obvious to me and my ilk, I wonder what am I missing? What do I need to understand about the motivations of the mainstream support-or is it just begrudging acceptance- that keeps them enthralled with Trumpism? I offer this also thoughtful and inciteful commentary from the NYT: http://nyti.ms/2Bkhe6t. It may not leave me hopeful, but our situation today doesn't seem to suggest much by way of a healthy way forward, or at least not in the short term. It does though provide some context for me to find some understanding I might forge into empathy. And that's a start.
5
Mr. Brooks, it is a pleasure to watching you get woke. Keep going.
8
Why don't some of the Republican gazillionaires who seem to have some sense to them speak out? i would list them if I could think of one....
3
Mr. Brooks see the Republicans of the past through rose-colored glasses. The only Republican cause has long been to further enrich the already wealthy at the cost of our nation. The thin veneer of rationalization surrounding this has worn away now and what is revealed is not pretty. The Republicans have gone from the Party of Lincoln to the Party of Child Molesters.
3
To be clear: Mitt Romney declared “enough is enough” only after Trump refused to add him to his Cabinet. Mitt is always ready to sell his soul to the devil if the price is right.
3
America was a really nice idea. I give it 25 more years.
5
Your best column David. The final word in its title says everything about today’s republicans and all that anyone reasonably could have expected from a party willing to put forward such a transparently ignorant, amoral, and execrable nominee.
Watching Trump at one of his highly-choreographed anti-erudition rallys, listening to Bannon defame honorable men, and seeing the spokeswoman for the once highest office in the land, daily declare that up is down, east is west, etc. says that the rot runs deep.
8
Only when the rich smell smoke in their gated communities or as in '29 fear socialism/communism will they give up one of their precious dollars. They never lose sight of the prize (more dollars for them, the heck with you) and can afford a tireless army of lobby types to fight their class war. Flash to the general public, they have won. As long as they can keep us fighting each other and fearfull they will continue to win. From the perch of old age I can only hope (dream?) that the younger generations will reject this vicious winner take all approach and construct a better society for themselves and their children.
7
Your party blows chunks, has forever, just now they are really out of the closet about it. Nixon and Reagan started the downhill, at rather a free fall pace.
4
Fear not David. The GOP is rotting (I think the operative phrase is "has rotted") but this too shall pass. Millennials are about as far away from the abhorrent philosophy of the "modern" GOP as you can imagine. They do not believe that capitalism is the best or even a good form of government. They openly embrace people of other ethnic backgrounds and sexual orientations. They don't make a big deal about being "liberal" these differences are just no big deal for them. They are (understandably) deeply cynical about American politics and show a keen interest in certain aspects of socialism. Meanwhile the minority population in the USA is on track to overtake the majority white population by mid century. Trump, Adelson the Kochs et al are dotards nearing their end of life. The millennials are waiting in the wings to take over and they are none too impressed with this pathetic sham of a government we have left them. When the phoenix rises from the ashes America may look nothing like the totalitarian white nationalist theocracy these bigoted old plutocrats imagine. We may even be witnessing the last desperate gasp of the privileged, white male patriarchy. I sincerely hope we get there and I hope I live to see it. Keeping my fingers crossed...
18
I admire your optimism regarding Reagan's tenure. Sadly, I do not share it. Republicans lost the moral majority they invented when they decided money was more important than the well-being of Americans. Compounding that with an administration whose thinking was more muscular than strategic wasn't better. Trump isn't surprising. Trump was predictable.
And to be utterly clear- we allowed the inevitability of Roy Moore and his rape of children the moment we as a country decided dead and injured children in the Sandy Hook massacre were less important than the interests of the NRA and the cheap trappings of murder.
These earlier modern moral and ethical failures occurred in an era of glossy self-congratulation, despite racism, misogyny, and xenophobia. I am grateful these things are at least noteworthy now.
14
What you have described is the classical Western definition of evil as "that which negates a good." Whatever Donald Trump comes into contact with - a ceremony to honor the Navaho WWII code-breakers; the institution of marriage (his own); law enforcement ('the FBI is in tatters') - he manages to leech the goodness right out of it. Institutions and individuals are then left to "rot," as you say. But commentators approach Trump's evilness like the proverbial blind person touching an elephant: to some, he's a racist. To others, he is crazy. Until the commentariat comes to agree on a single, unified message - that his over-arching awfulness threatens the goodness of the American Republic and its values - we will still be parsing this devil's pleasing shape seven years from now.
12
Your so-called history of appreciating excellence is overrated. St. Ronnie was wrong about everything, and his exchequer, James Baker, voted for Trump.
3
Wow. You struck a nerve, clearly Brother Brooks. So, let me call for a partisinal, tectonic shift right now. All Republicans who can't abide crude, populist racism, and all Democrats who can't abide crude, populist immorality (rap music, drugs run rampant, no societal imprimatur against teen pregnancy or libertine sexuality) should get together and form a new Decency and Common Sense Party, or some such. A recognition that science works for the secular, that religion works for the moral, and that both should be allowed to thrive without mutual interference. Non-overlapping magesteria was the term that Stephen Gould coined, and it would work.
4
You really missed the mark on this one, Mr. Brooks. First, the GOP is not a victim of some kind of Stockholm Syndrome. They made their deal with the devil long ago - yep, right around the time when you first tried to sell us your Darwinian/"Supply-side Economics" and you STILL consider this "hierarchical excellence", when it is truly the definition of privilege? Meanwhile the Dems' "Rising Tide Economics" naively(?) neglected to calculate in who owned all of the boats. ["excellent", white, men]. And we ALL underestimated what they would do if that "right to ownership" were even the tiniest bit challenged [Black President, Woman contender]. Trump may actually be the only honest one among you. At least he admits that he believes that the U.S. Govt. and world order should reflect a white, patriarchic, fascist, oligarchy at the top of the food chain. And his job in that is to create a large enough gap between the top and the next layer, so as never to be a threat.
5
"There's no honor among thieves."
5
It's time to stop being disgusted and appalled. This is the fruition of Steve Brannon's master plan using DT as his avatar to implode from within. It's not about the Republican Party per se -that's just the beginning -but rather about hastening some twisted, diabolical vision of the future that only he can see. I'm not convinced these people even have souls. We must stop clinging to our lost past and figure out how to beat these political terrorists.
11
"...the rot . . . began long ago. Starting with Sarah Palin and the spread of Fox News . . ."
No, David. The rot started with Goldwater in the 60's, continued with Nixon and his enablers/defenders in the 70s, and the abcess broke with Reagan, the cynical 'southern strategy' and the drumbeat of 'don't trust the government.' The rise of Gingrich, William Kristol, the Washington Times, and others pushed the putrid mass farther down the sewage pipe until Fox News, Limbaugh, Savage and Bannon came along to facilitate the drainage of any remaining "intellectual excellence" and any remaining claim to honesty, even political honesty.
What we see today is the product of 50 years of cynicism and the pursuit of power (and money), building upon the quicksand of the very hucksterism Reagan was so masterful in dispensing. Palin, Moore, Ryan, McConnell - all are faces glimpsed in the GOP shame house of mirrors.
Oh, yes: to link supply-side economics and "serious intellectual work" is sophism as it most blatant.
6
Both parties are rotten to the core. The Democratic one is just a little edible. Vote independent in 2018.
2
Another well thought out and well written critique. However,,this like most other screeds like this attack Trump, Bannon, the Congress, the Republican Party,,etc.
In general, though, the enablers of all of the above get off. The enablers, of course, are those fellow citizens who voted for the above. The enablers in the particular state of Alabama will likely elect pure scum to,the Senate of the United States. But, it’s not just Alabama that’s to blame,,it’s virtually every state.
Donald Trump didn’t win the popular vote, quite true, but, in a right thinking and acting nation,,he wouldn’t have received more than 10%. As for those who voted for most of the GOP Congress, I can only ask, “what in the world were you thinking “?
Hillary’s comment about many of the voters in the Country was a big mistake, but, she was quite correct.
13
The current state of affairs with the political parties reminds me again that I made the right decision, when I first registered to vote back in 1980, to choose independent. At the time, I really did not know the differences between the two major parties and having one parent a Democrat and the other a Republican did not help matters. Now as I see both parties in a morass, I honestly have to wonder why any young person would choose either one. At the local level, I see both Democrat's and Republican's feathering their nests, rewarding their cronies and flipping the bird to the general populace. Before the election last November, they were reading the post-mortem on the Republican party with the expected landslide for the Democrat's. Then, post election, when that landslide did not materialize, it was a post mortem on the Democrat's especially on the fact that their leadership are names from the 1970's and most are now in their late 60's or 70's. Now here we are again doing a post mortem on the Republican's.
2
I cannot imagine this ending well for the GOP. Or will it be a day of reckoning, not just for the GOP, but for the country as a whole?
6
"And apparently there is no end to what regular Republicans are willing to give him." Exhibits A and B, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. Ryan, in particular, irks me for the way in which he steadfastly refuses (after having been mildly critical during the campaign) to say anything even vaguely negative about the President, or, for the most part, acknowledge that the President says anything at all. Putting your political party above all else--including your children's future--is unforgiveable
5
Brooks is right. But so what? The current configuration of the GOP has gerrymandered and voter-suppressed it's way to nearly permanent power. Trump is stuffing federal courts with like minded people so future rulings will go in his direction. If Democrats are not able to vote them out by 2020 or 2022 it's pretty much over.
9
David almost went there but had th throw in that Tax Cuts create jobs and spur economic growth. They don’t and even he can’t point to examples. But I applaud him for going full bore at Trump and the complicit GOP. Congratulatins David. I know it’s difficult to see where your party has gone, but they really didn’t start out so great anyway. Remember Lee Atwater? Remember the Southern Strategy? Remember Nixon?
9
As a political liberal, I am not at all cheered by the rot and demise of the GOP. When viewed in the context of politics across world nations, America has benefited for decades from a two-party system that offered both balance and efficiency, while our peers elsewhere were mired in multiparty gridlock. I understand the value of Republican party in our two-party system. Where will the politically homeless go now? Will the moderates of both parties strike out and form new political blocs? Given the way the RNC and the DNC have behaved, given how bloated, corrupt, self-interested, and soul-less they are now, maybe moderate voters should do just that. but I for one will not be happy about that outcome. Preserving what has been historically great and dynamic about American politics requires reform at the committee level. The RNC and the DNC need to figure out how to once again stand on high moral ground even when doing so results in a sub-optimal outcome for their party in the White House or in Congress.
4
"That’s because Donald Trump never stops asking."
Asking?
Asking?!
You use that word but do not appear to understand what it's supposed to mean.
David, the rot goes back longer than you imagine. I can date it precisely, as I was in place to observe it from within the conservative movement: 1985, and the pivot towards retaining power that ensued from Reagan's landslide reelection. That's precisely when power mattered more than ideas, and it didn't take long for the likes of Lee Atwater and Newt Gingrich to drive the process. Today's GOP is the logical result.
9
I always thought about moving to Germany. From time to time, I had the passing thought of raising my children in a nation like Germany that values education and human development. Every time I had those thoughts, I felt a little ashamed of abandoning my birth nation, the United States of America.
After the election of Trump, I am feeling less shame of abandoning America. This nation always had tall hopes for itself. However, the dream of America being on that shining hill, and the reality of universal suffrage, universal meritocracy and universal access to North America's resources is too frightful for many of the nostalgic and fearful that continues to wish for the monochromatic Cleaver family on 1950s TV, which we all know was an ancient European fantasy.
4
I agree with your central point that the GOP is rotting, but the question is this: how can such an obviously bankrupt ideology allow them to control the White House, both houses of congress and most governorships? What does it say about us as a society that this has happened?
8
I love Mr. Brook's comedy writing.
The idea that Mr. Trump now makes the cornpone cabal of Reagan, Bush and Bush look good in comparison is a classic case of grading on a curve so steep it becomes a circle. Mr. Brooks may be able to see things differently in the rear-view mirror, but the current rot didn't spring from Trump. Reagan convinced people that the Feds were against them (despite the fact the Federal gov't pays for more in poor Republican states with money from rich Democratic ones), G. H. W. Bush gave us war and more supply-side economics, and G. W. Bush, not to be outdone, gave us two illegal wars and a depression.
Mr. Brooks wants to paint the past 40 years of ill-thought-out and cruel and greedy Republican policies as a momentary Trumpian aberration and not the blood and bone of the GOP; don't let him.
18
This article is on target. At one time there were defensible policy decisions and an alternate point of view. What is happening now is sickening (on a daily basis) and even more so because there is no governor or brake remaining - either on the party's steepening slide into nothingness or on some of the more fanciful notions on the left. One can only treat one's emotional distress by refusing to discuss politics, limiting news intake and contemplating entering a monastery. And it just gets worse....
1
With only 55 percent of the electorate voting, the lowest turnout since 1948, Nixon was reelected and carried all states but Massachusetts, taking 97 percent of the electoral votes on November 7, 1972. Nixon resigned on August 9,1974, a mere 19 months later. The run up to the resignation witnessed a painful, chaotic deconstruction of Nixon’s power as President.
The three Fates sitting at their loom have already woven Trump’s demise. The American political system which spawned Trump will also destroy him. The system corrects its mistakes. As Longfellow said:
““Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all.”
3
When Sarah Palin and the Tea Party infiltrated the Republican Party there was no push back because the GOP was desperate for voters, ANY voters,
because their same old policies were failing to attract young people and a changing demographic.
It turned out to be a hostile corporate raid,a description that the GOP comfortably understands.
The political party that failed to evolve with the times got devoured from within.
The solution is to let them keep it and start over.
3
It is nice to see Brooks admitting, though with some reluctance, that the decline of the GOP began well before Donald Trump appeared on the scene. But he does not go far enough back.
Surely the rot goes back at least to Gingrich, and the Southern Strategy can hardly be ignored.
As for supply-side economics, the claims about the 1981 tax bill are simply incorrect. The 1986 tax reform was certainly bipartisan and careful, having begun life as a largely Democratic proposal, but the 1981 bill was silly, based on absurd ideas about self-financing tax cuts, so much so that even Reagan supported a major rollback of it in 1982. And the statement that it relied on Say's Law, which even Say himself realized was wrong, only makes Brooks' defense of the law look worse.
Still, Brooks is starting to learn. He would do well do look more carefully at late 20th Century conservatism.
5
Some of us let the fox in the hen-house, and those foxes are just in the moment. You can't trust the people who let the banksters run riot any more than you can trust the other party who let them walk with just a claw-back.
This is just about another raid on the treasury before we return to 'having to balance the budget on the backs of the people'.
The REP may as well bring back "whats good for business is good for America" the infamous quote of an equally infamous Herbert Hoover. The little people should get their tents patched.
If the Alabama GOP uses its corrupt party machine t oforce the lection of Roy Moore, and McConnell goes back on his promise to expel him, the following should happen:
1. Every Democrat and any Republican with a conscience should walk out of the Senate chamber when Moore is brought up to be sworn in, and remain out while he gives his first speech (if this should happen to cause the Senate not to have a quorum, then that point of order should be raised and the Senate should be shut down) ;
2. Every Democrat or decent Republican should either turn their back or leave the chamber ANY time after that if he begins to speak; and if he asks for permission to speak or ask questions it should be objected to;
3. No one concerned about the integrity of the Senate shoud agree to co-sponsor ANY bill or resolution with him; and
4. If they have the nerve, NO ONE should agree to serve on any committee with him.
3
Bring back the fairness doctrine. This is where all of this nightmare began. The American public could not hear both sides of the story discussed rationally. Such as when Daniel Patrick Moynahan and William F Buckley would have discussions on television that were fascinating and both had salient points. Now that it’s who can scream the loudest and over the biggest group of people. Bring back the fairness doctrine and apply it to all things labeled News and sanity will return.
5
Say's law was pretty well discredited in the 1930's. Here is explanation as to why it is nonsense.
Suppose you area person who is full of ideas & risk your savings to start company. You produce a better widget & have a great ad campaign & people want to buy your widget.
We have just have 2 studies that showed if the typical American family had a real emergency & had to come up with some money, they couldn't do it. One said the half the people couldn't come up with $400 & the other that 2/3rds couldn't find $1,000.
So a lot of the people who want to buy your widget will not be able to and many of the ones that do will have to give up something else. Remember the studies looked at real emergencies, not something discretionary like buying a better widget.
What is holding the economy back is not regulations or taxes, but lack of money in the pockets of those who need it and would spend it.
Where can this money come from? Only the federal gov can get money to these people. The way it does so is by deficit spending.
And the deficit has been cut 75% since 2009.
4
As others have noted, Brooks's lament rings hollow in light of prior GOP conduct, including:
Nixon interfering with peace talks on Viet Nam.
Reagan interfering with the release of Iran hostages, and Iran-Contra.
George W. Bush and his false justification for attacking Iraq.
In other word, the Republican horse left the barn a long, long time ago.
2
it is impossible to shame these people. And, sadly, it is much too late to save us. The damage done is catastrophic and irreversible.
7
I would disagree with your use of the word "populism." It is my understanding that populists gain power not by failing to be excellent, but by using their excellence to promote the needs of those who are powerless. Which is why true populists are excellent. The main point of your article is true, though - the Republican party has become morally, intellectually, politically, and reputation ally moribund. To that I would add that they are spiritually dead along with the evangelicals who have sold their faith for power.
2
Brooks' epiphany is a day late and a dollar short. The evolution of the GOP has been obvious since since Gingrich launched his Contract ON America and yet he and his 'principled' conservatives did nothing until it was too late.
Conservatives like to wrap themselves in the banner of fiscal rectitude while conveniently ignoring real data that shows Republican administrations since Reagan to be primarily responsible for our fiscal hole. Conservatives bathe in the ethos of morality and goodness the GOP claims to represent while buying into the right-wing myth that liberals are solely to blame for the country's problems. That some so-called principled conservatives are now beginning to realize what they have enabled is cold comfort; we're well past the tipping point to decline. The GOP has been rotting for decades; they have squandered not just their own good-will, but the entire country's. Happy endings are only in the movies.
3
It wasn't liberals it was Jack Kemp and Ronald Reagan who pushed the Laffer curve as the justification for huge tax cuts. Without the bogus Laffer curve there would be no way to explain away the growing deficit.
2
I'm a liberal. I sometimes feel homeless too. We have so much in common, Mr. Brooks - a love of country, decency, knowledge, deliberative processes. I believe we share an abhorrence of discrimination based on skin color, sex, country of origin, religion, maybe other groups as well (e.g., LGBTQ).
I'm curious if polling would indicate that on those bases, a clear majority of Americans are part of the great big country I idealize as the United States of America - my endangered home. Democrats and Republicans are letting us down as we act more and more like an oligarchy with outrageous income inequality and little regard for needs of individuals and groups that only the government can address.
3
David, it is nice to see you finally get angry. I'm sorry its so late in coming. You could have done this four years ago when the Republicans did everything in their power to take down President Obama. He was a class act and no one appreciated him. The press turned on him and so did you. A very sad state of affairs. I hope you continue to hold your fellow Republicans to account for their actions. That could go a long way to saving your soul.
4
Brooks assumes the vast American electorate shares his definitions of whats right, what ethical, what moral, and whats not.
I suggest he has no clue on what millions of Americans believe.
I suggest their voting records suggest about 45 pc of Americans have no clue, no understanding, of things like rule of law, ethics, morality, fairness.
2
What Trump asks of his party? No, he asks us! The GOP is suppose to represent the best interests of all of us, not just themselves. The GOP is drowning us all in their service to themselves. ME ME ME all the way....
The thing about rot is that it is established and thriving long before most people see the damage it wreaks, especially if they really don't want to see it.
3
Where was this outrage and despair a year ago when it might have influenced voters?
2
Trumps victory has created a sense of recognition as well as some confusion in me. People like Brooks and Brent Stevens seem so horrified by Trump when they still celebrate the dog whistle bigotry of some of their greatest heroes. For example Ronald Reagan launched his candidacy in Philadelphia. Mississippi where three civil rights workers were murdered. He also continuously spoke of Welfare Queens. Who do they think that was targeting? Bill Clinton was pretty hideous in his own right. But we're talking about the Republicans now who hate Trump with a passion.
I am genuinely surprised about how deep their revulsion is given this history. But it does seem very genuine. Clearly the dog whistle is somehow perceived as profoundly different than the full throated roar of the alt right. They sound nostalgic for it more than taking any responsibility for where their embrace of it has led us.
5
Although it is more pronounced today, I think there has been a longstanding push toward disenfranchisement from the Republican party. Take Reagan, the Republican's shining model for a success. Reagan was Governor of California when I was in high school and college in the state. He is the one who first started reducing state support for higher education. I recall being in class and my professors saying, "We used to be able to do this but we lost the funding." Continuing with the trend he started, the University of California system only receives a little over 10% of its funds from the state. Reagan closed down mental hospitals to save money and that was the start of the homeless in my state. He didn't believe in conservation, remember his famous line "You've seen one redwood, you've seen them all." So this has been going on for a long time. It has just continued to accelerate and cut further and further into the common man's flesh.
15
RIP John Anderson. The last Republican I wanted as president.
After Reagan was elected and the years went by I saw a picture of a woman wearing a button that said, "I'm a Republican and I want my party back". I did too but I long ago gave up.
6
A generally well-considered column. I would call you to task on one issue regarding supply-side economics, though: it was never as widely supported in the economics community as you've suggested and part of the premise at the time was to generate capital to a market where it was scarce.
Its monumental lack of success during Reagan, W. Bush, and Kansas make it hard for any thoughtful person to still embrace it. Especially now as we are awash in capital, so the original purpose is no longer needed.
13
The Republicans have too long peddled morally-vacuous, politically-convenient ideas. Compassionate conservatism was their sugar-coated monicker to make their sour ideology more palatable to the masses. This party started its downward spiral since Nixon. I mean, look at the cast of characters: Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush the First, Bush the Second, Trump (the Last, hopefully). With the exception of Reagan (about whom a reasonable debate can be had), the rest of that line-up is a disaster. With that kind of a bullpen, you have to hang your hat on tactics to get through the next round of elections, and can't afford strategic, broad-minded, visionary aspirations. Who's next? Mike Pence? Oh God!
18
Mr. Brooks you are dead-on again. You know that life-long progressives feel the same way about The now entirely identity-focused DNC. But by articulating your lament on cherishing “excellence” in our ideas and politics you hit the nail on the head. It is ironic that a “sudden mass regard for excellence” actually goes a long way toward describing the unlikely success of Barack Obama as much as the fog of hucksterism explains the Clinton machine then and now. Many of us thought Senator McCain had that kind of stuff... then he allowed the Bush people to defame him without recourse in 2000 and chose Sarah Palin eight years later. Maybe the quintessentially American concept of competition holds the answer. Let those who seek strong ideas and vision break from the parties and form organic movements (and organize institutionally only well enough to file for elections nationwide). Let there be schisms in which courageous progressive figures break from the DNC and articulate libertarians bolt the GOP. There will have to be more give and take in discussion. The most viable discrete ideas (as opposed to platforms) can win the day. Principle can again guide the public servant in day-to-day decisionmaking, not Soviet-like propriety and CYAism. Let the schisms begin now before the parties and the dueling talking-heads on screen kill American democracy by inspiring only disgust.
3
I’ve been using the series Walking Dead as an analogy to the current situation in the GOP. In several seasons we meet living characters struggle with the notion that the walking dead are not fully human mainly because they were family members that they loved. These characters such as Herschel, refuse to destroy them because of their own emotional attachment to who they once were, friends, wives children, rather than who they are now, flesh eating walking dead without a conscious or soul. This is the GOP of today. They have all become zombies, walking dead, slaves to greed and power without a conscious or a soul. But this rot started before Trump. Trump is akin to the latest character Negan, the inevitable evolution of what happens when no one around has the courage to fight to destroy the beast because they are too scared for their own survival....The Republicans, including their electorate, are all Negan, those who refuse, suffer. The Dems also are like Herschel in that they too refuse to see the current incarnation of their old GOP friends as what they have become, the walking dead who only want to eat them alive. And in true Dem self righteous manner they sacrifice their own living, ie Franken, to the insatiable GOP walking dead hoping that will buy them some time before they turn too. We need a Sheriff Rick Grimed to set things right,unafraid to be flawed or imperfect, just powerful enough to take them on and not stand down for what is right for the survival of the USA!
7
I am one of those (now former) Republicans! Been that way since Trump won the Republican nomination.
As a Ronald Reagan Republican (who was willing to "work things out" with Tip O'Neal in order to get things done), I voted for Barak Obama because he was as pragmatic as Reagan. (Obama even took some heat from his own party for praising Reagan for his pragmatic approach to leadership.)
Little did I expect that the GOP would "stonewall" Obama for eight solid years!
34
They (trump supporters, theocratic evangelicals, cynical power seekers, whatever) dont care what kind of people get what they want done for them - Trump Moore etc whose reprehensible nature just serves as an unexpected useful distraction that "liberals" expend all their energy fuming about - They just want get it done asap and create as much permanacy for their vision within as many political and other instituions as they can in the time they have - and also get "revenge" on their liberal scapegoats. I've never even lived in America but i can almost feel some sort of force over there sensing blood and its pretty scary.
Hyperbole aside thank you for such a clear and sympathetic article Mr Brooks - i could almost envisage a republican i could like
3
"Supply-side was based on Say’s Law, that supply creates its own demand."
Let's try a different law, Mr. Brooks. Try the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and why the Perpetual Motion Machine cannot work in this universe. I'll give you a hint: Paying people less and less won't make them produce and buy more and more.
21
Donald Trump is not the reason the GOP has lost it's reputation for fiscal conservatism. Ronald Reagan created the three figure annual deficits with irresponsible cuts that required reforms that included eliminating deductions and taxing social security benefits for the first time.
George W. Bush projected tax deficits that exceeded $1.5 trillion before his first tax cuts were set to expire by way of a sunset. The sunset was necessary because the cuts were enacted by way of reconciliation - Democrats would not embrace such recklessness. His second set of tax cuts only added to the problem. (While the Obama deficits were blamed on the crash of 2007-2008, one must also wonder to what degree his deficits were structural. Obama inherited a tax scheme with insufficient revenue).
Trump inherited the Bush tax cut scheme as well. There were insufficient revenues the day he took office. The gap was not going to close. Trump has merely thrown jet fuel on the deficit fire.
The federal government has been, and will continue to suffer, from revenue deprivation that Ronald Reagan instituted by design to drown the baby in the bathtub! Republicans, in their generation long mindless zeal to kill government, have placed the fiscal future of our country at risk.
17
...as long as Republicans actually do wake up and realize that they're homeless! I see very little indication that this is actually happening.
5
Amen! Amen! And Amen! Thank you Mr. Brooks. You’ve perfectly articulated what I have been feeling and thinking regarding the moral and principled collapse of the GOP and so many of its leaders and members these past many years. The sacrificing of principles, character, and excellence is reprehensible and demoralizing. I hope it will end, but my hope is waning. In fact, I’ve realized that much of the vitriol that the “Left” has spewed towards the “Right” actually has some merit. I didn’t believe that it did for a long time, but the banality and shallowness of President Trump and Mr. Bannon, the abandoning of principles and decency to try to elect Mr. Moore, and the pathetic governing efforts that the GOP has demonstrated the past 9 months can’t be denied. I am a conservative without a home.
12
Republicans are owned by the Kochs and their friends. They will put up with Trump and Roy Moore and worse in order to get a Constitutional Convention to eliminate our democracy and establish an aristocracy – presumably Charles Koch or his puppet will be King. Populism is just a ploy. Reading Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money” and Nancy Maclean’s book, “Democracy in Chains” has raised these suspicions in my mind. I find them harder and harder to refute.
13
The Republican Party sold its soul when it adopted Nixon's Southern strategy. Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 campaign at Neshoba Country fairgrounds in Mississippi near where three civil-rights were lynched in 1964. Reagan touted "states rights", code for segregation and worse.
18
And, Dear Brooks, how might this have happened?
REPEAL CITIZENS UNITED. NOW.
19
The Republican beliefs described by. Mr. Brooks are nothing new.
Now that they control the White House and both legislative branches, they are able to turn these beliefs into legislation.
if you don't like what you are seeing, get actively involved in electing Democrats in 2018. Start now before it's too late.
11
Generally, people get the leadership they deserve.
Nowhere is that truer than in the modern GOP.
30 years of extremist propaganda on talk radio, then Fox, then Drudge, Breitbart, and Alex Jones.
Where was the outrage? Where were the principled conservatives then?
Answer: they were willing to accept the worst of the worst as fellow travelers as long as it helped them solidify their base.
Now the beast they created is out of control, and like the rest of us they are forced to go along for the ride.
21
If Trump fires Mueller, the Democrats May finally have an issue about which to shut down the government. If we can’t even get a fair investigation into swirl of allegations surrounding this shady regime, we need to bring things to a halt.
15
I'm a liberal but I have to admire solid intellectual arguments that back up ideas. I dislike blind distrust of the republican party. I've respected them in the past (and I'm only 35). There are ideas there worth understanding even if a person concludes that they disagree. You are right about this current republican party. I can not unravel what intellectual arguments hold up their decisions. There is nothing there. Nothing for anyone to understand other than the populist description you offer.
I would rather this nation have two HEALTHY parties instead of this zero sum situation. Liberal democrats have to accept that sometimes we will have a republican majority in congress and and in the white house. Under those likely conditions we should aspire to build a healthy republican party. We as liberals should support a sensible republican party. We do not have that. We now have awful, awful people. Mitt was fine people. Mitt was fine enough. There was a foundation of knowledge with which we could argue and debate. Now we have religious hypocrites, nationalists, and racism. There is no way to argue with those people. We are all losing here.
14
I've never respected the Republicans.
The Democrats are corrupt and weak, but their stated goals are mostly good.
The Republicans are even more corrupt, and their stated goals are invariably terribly regressive. They stand on the wrong side on virtually every issue.
It's been that way as long as I can remember.
5
At last... at last David Brooks has issued the cry...
Cry Our Beloved Country...
We are going down... in the flames of an electorate so ignorant.
Our leadership is bankrupt - in both parties.
And the smile about it.
Ben Sasse was right on at the end of his first year.
But who cared?
Senator Sasse seems to feel partnering is where it starts.
Well, I do not disagree...
But there is more to it that being a father, Ben.
We must be effective... and it's exhausting.
The national conscience has checked out.
The sins of the flesh and the soul are running amok.
We need inspired leadership.
David Brooks has issued the cry.
It will take an emotional and intellectual revolution...
Not violence.
2
“What shall it profit a man,” Jesus asked, “if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?” The current Republican Party seems to not understand that question. Donald Trump seems to have made gaining the world at the cost of his soul his entire life’s motto.
Sadly some of his staunchest supporters are Conservative evangelical Christians. The holier than thou wing of Christianity.,
15
Thank you, David. As frightening as Trump's presidency, what was many times worse was the appeasement by the GOP for a stolen Supreme Court seat.
20
Mr. Brooks, Even as a liberal who has wildly and widely opposing opinions to yours, there is much you say of late I can agree with. However, describing Jeanne Kirkpatrick as an "excellent leader" is not one of them. Seriously? Maybe as a white male she served you well, but for over half of the population of us, she was the epitome of a woman completely out of touch with--if not against-- the advancement of women's issues. That is not excellence, nor is it leadership.
10
Perhaps the time has come for those Republicans and/or conservatives who agree with Brooks' thesis to form a new party....
10
Thanks, Mr. Brooks, for this column. This country needs a healthy, principled, vibrant conservative party. It does not have one. It has a proto-fascist, corrupted, extremist gang that is stomping all over our political traditions.
I am a Democrat, so I have little sympathy for Republicans. I do, however, feel for my country because I know my party is not always correct in its positions. Not by a long shot. Please, GOP, come back to the middle and, especially, to sanity.
4
Dear David...
At last... at last you have issued the cry...
Cry Our Beloved Country...
We are going down... in the flames of an electorate so ignorant.
Our leadership is bankrupt - in both parties.
And they smile about it.
Ben Sasse was right on at the end of his first year.
But who cared?
Senator Sasse seems to feel parenting is where it starts.
Well, I do not disagree... parents are vital.
But there is more to it that being a father, Ben.
We must be effective... and it's exhausting.
The national conscience has checked out.
The sins of the flesh and the soul are running amok.
We need inspired leadership.
David Brooks, you issued the cry.
It will take an emotional and intellectual revolution...
Not violence.
Not violence.
'You don’t save Christianity by betraying its message.'
Oh, that's what's going on! I had no idea a main plank in the Republican Party platform was the salvation of - well, Salvation, if you'll forgive the drollery. But it does explain a lot about the attempted exclusion of Muslims from right here in God's Own Country. They had the same difficulty in Europe a few centuries ago - apparently the Servants of the Sultan got as far as the Gates of Vienna, before being soundly repulsed. For 'Vienna', I suppose we have here JFK, LAX and other ports of aerial entry. Or is that invasion? Explains a lot.
AS to that 'rot': it's emphatically not confined to the GOP. It's evident in both parties, since both subscribe to Neo'conservatism', in its trade uber alles guise. The price of everything; and there are no values.
Brooks just doesn't get it, probably never will. Trickle down voodoo economics never worked , still don't. What he fondly remembers is that the GOP at the time was not regarded with the disgust and revulsion it is now. It will take a long time to regain the trust they once had, if it is even possible.
7
The rot goes back to 1968 and Nixon's Southern Strategy. The current incarnation is little more than a rehashing of that positioning that lays bare that the only true underpinning of the Republican ethos is resentment, primarily racism and antisemitism. 2016 just added the educated to the same old mix.
5
Mr. Brooks writes: I’s amazing that there haven’t been more Republicans like Mitt Romney who have said: “Enough is enough! I can go no further!” To this reader it isn't amazing at all. The rot didn't begin with Palin and Fox News as he asserts; it began with Richard Nixon's "southern strategy" when the Republican party began its courtship of racist southerners who were opposed to integration. The Republican party has been speaking in dog whistles to that constituency ever since. It is not surprising that that constituency would eventually demand more than lip service from mainstream conservatives. Donald Trump and Roy Moore are the result of over 40 years of Republicans looking the other way in order to get votes. It is not surprising that Mr. Brooks fails to recognize that reality. He's been failing at it for a very long time.
4
Well, it is good to see Mr. Brooks in increasingly accepting and writing about how horrible and evil the Republican party has become. There are what I would consider to be inaccuracies in his piece (supply-side success stories?), which have been pointed out by other commentators. But on the whole, he is brutally frank, ending up with the observation that Republicans have no vision for the common good, only that Republican donors should get more and Democrat donors should get less. McConnell and Ryan have weaponized the US tax code against blue states.
Sadly, my view is that none of this will matter. The Republican base has been brainwashed by Fox and will buy anything those hucksters sell. The Kochs have won the ground war and own the state houses, enabling them to gerrymander and suppress votes at a sufficient rate to keep the Republicans in power for many years to come. Their tyrannical rule has no end in sight.
2
I actually liked and agreed with this article until he got to the part embracing Trickle-down economics - I certainly agree with the Republican-rot part.
8
Brooks: "The rot afflicting the G.O.P. is comprehensive — moral, intellectual, political and repetitional."
The comprehensive rot in the Republican Party, once known as the Party of Lincoln, started some years before they became the Putin-Trump-Moore Party. The rot has been there for a while, but it became manifest when Republican legislators succumbed to what is nothing less than the evil of idolatry, swearing obedience to the demands of the NRA, an obedience requiring that the idol or "god" known as "gun," and requiring child sacrifice, would get their incense; and placating the "god" with even more human sacrifice was considered acceptable.
When their response to the Sandy Hook massacre on December 14, 2012 (the fifth anniversary is fast approaching) was essentially nothing (no more than "thoughts and prayers"), many of us knew then the rot was comprehensive.
It is up to voters to do the exorcism, to rid us of the rot.
8
"There is no end to what Trump will ask of his party. He is defined by shamelessness, and so there is no bottom. And apparently there is no end to what regular Republicans are willing to give him."
Republican lawmakers with ethics are primaried out or resign in disgust. The party slowly expels the best and becomes a cesspool of the worst, perhaps intentionally. Every new scandal seems to become a way to test who is loyal to Trump and the Party, and who is a party turncoat or a "race traitor" who puts the country and the constitution ahead of following orders.
There is no democratic way forward for the Republican Party, and they know it. They have amassed enormous power, but demographics will catch up to them soon, as right-wing boomers die off and progressive millenials increase in the electorate. The big question is, if Trump says elections are rigged and need to be done over or delayed or abolished, will they sigh and accept that too?
When Julius Caesar abolished the Roman Republic, his defiance was expressed in one great act, crossing the Rubicon River with his army. I fear that Trump is slowly wading across a Rubicon Swamp, with his well-armed militia following in the shadows, programmed by Fox News and right wing talk radio to revere him more than Jesus. There will not be one great act, but only one little thing, then another and another, and we will say, "I didn't think he would get away with that," over and over. Just as we have been saying for over a year now.
5
I agree with your assessment, but I would quibble with the historical perspective that Julius abolished the Republic.
Some senators certainly thought so, hence his assassination.
But some would suggest that the Republic wasn't truly abolished until Augustus defeated Marc Antony and consolidated power as so-called "First Citizen."
1
The rot that brought you where you are today did not start with Sarah Palin. It started with Richard Nixon channeling Barry Goldwater and George Wallace.
There is no difference between yesterday's tax bills and the Trump tax bill of today: they all sought to broaden the tax base, which is dog whistle for upward redistribution of wealth.
The Republican Party has NEVER had an original thought that did not involve tax cuts and the rich getting richer at the expense of everyone else.
Simple question:
Name a single program designed to help the poor, the working class, the middle class that was written and passed by Republicans since, say, 1980.
And to think the MSM likes to call the GOP "the ideas party."
5
Good morning Dave. Did you have a good sleep, these last couple of decades? I know you find it particularly heartbreaking that your jewel is rotting but it is in like company with the rest of the US government. The good news is that the stench alone is enough for the Europeans and the rest of the world to start thinking about going their own way. Hopefully it's not too late.
1
R's are in bondage to their financiers for election money. Citizens United set this up. D's are also in the same trap. A unified, peaceful resistance to this arrangement is required. Perhaps the sex assault scandals are a good start for this brush clearing.
3
When the Tea Party was materializing, the Republicans thought they could co-opt it. Instead, the GOP was essentially hijacked by the movement. Fed up with the status quo, the Tea Party managed to get elected their own candidates, who among other things, succeeded in sending the likes of Eric Kantor packing.
Despite their collective lack of political experience, and their individual lack of intelligence, for which outrageous claims contradicting any iron- clad facts in such areas as science and religion, for examples.
We don't hear much about them anymore. But, it seems as if their "special kind of stupid" has rubbed off to given degrees on some of the rank-and-file.
Fast forward to the here and now. In the White House, we have a textbook example of that aforementioned "special kind of stupid," who's "savant" is his ability to manipulate the media; blame all but FOX News and other right-wing media-types for presenting "fake news."
Then, there's the current version of the House and Senate; a SOH with a reputation of being a weasel; a Senate majority leader who is better a winning re-election, than legislating; topped off with Tea Party holdovers
and others who are equally politically maladjusted.
There's your rotting Republican party. The blind leading the blind, led by an empty suit, with an equally empty head.
God help us.
4
Ok, Mr. Brooks And you didn't see this coming with Sarah Palin? Maybe if a few good journalist had spoken up earlier, we would not have "The Donald " now.
And I consider you one of the "good journalist".
What makes the G.O.P.'s kowtowing to Donald Trump even more pathetic is that the G.O.P. is not really Trump's party. Aside from the fact that he used to be a registered Democrat, before running for President Trump never identified with traditional Republican values and goals. He merely chose to run for President as a Republican nominee because in 2016 that happened to be the easiest available path to the White House. Had Hillary Clinton not been a Presidential candidate Trump would have had no problem running as a Democrat, if he thought that that would have been the most likely way to have gotten himself a seat in the Oval Office.
5
So when will the old-style republicans accept that their party doesn't exist anymore and found a new one?
3
Never.
Partisan loyalty won't die out for the GOP because they know a totally united front is the only way they can retain power.
It's too bad Democrats can't learn that lesson.
1
Agree there are a few good men and women of principal int the GOP, but Trump has only enabled the true character of the majority of a party that has ALWAYS harbored hypocrisy, misogyny, and bigotry against 90% of the American people. There are innumerable examples of Trump's criminality and complete deprivation of morality and integrity to warrant impeachment and possibly indictment, yet the GOP does nothing. Why? Because it benefits their selfish, autocratic agenda. Benjamin Franklin warned of this.
The GOP isn't rotting, it's ROTTEN to the marrow.
4
Brooks is dead on accurate with his description of the Modern 'so-called' Republican party. Goldwater, Reagan, and others who have passed would be leading the revolution against these no conscience louts.
I have friends who are overjoyed at Trump, and the so-called Republican agenda.
It completely baffles me that they can feel this way and be swept up in this most dangerous cult of personality.
It is frightening really.
4
Don't forget that POTUS Shield (Prophetic Order of the United States) is shielding Trump from any sins. They have convinced Trump that he has been selected by God to be the ruler of the U.S. and can do no wrong. This looks like the definition of the false prophet many "evangelicals" have been harping about for a century.
3
Great column, thank you. The Republican Party should go the way of the Whig Party — extinct. Republicans’ use of corrosive, hate- and resentment-based rhetoric to lure economically-stagnant Americans to vote Republican against their own economic interests (ex. tax cuts for the rich, healthcare for the rich) is despicable. Republicanism is now a toxic and hollow ideology.
4
Phrasing everything that has happened under the REPUBLICAN PARTY, as somehow all the fault of Donald Trump, but not really the fault of the average member of the Republican Party is the height of cowardice. They elected him knowing full well what he is, and they continue to stand by him, because they care more about tax cuts and repealing Obamacare than they ever did about their 'principles'.
3
The "ROT" began with Ronnie Reagan. Give to the rich and it will trickle down to the poor. NOT! The rich have been getting richer ever since. I was young and married during Nixon. I was poor and scared the entire time he was president. I went to college so I wouldn't be so scared, then there weren't any jobs. I was still scared during Reagan because it was obvious of his right wing awfulness. The rich have been getting very rich ever since. Not so for the hard working poor and middle class. They just keep on working and running in circles. It seems to be a given and so this so called tax cut bill must not be allowed to happen. The Republican party and all of it's minions are soulless creeps.
4
On reading this column, McConnell said, "If we've lost Brooks, we've lost the war."
2
President Trump is, I believe, a narcissist. As such so long as he is the center of attention he is happy. I hope his staff sees that this column is copied for him to read, perhaps during a Fox and Friends commercial. If so I suspect he will not be put off—for once again he is the center of attention.
2
Mr. Brooks, the party will continue to rot until you and the rest of the people who enabled Trump take out a high quality mirror and look at what you have advocated and condoned over the last several decades. Mr. Trump isn't an accident and his demands aren't what's driving the Republican agenda. Republicans are all good with Mr. Trump so long as they can get through their agenda. This is all them...and you know that.
5
David, the GOP party will forever be tainted because so many folks who call them selves "moderate" voted trump into office. That is a mark of shame. He was uniquely unqualified for the office being bereft of political experience. Beyond that, he's a jerk. That should have been enough for any GOP voter. That the crazy GOP voters went for him; that people in the Confederate States of America voted for him-- should be a surprise to nobody. But that so-called smart people did so-- for greed for themselves, for devotion to party, for hatred however unreasonable of Obama or Hillary-- well, the country's decline rests on your shoulders. Not mine, yours.
7
Maybe many would not buy into or ignore Republican lies if they were not also guilty of lying themselves and doing it each day on their Facebook pages and Instagrams. In forgiving Republicans this sin, you forgive yourself.
The title of this column is wrong. It should be "The G.O.P. is rotten" and it has been for a long time - since 1980, at least. That is about the time their plutocratic overlords took complete control and any semblance of humanity was lost. Some republic, some party!
4
This column should be required reading for all Republican congressmen and congresswomen. How do they face themselves in the mirror every morning?
5
Wrong!
The party is not rotting is is rotten and has been so for a long time. Without the constant message coming from the republican noise/propaganda machine of the republican party (limbaugh and fox as examples) the politics of socialized loss and privatized profits would have no sway in the "heartland". Or even in the Midwest.
"My donors told me not to call again if we can't get this thing through" is the republican campaign slogan for next year.
The nobles demand their fealty and their lapdogs will force the serfs and peasants to cough it up, even as they cough up their own blood.
Brooks, your party has been rotten ever since Reagan went to Philadelphia Mississippi to begin his "state's rights" campaign for the White House.
Hopefully voters will send them all back to the permanent minority they deserve so we can get on with a democratic future.
6
Finally, but a dollar short and a day late Mr. Brooks. Where were you when everything you have said about Trump was obvious for anyone to see? That he would be a disaster was a given, but you and your fellow travelers chose to wear blinders and elect a person who will probably turn out to be much worse than the one you described. Did the GOP really hate Obama that much?
6
So David Brooks are you becoming an Independent? Like Joe Scarborough? Are you willing to take a stand?
6
"Populism doesn’t believe in hierarchy. Populism doesn’t demand the effort required to understand the best that has been thought and said. Populism celebrates the quick slogan, the impulsive slash, the easy ignorant assertion. Populism is blind to mastery and embraces mediocrity". Dear David, populism doesn't believe in hierarchy that exploits the masses. Populism cannot afford the effort to understand when the educational debt burden sufficiently keeps the poor poor and the middle class kid endebted to private bankers enrichment. Populism corresponds to the slick slogans of lying politicians in Congress because they do not own the means of spreading truth. The rich have no reluctance to pay millions to political liars to preserve their billions. Mastery is what the bankers preach in every society. And Jesus the populist threw them out of the Temple of the Lord for their avaricious theft.
2
So glad that Brooks gets what a Faustian bargain his party is making. So tragic that no one seems able to resist it.
3
I live in the Democratic party paradise of California and we have plenty of rigged corruption in our State government which plagues the average citizen.
A pox on both parties......neither party has the answer. Extra points to the Republicans who no longer even try to make sense or tell the truth.....with their total chaos agenda.
2
Not even close to the rigged corruption in my state government of Florida, which is dominated by Republicans.
2
No Mr. Brooks, it is not Trump who caused the rot. The Republicans have been rotting for many years now.
They were champing at the bit for someone like Trump, it just took a little while for them to recognize it. Once they did, it was off to the races --- and the wholesale sacrifice of their last shred of moral decency.
5
White, wealthy, anti-education, and mediocre is the face of the Republican Party. Face it David, they want to turn this country back to the early 1900's with no middle class, and destroy all the work done from the 1940's forward.
9
Thank you for one of the best Op-Ed pieces I have every read. You were spot on in every instance you cited. The challenge now is how to rid the party of these horrible influencers that pander to interests that create their own conflicts. How do we rid the country and the party of corruption at every level. Rhetorically, that may be impossible, until the pendulum swings in the other direction based on the level of disgust that grows within us all.
2
Why do we not see strong public statements from (most of) the Republicans in Congress saying they will not support Roy Moore and standing against him and what he represents? Where is their moral outrage about their party supporting an accused child molester and avowed racist?
Instead, the see the Republican Party (and of course Trump) openly now supporting this criminal while several elected Congressmen have now resigned for less that he is accused of? What is going on?
Rot indeed.
4
I offer my belated thanks to you as well Mr. Brooks for this clear admission and analysis of the cancerous, ever-metastizing rot which has been and continues to be inflicted upon this tottering nation by the Republican party at every level - whether by mere association, silent or equivocal complicity or active participation. Yes, it has finally come to this. Now, what next?
2
I am so tired of Brooks constantly begging us to forget that the Republican party has been the party of bigotry and sexism for decades. The only thing that makes Trump and Moore anomalies among Republicans is their refusal to use coded language to spread their hate.
5
While the Republican party has become the party of bullies and moral vacuity, the Democrats are now the party of pushovers. They may have always been like that, but it is time for us to start playing dirty. It is enough.
I do believe that the calls for Sen Franken to resign were short sighted. Not only do we lose one of our finest, but it is also for a lost cause. They don’t care. In no way is it going to dissuade anyone from voting for Moore—just makes us look foolish.
If we can learn anything from the party of “family values” it should be how to play their dirty tricks. Fight fire with fire.
5
Mr. Brooks,
We liberals have been telling you this since 2015 when Trump announced his candidacy. In fact, we told you again and again. Yet, just now, today, you realize the utter lack of moral standards, the complete absence of any philosophical basis for the Republican Party?! Weak kneed hand-wringing at this date is too little, too late. Be a man. A real man and join the Democratic Party!
5
David, I am sorry you have become homeless in your own party, as so many republican's have. I hope that this will create an opening for us to find the political and social middleway...as we ALL have so much at stake, and everything to lose.
2
Only Republicans with David Brooks' integrity and intelligence can feel politically homeless. Fewer and fewer Republicans, current and former, recognize or even care about the rottenness.
3
Wow. David Brooks just noticed what the rest of us have known for years. The rot in Abraham Lincoln's log cabin set in so long ago that nothing is left of it. But there are plenty for shiny mansions behind gates where the Republican party's masters live in endless luxury.
2
I'm sick of people re-writing history and bemoaning the good old days that exists not in the share history of people, but in the rosy lenses of a vague imagined memory. What Republican excellence do you refer to? Give a concrete example! Was it the invasion of Granada, Panama, the Persian Gulf or Iraq? Was it the defunding of infrastructure, education, or welfare? Prior to Reagan, there were no homeless encampments. Oh, maybe it was Nixon lying to the public and sending young men to the graveyards in the jungles of Vietnam? Was it bringing all life to an end in a worldwide mushroom cloud?
If the Republicans find themselves politically homeless, well, pull up a sleeping bag. Since Clinton, who was more Republican than the Republicans, Democrats have been in the same encampment. I like Obama, but he was too weak and timid to be effective.
Mr. Brooks, please stop making up fake stories. You probably don't even know how much a gallon of milk costs. (Ask Gore)
5
When the GOP loves the country more than hating liberals, that's when is gonna get better, not holding my breath.
4
Mr. Brooks:
The most salient observation this column evokes is that, no matter the topic your pronouncements are always behind the reality of the times. Thanks for this partial admission of the rot at the center of the G.O.P.. However, the rest of this country has been under the spell of these liars since Reagan.
In your frequent rants about the sixties being the cause of moral decay You never mention Watergate, a scandal if ever there was one. Trump is not the first crook in the White House.
4
And rot STINKS.
It is obvious that the motive of the present crop of republicans is to ALTER EVERYTHING to line their own pockets; they've altered rules, and laws to this end. Done to eradicate the poor in many ways;
destroy Obamacare - lots will die without insurance for medical treatment;
gut the EPA and other regulatory bodies - to make sure those whose lives are affected by poisons and unsafe conditions at work get really sick or injured and die;
to allow NRA to continue to have their gun-owners kill and maim as many people as possible, and with the right guns, all at once;
to make sure that the poor women are forced to have unwanted pregnancies, one after another to keep them in poverty;
to change tax laws to suit their own businesses;
There are countless heartless acts each week to destroy the lives of the non-rich and the sick;
Anything good you can think of is under the gun by the Repubicans' illegitimate leader, who may have bought his position with roubles. He embodies evil.
REPUBLICANS! This is not the party of Lincoln; who is rolling in his grave.
WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? Are you TRYING for the second revolution by using the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,' and hoping we are too sick and helpless to 'rise up against this sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.'? I do not take comfort in any hope that these so-called republicans will get their come-uppance in the after-life.
3
The worst has hardly begun. If Trump loses in 2020 he will not concede. Its not in his DNA. He will claim that the election was rigged and stay in office. The rot that Mr. Brooks describes will keep him there.
3
It’s not 2020 yet, so there is still time for him to act like Robert Mugabe or fill-in-the-blank dictator. It has to be factored into Democratic strategy.
Well said David, but despite the number of posts by those who summer time patriots predicting the end of this great experiment, there are many others, myself included, that aren't resigned to sitting on the sidelines without taking corrective action. Yes, Trump is an idiot and Moore should be in jail not the US Senate. The GOP has lost it's moral compass. That doesn't mean the Democrats are any better. I'll be curious to see if their new found backbone will apply retroactively to their opinion of Ted Kennedy. The reality is both parties are incompetent and corrupt. We need a new party that jettisons the far right Trumpistas and the far left Bernie crowd. If it forms, we'll be back on good footing and return to our welcomed role as leader of the free world.
Has David Brooks said, "Enough is enough and I can go no further." Everything we now know about Trump was known before the election. Unless David Brooks can now tell us he voted for Hillary Clinton, he's now just blowing smoke.
2
David, you hit a home run with this article! Bravo!
The GOP's house is built of straw.
2
Within the Republican party ideology is farce. Greed and self interest rule. Deception, lying, distraction, misinformation and arrogance pervade the political lives of each member. At the center of this corrupt cabal is citizens united, the never ending poison killing the vestiges of American democracy. Today inequity is blatant. Tomorrow democracy dies without a fight nor a murmur nor a protest. America the beautiful is dead.
Great and thoughtful column and it leads us to the next question. To quote a former late NYC mayor, the opposition party needs to look in the mirror and say "how am I doing"? In New Yawk dialect the end "g" was silent.
David, the end may be nigh, for the GOP, (including relentless demographics) but the Democrats have their own issues. As a gaping opening is created by the vileness of Trump and his enablers, do Democrats sing "all in and all aboard for victory"? No. Do they seek to encourage discouraged conservatives like D.B. and first responders and families and small business owners and non-evangelical, non-fundamentalist people of faith or anyone not covered by identity politics of the hard left to join them? No, and No (with small local exceptions).
I fear the push by the hard left and the identity politics practiced by both sides will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Down with all these culture war litmus tests. Jobs, the environment, healthcare, infrastructure, education and a real reform of taxes done with fairness to all. Isn't that plate full enough? Do elections always have to be fought on pelvic issues or by listening to narrow single issue loudmouths?
5
Well said Unworthy Servant! Especially your point about why can't both parties focus on "jobs, the environment, healthcare, infrastructure, education and real reform of taxes done with fairness to all"?
1
Excellent! Why I hate the Democratic party as much as the Republican party. I'm sick of Republicans' lack of morality, and sick of Democrats' turning every minor or fringe issue into a morality (according to Democrats) litmus test.
So what?
You elected a... creature that bragged about sexually assaulting women, called Mexicans rapists, told black Americans they have nothing to lose but that Colin Kaepernick should be grateful for his country, and happily collaborated with a foreign government to corrupt an election. The G.O.P. isn’t selling its soul - it doesn’t have anything left to sell.
You did this. Now you deal with the consequences. I think it might take more than a disapproving editorial in the NYT to rescue your precious party.
7
Trump is the anti-Christ...and he will burn in hell!
1
Oh, puleeese. Don't we get enough of this nonsense from the right?
Even as satire, it is unfunny.
David Brooks and I are close in age. I lived through the same Reagan era that he (mis)remembers so fondly. What Mr. Brooks neglects to remind us is that President Reagan argued that "government was the problem, not the solution" -- a phrase that has become a veritable mantra among the GOP for four decades now. Reagan set us on this disastrous path. Trump is true heir. It was only a matter of time before the wolves in sheeps clothing abandon their costumes. Trump is no sui generis. He is purebred Republican.
12
I Fully understand the points you make in this excellent column, Mr. Brooks. What I rarely see is "why?' What drives a person to cast aside what most feel is good for the country and acts for themselves only? More importantly why does the Republican base support something against their own interests time and time again?
7
Thank you for a simple description of the appalling place at which we find ourselves. NWe now live in an actual reality TV show, run by a reality TV showman. Reality TV completely relies upon creating drama where there really was just mundane normal life. And that is what Trump brings us - a 'rogue character', self promotion and the creation of drama. He, and the party that stands behind him, have fallen over the edge of sanity. I hope each and every one of them loses their jobs.
3
Supply side economics and the trickle down theory is bunk. It has historic precedence in our country from the mid to late 1800's -- that being the hucksters cry that "Rain follows the plough".
3
It is difficult to add to the column and the comments, but the money that has gone from a leak into politics into a tsunami is a major factor, as is the rise of conservative talk radio, FoxNews, and now Breitbart and a gaggle of others. Money is the commonality among them all. It should come as no surprise that the GOP leaders find it tolerable to have abandoned their principals and their moral high and might positions when they donor base, those in the top wealth, want to keep the system rigged, drain every swamp but their own.
Do some of these people actually believe the positions they have to tie themselves into knots to espouse? Probably. Are there single issue voters who push aside their sane conservative views for one cause? Absolutely, and that is worse than a true believer. Their currency is not money but a federal judge or a Senate vote. Not too many years ago, all we heard from this crowd was "no activist judges" and no federal debt.
Sell out comes in many forms, and the currency is whatever it takes to get the sellout. Most, I am sure, have no conception they have been bought or at what cost.
3
It’s not the Republican Party that is finished, it’s America and the whole free world. The damage has been done, there’s no going back. History has turned a corner, and it doesn’t look good.
3
they were rotten a long time ago. This is a party that has been against the welfare of the majority of Americans since the days of the New Deal. They have been after social security since it passed in 1935 under Franklin D. Roosevelt and after Medicare since it passed under another democrat, Lyndon Johnson. Now you can just see these creeps loving the morally ignorant and repugnant sexual predator as their leader and all that is happening to deprive the 90% of us of all that we have achieved. David Brooks makes me want to vomit.
4
The actions of the so called moral republicans John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Richard Burr, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and many others reveals the ethical code that shape the actions of Congress — me 1st, country 2nd, if it does not interfere with the support of my patrons.
No hypocrisy or lie is too big, no sneaky budget trick is off the table, patriotism is for optics only, and laws are for managing the masses, not the elite. It has been clear since Reagan that money and power drive Congress, not loyalty to the ideals on which our nation was founded.
That said, Congress has become nothing more than a constitutionally sanctioned criminal enterprise run by corporations and the super rich. To fix this situation an overwhelming electoral defeat of the R's must be followed by a purge of the democratic party to jettison "owned" politicians. Once the dust settles a constitutional convention is needed to fix a flawed document that has been corrupted beyond the fears of the Framers.
All this from a person retired from the military, who pays taxes to support the common good of a once great nation. A person who fears that the "struggle" of which Molly Ivins wrote about will end very badly.
"It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America." Molly Ivins
6
Thank you Mr. Brooks for sharing your thoughts and concerns as an intelligent, informed and concerned Republican. You and those who share your views are who need to lead us out of this desperate situation. Democrats' criticism of this administration will never be accepted by Republicans. It must come from their own voters. It must come from people such as yourself. Thank you Mr. Brooks and please do not stop sharing your concerns.
2
The Republican Party has become the party of narcissists and sociopaths hiding behind their so called patriotism and under the dark cover of their God. Their America is not my America and the God they purport to follow is not my God.
3
It may be , as you say David, that Trump keeps asking. Or whining and crying until he gets his way.
But it's noble burghers of the Republican Party who keep saying "Yes".
Roy Moore is going to win in Alabama in no small part because of how distrusted the mainstream media is in certain corners of the country.
And one of the reasons is it distrusted is because it is, in fact, biased.
That isn't to say the media is wrong about Moore--they aren't in this case. But they have been so consistently biased against Trump and the GOP in general that it's like boy who cried wolf.
That is a point worth thinking about--how media bias is rotting the Fourth Estate.
My question is this: Is there a lawyer within the US willing to take a long, close look at the new GOP tax bill and scan it for possible legal, Constitutional and human rights violations?
Donald Trump and the GOP that holds control of all three branches of government are no longer servants of the people, but of a global elite who want welfare at the expense of the American people. Both parties are beholden to Corporations and defense contractors, that much is obvious now.
But is there a lawyer anywhere in the US invested in justice and the will of the people that would challenge the CRIMINALITY of the GOP's tax fraud scam?
5
Mr. Brooks, I have read your column for years. I have not always agreed with your politics but I knew you were sincere, smart and a thoughtful writer. You have written what many of us came to understand long ago. Now, what are you going to do about it? Will you quit the Republican party-- publicly? They are never going back to being the party of Lincoln or William F. Buckley. They are never going to get over the culture wars that were settled a long time ago. They are never going to embrace modernity or science. It's over. Palin was the penultimate nail in the coffin and Trump is the final nail. Vote with your feet and leave the GOP-- they already left you.
9
When I hear the description here of "populism" my mind brings up some of the episodes in Pasternak's book "Dr. Zhivago," describing how worker's committees replaced officials in soviet Russia. The mostly uneducated workers were supposed to replace the corrupt officials and run the "workers paradise" but the opposite happened. The tyranny of the mob ruled instead, and two major results occurred: excellence was killed off, and the country became a disaster.
Today mob rule is expressed in social media, where clicks and eyeballs replace anything resembling virtue, and power goes to those who shamelessly take advantage of ignorance. Expertise and excellence is measured in dollars and cents. Corporations and businesses lead in that race because they are structured specifically to be without a conscience. That's the root of the rot in the GOP.
3
Like a spinning top;
We had balance but we are teetering. Soon I fear to crash.
Our silent majority is now too small to be heard;
Do something....explore
> [email protected] <
"The G.O.P. Is Rotting"
--------
Where have you been the last 30+ years?
4
You misspelled it. It is evangenitals not evangelicals.
2
Thanks. You nailed it! ---
The GOP have not given up the moral high ground, because they have now shown with their full-throated support of the racist, fascist, sexist traitor Trump, they have no morals to begin with.
David, the one qualm I have with your opinion piece is that you put all the blame on Trump. It seems to me that Trump has been 'captured' by McConnell and Ryan for their own narrow minded purposes. Trump, to quote Tillerson, is a moron. The rot in the Republican Party is internal. And it was there long before Trump showed up on the scene.
1
It seems to me that the Republican Party enjoys riding the wave that Trump has created for them. They don't even seem to care if it's leading them ashore or out to sea. It seems that the only thing that matters to them is winning, apparently at any cost. It should be so easy to vote them out of office; to prove that they are cynical, insincere, opportunistic, hypocritical, irresponsible, that they don't give a damn about anything other than their next campaign. And the Democrats respond by offering sacrifice of one of their own members who has been dedicated to opposing the Republicans because keeping their side of the Senate strong is not more important than hypocritically celebrating their side's image of themselves as faultless.
2
Thanks, David. OMG GOP WTF pretty much sums it up for me. They have definitely set the bar to the new low. Sadly, the decay is not confined to one party and encompasses our whole culture. There is no room for morality in corporate and Congressional capitalism.
1
If you grew up a minority in this country (I'm gay and Mexican), you've smelled this rot your entire life. If there isn't a major correction during next year's midterms, this country will be lost a very long time.
9
Mr. Brooks,
I wish I could join in on the plaudits you're receiving because of this column, but I cannot do so in good conscience. From your position at The New York Times, and as a guest on many "conservative" talk shows, you have contributed mightily to today's unhappy circumstances. I'm happy you've had your Damascus moment... but those of us who have been watching and protesting this evil steamroller for years are unimpressed with your years-too-late contrition and we cannot grant you absolution without a full, wholehearted, confession of your role.
It's not enough to condemn those with whom you've been complicit; you must acknowledge your OWN role in making this happen.
16
I agree and I find Mr. brooks reference to Sen. Flake as a dissident extreme. I believe it is spineless to “float” somewhere in the middle and keep one’s head down. I would have expected more from Mr. brooks.
5
While I have disagreed with Mr. Romney politically (Corporations are not people, sir), I do appreciate his stance that choosing party, and in particular this current President over the best interest of the nation one step more than he will go. It is unfortunate, though I hope not catastrophic, that the current Republican members of Congress cannot see this.
3
The original trickle down did not create economic growth -- stimulus from the deficit did. It created greater inequality. I voted for Reagan because I thought trickle down might work but was disillusioned by the result. The repeated attempts at this misguided concept continue to prove it is the source of ever growing problems. This is, I believe, the original failure to accept the real world that continues to haunt the Republican party which goes deeper into the fantasy world of their own creation every year.
8
I have struggled for a while with stringing words together that could possibly describe the state of our nation's governance and politics. David Brooks has come very close. I hope someone will identify themselves in this tragic story and begin the journey back to sanity and integrity.
9
And that's exactly how a narcissist gains full possession of his victim. He asks them to give up a little here and a little there, and they agree, giving him the benefit of the doubt.
But he never stops. And the more they give, the more they invest, the more depended they become on their master, and the more they are compelled to continue giving in -- until there is nothing left of their former selves, only an empty, useless shell.
And you'd think they should have known better.
18
Even if Trump is deposed, impeachment, 25th Amendment or forced resignation, as a retired person I honestly fear a recovery from the damage he has done internally and internationally to our country will never occur in my lifetime. Al Gore talked of an environmental "tipping point", I think Trump has pitched our country over another tipping point.
18
Republicans have lost their vision for the future. That is why they have failed to become a party of inclusion. All you have to do is look at the picture topping your article and you can see that the Reps are only worried about grabbing everything they can now just for people like them. They are willing to find a place for Roy Moore but not for women, gays or people of color. This is all about them and nobody else.
For now they can win by squeaking through. In the future they will begin to lose because their policies are not about the entire nation but are designed to provide increasing benefits to billionaires and evangelicals that are OK with looking the other way on those who commit sex crimes. The most important thing they argue is to confirm supreme court justices that agree with their immoral logic.
6
Mr. Brooks, as you know there of multitudes of folks like me who were once Republicans but now find ourselves understandably repulsed by the current iteration of that political party. Many of us will continue to oppose their bigotry, narrow-mindedness, anti-intellectualism, etc. and I'm quire certain in a few years we'll look back and ponder the fact that the GOP has been (self-)marginalized and is no longer significant. I so look forward to that day!
4
In addition to Fox News, right-wing radio hosts have reached and preached a populist, fear-mongering and "left-hating" message of grievance to its angry, loyal audience quite effectively, for decades.
10
Amen, David. I have always admired your objectivity, your ability to tell us how you really feel and WHY. The Republican Party today, tells us the former, but never the latter. They speak only in cliches that put their opponents down. Is that purposeful, just instinctual, or part of the "mantra talking points" they share to prevail. Who DO they think we ARE? Who DO they think they represent? I have a note page on my phone, "Republican/Conservatives I Admire". There aren't many. I try to mimic your objectivity. I know, we're not of the same party. I used to be a Republican, once a Democrat, and now am an Independant. Never again Republican. I detest their actions and all that they as a whole stand for. The pendulum does swing. Watch out guys!
3
Indeed, Mr. Brooks, well stated. Perhaps you can now make the mental jump needed to truly understand how much trouble this nation is in now, with this undead monster you helped create in total control of our government. That this has been a long time coming has been clear to some (I sure wish I could say 'many') for quite some time, but we were ignored because, well, gosh things couldn't be that bad here, right? Nevermind the lessons of history, sociology, anthropology, the hard sciences, the voices of our own downtrodden, voices and experiences from around the world. 'Murika! What's on TV?
This essay shows that you are truly on the path to waking up. Such introspection is rare among those paid to give a consistent opinion buoying an ideology, it is heartening to see. Merry Christmas to you and yours.
3
David Brooks focuses on a few possible good things about Republicans in the 1980s, but overlooks the wreckage of the Reagan Administration, from bad education policy to bad environmental policy to bad FCC policy to gutting DOJ antitrust enforcement to gutting consumer protection at the FCC to Iran-Contra, well, the list goes on and on. In one area after another, the Reagan Administration was a disaster, including but not limited to the most number of investigations, indictments or convictions of executive branch personnel (138 or so) in US history, much more corrupt by that count than Harding, Nixon or anyone else. Brooks also leaves out the Republican nutcases in the US Senate at the time: Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms and a long list of others. The Republican Party has been rotting for a very long time and I'm tired of journalists framing its decline around the George W. Bush or Trump administrations.
5
"The rot afflicting the G.O.P. is comprehensive — moral, intellectual, political and reputational." Indeed. As an Independent voter, fiscally conservative and socially moderate, I have problems with both major parties, and with the two party system, for that matter. But in recent years, I have to agree the Republican Party has lost any semblance of respectability. Now with control of all three branches of government, they appear utterly drunk with power. The recent tax "reform" bills are perfect examples, where they were writing in stuff in the margins while they voted for it, and even after they passed it. "Tucked into the legislation from both chambers, however, are measures with consequences for the environment, health care, churches and abortion rights." (PolitiFact) That is not governance, just obeisance to their donor/owners.
8
Putting your head down and "floating" would not be acceptable with someone half as dangerous as Donald Trump. It is that attitude that got him into office in the first place; apathy. The willingness of your party to ignore things that should not be ignored with the hopes of ..what I do not know. I do not feel sorry for you 'honorable' Republicans, you earned those quotes around the word. There is never space, especially for honorable people, to put your head down and float.
3
I've been reading US history from the antebellum period. The decline in the legislative and executive branches seems very familiar. Although I am a liberal, it seems to me the last mostly honorable government we had was in the Eisenhower administration. Some since have had their moments, but especially since Nixon's election the decline has been steady, with the possible exception of the George HW Bush administration.
Trump seems to admire Andrew Jackson. Jackson and Trump do have many of the same shortcomings. Trump can't hold a candle to Jackson in terms of competence, ignorance, racism, thin skin, staffing government with political hacks, disregard for law, inclination to vendetta, and authoritarianism. There were times in the antebellum period when Congress stepped up, as they did in the Nixon administration, but the same self-serving character and hypocrisy was dominant then as now.
We survived Andrew Jackson, unless you count Native Americans and the slippery slope to the Civil War. One thing that is really different now is the voter participation rate. I wonder what that says about our chances in the future. Are we doomed to making the movie "Idiocracy" into a documentary?
5
I want to make a suggestion.
Fight the rot. Demand that the US begin a truth and reconciliation movement that will bring light to the corners and the shadows. Open our eyes and minds to our history and what we can learn and desperately need to know.
I am trying to find a way to counter the moral and ethical malaise we are now asked to accept in our lives.
I read about this museum in The Atlantic. I believe we can start here and move forward.
https://eji.org/enslavement-to-mass-incarceration-museum
1
The boil that has long been the Republican party has been growing for decades, thanks to ALEC, the Koch brothers, Pence, Gingrich, and their ilk working under the radar to destroy democracy from within.
Now thanks to Trump, McConnel and Ryan, it is finally popping. But it is not new.
4
Monkey see; monkey do, is no way to run a political party. Especially if the monkey is the likes of an unfit, incompetent leader.
Also, winning at any cost, like supporting Roy Moore to keep the seat warm for another Republican, isn't really winning. It's capitulation to a lower moral/ethical bar and lesser standards.
And that also includes the party on the other side of the aisle who, regrettably, appears to take a page from the Republican play book by sacrificing a man of substance--who's evolved beyond previous poor judgment--namely Al Franken, to make a political point; to try to start winning again.
When "they" take the low road; we Democrats are supposed to take the other one. However, the sacrifice of Fraken makes it appear that Dems are also losing their way. They seem to be on the verge of losing sight of the other higher road that's getting overgrown with the weeds of all in for winning at any cost.
3
I know of exactly one Republican worth fully supporting nowadays: Walter Jones of North Carolina. He enthusiastically supported the Iraq War in 2003, acting as one of the congressmen who was behind the whole "Freedom Fries" thing. But a year later, the realities of war sunk in after attending a series of military funerals, and he was one of the war's fiercest critics in either party from 2004 through the present day. His record of peace votes on issues of war and peace is stronger than that of any Democrat today. And he's quite moderate on most issues in general.
Justin Amash is worth an honorable mention as well. He's the most libertarian of the fairly small collection of congressional libertarian Republicans - which means that I disagree entirely with him on economics, but his civil liberties and pro-peace records are impeccable, and he does stand up for his beliefs in a principled way. The ACLU is a big fan of his.
I'd give Rand Paul a somewhat-honorable mention for being a libertarian with principles too, although Amash does a much better job of this.
After that...yep, I've got nobody. Maybe one or two of the Republican governors of blue states, e.g. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts. I haven't looked into them enough to know for sure. The rest are all slimeballs for the reasons Brooks mentioned, with varying degrees of slime ranging from normal slug-like slime up to to banana slug-scale slime, in support of the biggest, peculiarly orange-colored, banana slug.
2
I always found the Republican tendency to shame and shackle the poor and make things easy for the wealthy and connected hard to reconcile with your rosy vision of its healthy and glorious conservative past. Buckley wanted to punch out Chomsky, Reagan brought in massive deregulation to aid corporations. Whatever about the value of "hierachies", meritocracy can be good, but a private club is not good for a democracy. Trump is the private club member run amok, and that is an old trope of the ruling classes. And the wealthy will always circle the wagons for their privileges first, they are a backward looking and fearful bunch. God help those outside the compound. But wasn't it ever so?
3
Contemporary Republicans are Dixiecrats, northern fellow travelers, and westerners who want to make bank of off public lands.
That is all they are now. Their fiscal probity is a thing of history.
3
Why is this just partisan?
It isn't just Republicans, it's this country's values, today. Republicans aren't alone in putting money above all else, are they?
Where is the national outcry about unfair labor practices: the collapse of unionism?
Where is the concern about the years-and-years of continual warfare that has killed hundreds of thousands of folks that did nothing against our country or interests?
Where is the shame and abhorrence of policies that allow tens or hundreds of thousands of homeless people to make our cities appear like some 3rd-world nation?
The rot began a long time ago and is visible all around us. First, we have to acknowledge it. All of it. Not just what directly impacts us, personally.
2
You're not "homeless", David - you have chosen to stay. You have always known what a monster Trump was, have known that health care, education and the environment were attacked. You chose this "home". Over and over and over.
Democrats are what moderate Republicans were before Saint Reagan. Many of us found a new home.
5
There's so much more to cover here.
Take one example: the fall of our system of supplying medical care. The GOP refused to propose anything that would really address the problem (and no, catastrophic health plans do not do that, not with the rise of chronic and long-term diseases like diabetes and Parkinson's).
Ordinary people were less and less able to pay for medical care—something utterly vital. When BHO tried to propose a solution, Repubs did everything they could to sabotage it, and crowed about every problem with the ACA, as if it not working were a happy thing.
Add rising inequality to the problem, and ordinary people start calling out for solutions, then getting more and more extreme when the solutions don't deliver.
If you want to pursue power, you have two choices: try to solve the real problems of the people, or offer some corrupt other attraction. Repubs have diverted attention to people's basest tendencies and left us all stewing in the problems.
2
Mr. Brooks where were you during the last administration. Love you big city kno it alls. Basically you had you head where the sun doesn't shine. The president is attempting to drain the swamp left by the Muslim.
Exhibit one.
1
Sorry you had to come out from under your rock and see this Mr. Brooks. But for the last 30 years, the Republicans have comported themselves like whores chasing after easy money. This won't stop until the gerrymandering, voter suppression and easy campaign money stops. Overturn Citizens United and demand publicly funded campaigns!!
4
The rot set in with Saint Ronald when knowledge and education started to be dismissed in favor of folksy humor and ignorance; Buckley and Friedman were the last among those who at least tried to be public intellectuals. The thread of stupidity then continues through Dan Quayle and Newt Gingrich before blooming like a corpse flower in George W Bush, when ignorance became a downright virtue and requisite for leadership. So no, as execrable as Sarah Palin was, the deification of anti-intellectualism started in the 80s under Reagan. What we are seeing is only its grotesque and entirely logical culmination. The only question is how much further the GOP can sink in this moral hellhole before it literally drags the entire country into its hell.
3
Trump tells his supporters whatever he thinks they want to hear. Blame immigrants and African-Americans for their problems. Hillary is a crook. A wall will keep the Mexicans out. The tax cuts are for the middle class, not him. Whatever. Believe me he says, and the snake oil salesman charm wins them over.
All the while the Republicans are passing a tax bill that will blow a hole in the deficit and cut from social security and medicare and totally hurt the middle class by ending important deductions like state and local tax deductions. All of this hurts people who are middle class, not to mention the poor. The super wealthy suck more money up and leave the rest of us holding on for dear life.
GOP Greed over People
2
Best column you've written to date Mr. Brooks, but in this free-press capitol you don't quite manage to cross the aisle and embrace the truth.
The demise of the Conservative movement began with Nixon. In his selfish, soul surrendering interest to get elected he treasonously sabotaged an agreement with North Vietnam that might possibly have ended the war in 1968 and saved 100,000s of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians, perhaps millions, and tens of thousands of Americans. Then with the aid of demi-demons like Murray Chotiner and Lee Atwater he worked up the Southern strategy, embracing incipient racism and playing to a wicked strain of Southern Evangelicalism that holds sway in our South today, and other regions as well.
Trump isn't new. Republicans flocked to the 935 lies of George Walker Bush and Dick Cheney in a jingoistic passion and lust for war against "the great Satan Saddam;" truth was the great Satan was their reflection in their own mirrors. That cost 100s of thousands of Iraqi lives, maimed 100s of thousands more, and opened the flood gates of civil wars and diasporas with which we are and will be dealing for generations, but even more so our Allies in Europe, giving birth to Neo-Fascist movements and the rise of the power of Putin.
Republicans willingly sign into Grover Norquist's demand to kill government. Paul Ryan will take up that work of destroying our Social Safety Nets in January.
Trump isn't outside Conservatism, David. He's a spawn of it. Admit it.
20
I'm sorry, I'm not buying. Every day, we see another Republican lament the state of the party, and, yet, they continue to go along with the program. Trump is like a madman loose in the museum, taking a claw hammer to everything in sight: foreign policy, domestic policy, tax policy; inflicting serious, perhaps irretrievable, damage to national treasures. Instead of making America great, we appear to be witnessing the end of days. Yet, Republicans merely say, "Well, I wish he would not have done that." Every Republican senator voted in favor of a tax bill that they knew in their hearts was a disgrace, and not in the national interest. Until Republicans unite, and denounce Trumpism in deeds as well as laments, this country will continue its downward drift. Unless they are willing to risk a few election cycles in the wilderness, the whacks to our country will continue. It is not enough for intellectual Republicans to continue to say "I wish it weren't so."
22
Republicans have, at best, tolerated and/or denied the racism, sexism that pervades their ranks, even as others have nakedly exploited it the way Trump is doing now. They rail against “political correctness” but have little commitment to social justice or addressing structural inequality. Their insistence on personaliszng disagreement is pervasive and to pretend free speech is absolute is a mistake. The first step to solving any problem is admitting it exists, the mainstream media is doing Republicans no favors by pretending this doesn’t. This isn’t a Trump problem, it’s a Republican problem.
8
Every time I read your pieces, Mr Brooks, I recall reading your fervent defense of Paul Ryan several years ago. You claimed he understood the poor, that his Ayn Randian vision would ultimately be tempered into the conservatism you have always advanced. At the time, I was frustrated you could so easily be swayed by a smooth talker. I would like to point out that the roots of this moral decay were there too. Ryan was never going to have an abiding concern for the poor when his donors demanded his full allegiance. He has always wanted to gut Medicare and Social Security. Now evidently even CHIP is in danger of failing. I'm glad to see you recognize the moral decay in the GOP now, but the seeds were there, and they have willingly sold their soul.
19
What our country desperately needs is for the group of honorable conservatives in congress to move, en bloc, to establish a new political party and start building a new organization. It would be great if this new party took in both Republicans and Democrats and committed itself to honesty, values and virtue, science, the rule of law, the public good, finding compromise, and a reasonable balance of personal responsibility and social mobility. It wouldn't take many to put a stop to this insanity. Think about what would happen if this new party were large enough to caucus with Democrats to get compromise legislation passed. Its a way out of the situation that does not involve giving all power back to liberals. Conservatives with a conscience need to accept it--the Republican party is lost. Move on and create something better. It wouldn't be hard!
5
I disagree about the intellectual bona fides of "supply side" economics--that philosophy has always been an excuse for giving more money to the wealthy. Investment in business always begins with demand; no one's invests in manufacturing or distributing a product unless someone is going to buy it.
But even is we assume, arguendo, that supply side has some rational philosophical basis, we cannot ignore the racism and divisiveness sown by the Republican party in its efforts to sell it.
What's happening now is the logical, almost inevitable, consequence of that scheme. The Republican Party sold its soul long ago.
7
"no one's invests in manufacturing or distributing a product unless someone is going to buy it."....Exactly so. Today the inflation rate is barely 2%, if that. Low inflation tells us that the economy, the interaction between buyers and seller is in balance. The economy can't expand until the buyers are demanding more products. Or put another way, "supply side" economics can only work in times of high inflation.
1
Why do you suppose Trump chose the Republican Party in the first place?
Going all the way back to Nixon, it has been the party which wanted to keep black people where they were and to reduce the power of labor unions and New Deal economics. There has always been a wink and a nod for the demagogues of the South and the know-nothings of other regions always ready to sell out to the corporations who financed them, though they were not so open and high-handed about it as they've been able to be in recent years. I am referring to the broad daylight theft of a Supreme Court seat and the creation of important legislation without participation or even advance knowledge of Democrats. Those more refined, like David Brooks, have had to practice selective blindness about the company they keep. Trump and his disregard of democratic norms is just the latest symptom of what McConnell & Co. have been doing, right out in the open, all along.
11
Somehow I can't quite bring myself to believe that there is this critical mass of former Republicans who now feel "politically homeless." Most have moved right into the house of ill repute and made themselves comfortable.
9
This is the culmination of the "Southern Strategy", Nixon's generations-long plan to end the Republican Party. He recognized in Goldwater's candidacy and the John Birch Society the impulse which would destroy democracy, and concluded the only way to stop it was to infect it with mindless illiberal populism so that it would eventually rot from within.
Because the readers of most papers of record tend to be politically homogeneous, including and especially the NYT, comments generally focus on blaming the other side and calling their supporters names. In the modern era of social media, one achieves an ego-driven air of superiority by denigrating ones opponents while being cheered on by like thinkers. This mindset precludes the obvious driver of political rot across the entire spectrum, which is ourselves. The reason that bipartisanship was possible during the 1986 tax cuts was because Democrat voters wanted their congressional representatives to work with the President. Of course, gerrymandering engineered by both parties have facilitated the emergence of politicians who focus on the "local" good at the expense of the nation. Yet, one only has to read the deflecting editorials and comments in every major American paper to recognize that the problem is us; our continued insistence that politicians lie to us and tell us that there are no difficult choices or required trade-offs. We insist that our politicians demonize the other side. The problem was not Republicans plotting to make President Obama a single term president; it was that their voters / supporters egged them on. Politicians sense of self-preservation will always have them responding to their constituents. All to say, we reap what we sow ... and that applies to you, too, on the left.
1
We have not always agreed in the past, Mr. Brooks, but I am sincerely grateful to you for this op ed piece; I have been feeling utterly gas lighted this past year. I believe as you seem to, that we have entered into a profoundly dangerous time here in our country. The GOP has disgracefully signed their own Munich Agreement. Heaven help us. Where is our Churchill?
1
W started the slide by bringing in the tea party to win reelection. This opened the door for the Trump people leaving traditional Republicans on the outside looking in. Calling this a populist movement gives this show way too much credit. Coup, maybe, but not a movement and certainly not populist. The traditional R can now be replaced with a giant gold T. They can keep the elephant for obvious reasons. It's Trump's party and it will rise or fall depending on his (or Mr. Muller's) success or failure. The smart bet is on an authentic populist stampede, powered by logic, reason and focused rage. VOTE!
2
The president doesn't see it as his party, he subscribes to the Bannon disruption theory of government. He has set out to ruin the party, and he's making good on that promise, even if was only implied, and the GOP somehow missed it.
1
Mr. Brooks might not know it, but today's situation is the culmination of a long process that began in the 1960's with the GOP's "southern strategy."
4
Mr. Brooks, your writing is insightful and eloquent. I wish more people could read your work. I worked for a liberal New England Republican in the late 70s and early 80s. Susan Collins is the only lonely one left. The rest of us have been appalled and repulsed by the change in the GOP that you describe in your piece. The only solace I can find in the present moment is the hope that our young people will wake up and reject the moral bankruptcy of the old white guys, finding a more positive approach to democracy and governance.
2
Less that the Republicans let Trump in, and more that Trump is a creation of the Republican party. Trump is who the Republicans are when they think out loud.
5
"The Republican Party is doing harm to every cause it purports to serve. If Republicans accept Roy Moore as a United States senator, they may, for a couple years, have one more vote for a justice or a tax cut, but they will have made their party loathsome for an entire generation. The pro-life cause will be forever associated with moral hypocrisy on an epic scale. The word “evangelical” is already being discredited for an entire generation. Young people and people of color look at the Trump-Moore G.O.P. and they are repulsed, maybe forever."
The Republican Party has taken on the characteristics of its corporate masters. And, as we all know, American corporations seem incapable of looking more than a quarter or two into the future.
3
And so it begins... I saw this as a comment on the Donald J Trump Facebook page.
" Profound in his vision, confident in his command, peerless in his patriotism, President DONALD J. TRUMP is the world's premier statesman. His tireless and noble endeavor to build the American empire into one of tremendous prosperity and prestige is making monumental leaps forward each day and rewriting the history books for generations to come. It's time to start thinking about amending Presidential term limits and elections so that President DONALD J. TRUMP can continue to serve us so well indefinitely. There's nothing that can't be accomplished with President DONALD J. TRUMP and his unparalleled abilities and leadership prowess. May he continue to win new victories for the American people and the entire world each day for many, many years to come! It's time to abolish oppressive Presidential term limits! If Senators don't need them, neither does the President!"
The ground work is being carefully laid to install him, or someone like him, as another Putin...an authoritative kleptocrat. I figure this isn't a real person, just a fake account that Trump's people post glowing wonderful comments for him. I read it for this very reason, to see what the opposition is up to. Beware, we may be headed down the road of no return.
2
Thank you, David. I agree with the comment stating that the rot pre-dates Palin, but in essence your message is spot on. I just hope some Republicans read it.
Yes, the '78 capital gains tax cut was supported by Say's law, but the Reagan tax cuts were voodoo economics; The Laffer Curve upside without the apogee and downside. That was here the rot started; throwing away the part of conservative philosophy that said "be careful" for the notion that an ideology was always right. I will always be grateful to Reagan for winning the cold war, but I can never forgive him for planting the seeds of hatred of our own elected government.
2
Figured this one out, did you? This process began with Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy in earnest, but really goes all the way back to Barry Goldwater. The interests of wealthy campaign donors, political insiders, and party hacks have taken precedence over those of average Americans since the 1960's. Trump and the current-day GOP are the logical conclusion. This country is utterly screwed to the wall with GOP majorities in more than 30 state legislatures, in both houses of Congress, and permeating political offices at every level, including the courts, with gerrymandered districts, and a neutered census office to make sure they stay that way. Plus, the majority of mass media organs are controlled by corporations that are major contributors to the GOP, and the Sinclair Group is airing mandatory GOP-friendly/Trump-friendly propaganda to the majority of American households to continue the cultivation of the mendacious culture that is promulgated by the GOP. Our institutions across the board are being degraded, and deconstructed for profit with these people in power. America as our grandparents knew it, with its promise of a comfortable life, where one could aspire to do and be anything that we wanted to be is in the process of being permanently denied to future generations, while the plutocrats and oligarchs that pull the GOP's purse strings rake in the cash. The Robber Baron era has returned in spades, and people of good conscience in the GOP are in abysmally short supply.
3
Mr. Brooks I remember the Republican party you do. It was my father's Republican party, the one I grew up with. My dad was great admirer of Reagan, and I remember a speech he gave in the rain, inspirational and full of optimism. I have not heard or felt anything like that for a long time. The behavior of the Republicans under Obama should have been a warning. Ranking Republicans told the public Obama hated America, maybe was not even born here. Illegitimate. They made obstruction their only agenda. Trump is unable to give an inspirational or hopeful speech. The GOP only knows how to break things now, not fix them. The cost is high: our environment, our public schools, and sadly our hope, among other things. Americans are miserable. Not just liberals, but Americans. If the GOP can find a way to make America hopeful again, that'd be a start.
1
Republicanism isn't rottING - it's already rottEN.
Sarah Palin is where you think that started?! Try again, and much earlier, Mr. Brooks.
As per MY experience, the divorce rate in this country is linked to "conservative" tax cuts for the wealthy. It's much harder to cohere a family when jobs are scarce, money is tight and tax reform does nothing to help your middle class finances. Just ask my divorced parents who called it quits in 1988 over household expense arguments.
I can remember my father, as he hugged my mother and me goodbye to travel looking for work, said to us, "Damn Reagan and his tax cuts, they're splitting our family and country apart."
Trickle-down didn't work back then - entrepreneurs that benefitted from that era pocketed the extra, sold their small businesses to corporations and dumped what they made into Wall Street, rather than reinvesting it in their workers. It was their succeeding market speculation, wealth-hoarding and sense of entitlement to less oversight that's led us all to the brink of fiscal, social and political collapse.
5
More and more Americans wake up every day and realize "I'm homeless". And those numbers will increase exponentially in direct proportion to the amount of the Republican agenda that becomes law. This is more than moral rot - that set in years ago - this is a death sentence for thousands of Americans.
I suggest that Mr. Brooks can proceed from hand-wringing to action by reminding his readers that they still have the power of the vote and the ability to raise their voices. He can and should urge them to do both.
2
The rot is moral, not political, and, yes, the craving for power is at the heart of this, but what bothers me most is the Republicans' decades-long conviction that Democrats/liberals/progressives are not just wrong, but are the enemy of America. It's that conviction that enables them to justify using anything - any means, any law, any lie, any language - to impose their will on all of us. They are unwilling now to self-examine, to step back and examine what this has produced in the society, in politics. I see no resolution to the current virulence in conversation other than the complete obliteration of the party in the next several elections.
1
Looking at the "rot" infesting our country, one could ask,"Is it possible to turn the situation around. Can we save ourselves?"
In 1945, Japan and Germany had hit bottom, zero. Over the next several decades they were able to shape well integrated economic and political states. They saved themselves (with plenty of outside help) after total demolition of the preceding order.
Do we "need" total destruction as a preliminary to getting our house in order?
The question arises, is total destruction the prerequisite to
1
David Brooks one of the only sane conservatives. I like this piece a lot except for his assessment of the earlier version of "supply side" economics. It was a gross misunderstanding of Say's Law, and his so-called intellectuals (Buckley and Friedman) were, woefully intellectually challenged in their grasp of it. Earlier in the century, Keynes' (along with many others, including even Max Weber) had deciphered why Say's Law is invalidated by the existence of money. So that when the so-called "supply siders" during Reagan thought that deregulating the financial industry would somehow help "the little entrepreneur" they were absolutely wrong. They set up the mechanism to crush the small entrepreneur and middle class. The rest is history. And this doesn't mention the now totally discredited "quantity theory of money" that Friedman espoused. Indeed, I think the moral rot of the Republican party started with the intellectuals, Buckley and Friedman, men who sold their intellectual integrity and moral conscience for ideology.
-Torrey Byles, Morro Bay, CA
" Now he (Donald Trump) asks the party to give up its reputation for fiscal conservatism."
I believe the power brokers in Washington, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan had more to do with this so-called Tax Reform bill than Trump. Their only interest is serving their wealthy donor class; deficits don't matter. The Koch cartel want a 20% tax rate? Done.
Trump just wants to be seen as a "Winner" and will sign any document, that gets him flattering media coverage from his sycophants and Fox News.
The Republicans have one over-riding ethos:
Group Think and Follow the Leader, no matter who that leader is or who they are. The party that's supposed to be tough and manly is populated by people without moral courage. Without any courage that I'm aware of. Until there's a tidal wave of people reregistering as Democrats or Independents, why keep the Republican party affiliation?
1
"There is no end to what Trump will ask of his party."
And there is no end to the repeated answers of his broken party. "Yes." and "Thank you sir, may I have another."
David, I agree with everything you said. The problem is 50-60 million people do not. Just last night having dinner with friends who are republicans, the subject of politics came up. Not a good idea. Our friends think Trump is doing a fantastic job and I decided to keep my mouth shut. But eventually made the comment that I thought Obama was a great president and historians will judge him that way and give Trump a failing grade, maybe worst president ever. The vitriol that came out of my friends mouth is not fit to be printed. So that's an example of what we're dealing with.
2
Excellent piece. It points to the need for more parties in America. Republican vs. Democrat is obsolete, simply not varied enough a choice to reflect a diverse population. Maybe the GOP will just rot away to be replaced by a new formation of Conservative.
As far as populism goes-if only its main flaw were mediocrity. That would be fine. But it actually embraces vulgarity, loutishness and bigotry. Unfortunately a large segment of white America has not evolved from the thinking of a dark past. They are not very visible but they are there--we need them to progress, not to have politicians regress to reflect their (lack of) thought.
I was a lifelong Republican who has to switch parties to Democratic because of what the Republicans had become. It has only gotten worse.
Trump was a Democrat who liked what the Republicans were becoming.
2
Thank you, Mr. Brooks. Just.....thank you. As Democrat, I take no pleasure in the current sad state of affairs. I know just enough about people and history and how power works to know that the whole country would be better off with two functioning political parties that search for common ground beyond their partisan differences to do what's best for the country and its people. The status quo today is one party limping, the other crippled by the rot you describe. What will be the way out of this morass?
Oh David. The fact is that the Republicans, in particular baby boomer Republicans who didn't live through the Great Depression, and who seem to believe that poverty and its attendant ills all originated with the advent of the welfare state, have been looking to shrink the safety net for a long time. Given America's aging population they understood that the choice was either to raise taxes or reduce expectations for what citizens are entitled to from their gov't. Many, many people refused to take their claims seriously, refused to believe they would actually gut popular plans. Clearly these optimists were wrong, clearly they discounted the strain of conservatism that views taxation as a moral evil and a blow to liberty. I would say that the only thing stopping Republicans was a fear of provoking a backlash, and what Trump's election did was open the floodgates. Trump has shown that you can get away with being greedy and selfish - he got elected despite not showing his tax returns, despite going bankrupt and stiffing workers, despite gaming the system to pay as little income tax as possible - all this makes him 'smart'. Republicans know that opportunities like this might not come around again, and many are indeed willing to sacrifice their careers - not to oppose Trump - but to put a knife in the heart of the safety net and deprive the gov't of revenue to be spent for the "common good and general welfare". Trump the man may be an aberration, but sadly his positions aren't.
1
ABOUT BECOMING PARTISAN
Thank you for your decisive column today, clearly laying out the tragedy of our government today. Even though I was raised in a family of die hard Republicans, I left that party years ago. As a registered Democrat, I’ve found myself contemplating re-registering as an Independent while becoming partisan in many other ways. I’m a partisan for a government that protects weak and vulnerable citizens such as children, seniors, and the homeless, one that includes creating and sustaining an effective safety net for all its citizens. For public programs that support education and healthcare that provide a basis for all citizens, young and old, to realize their promise as human beings and the promise of making a decent living is a reality. We need principled and thoughtful leaders in our government and military.I did not vote for Bernie Sanders in the last election. As I write this, I’m realizing I might be more of a follower of him than I thought I was. That’s what this current political situation is doing to me.
6
Bernie’s only accomplishment in life is taking down the most popular Democrat in America. The one Obama said was the most qualified person to be president in history. Of course Bernie had the help of the Republicans and the Russians and still lost by 4 million votes. Follow him all you like he’s not going anywhere.
1
Mr Brooks. Seeking higher moral and intellectual ground in a wasteland of rotting values is irrelevant; for we are now witnessing the 250-year old experiment in democracy perishing from the earth. Looking forward to your next column on what the image of post-democracy America looks like. Oh, I get it; you just did that.
4
Yes it's all true ....... however if more Republicans are waking up "politically homeless" they are saying much. I sure wish they would scream out about it!!
2
"The pro-life cause will be forever associated with moral hypocrisy on an epic scale. The word “evangelical” is already being discredited for an entire generation."
Possibly. But, sadly, it won't matter. If, in fact, evangelism becomes a term that, when associated with Republicans, comes to harm them, they'll merely discard it only to repackage/rebrand themselves and their causes in a more modern, more effective shiny wrapper. Of course, you must take the next step; proudly announcing your new brain child while simultaneously crying indignation. This effective method of garnering free advertising for your renamed bundle is further accomplished by incessant accusational howling of a left-leaning media and unwavering claims of ever unfair press coverage. Follow these two simple steps, e voila! You've just landed your product on the top shelf of America's full-fat, low-fact, empty calorie grocery store. Go on, eat all you like, my gullible countrymen. Just don't be surprised when you bother to look at the scale.
1
I think Brooks is wrong: bigotry, racism, divisiivenss, predation, and greed have been the hallmarks of the GOP since Nixon. t---- is a reflection of the GOP of what the GOP is, not an aberration.
5
Oh please. Dont tell us that you, and all those so-called decent right- thinking republicans couldnt see this coming. You can point fingers all over the place to shift blame, Mr. Brooks, but YOU and your pals in the republican party are to blame!!! WAY to late now to step up and express impotent outrage. Where were you in 2016???
20
David Brooks has it almost right about the Republican Party. But he doesn't go far enough. The Republican Party is rotten! It's rotten for two basic reasons:
1. They do not represent people, but only corporations who ,(sorry Supreme Court), are NOT people. Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits for its share holders. Republicans represent this objective in Congress (see pending tax bill).
2 .Republican elected officials and candidates have no moral core. They string together various single issue and hate groups to get an electoral majority. Their southern strategy is well known which started w/ Nixon. They have politicized religion ,especially among Christian fundamentalists. They have been cozy with white nationalists and KKK members. They even collude with a hostile foreign power to win the presidency as House Republicans attack the FBI for investigating this violation of Law. Finally, they ignore the sexuallv predatory behavior of a Republican President who bragged about grabbing women's private parts, then seventeen women came forward to confirm his sexual assaults. Trump even bragged about his veuroristic pedophile behavior of walking into the dressing room and watching minor girls at a Miss Teen USA pageant because he owns the pageant.
The Republican Party has no moral or ethical core and is ROTTEN!
12
Instead of draining the swamp Trump has created a cesspool and the GOP is swimming in it.
10
David Brooks writes: "It’s amazing that there haven’t been more Republicans like Mitt Romney who have said: “Enough is enough! I can go no further!”"
Really? Mitt Romney is Brooks' best example of a "principled" Republican? iirc - Mitt seemed willing to go plenty "far" when he thought it might get him named Secretary of State.
Gail Collins nailed this one a year ago.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/15/opinion/for-mitt-romney-dinner-and-a-...
4
Sad days for democracy. Is Amerika the next chapter? There are many evangelicals unwilling to accept the rotting Trump-Moore Republican Party that David so aptly describes. I propose a new group, a new description for those who do accept: Evanghellicals-worshippers of a false orange god that ignore the teachings of Jesus.
5
So, David, are you becoming a Democrat now? Or maybe an Independent? After what you just wrote you can't in all conscience still call yourself a Republican. As a Democrat I would welcome a man of character like you, but you have to choose.
6
The point is, he should not have to claim party loyalty to be thoughtful and have well considered ideas and ideals. THAT’S THE POINT. Party should not define us. THAT’S THE PROBLEM.
1
Chris-let me guess-If David could vote in Alabama, I'm betting David would rather not vote at all then vote for a Doug. This is how our nation will end-from 'benign neglect'.
1
And yet The Republicans control all three branches of government, and most of the governorships and state houses. Democrats control bi-coastal communities in soon to be bankrupt blue states. I'll take "rot" anytime.
So your abiding interest is to be a winner? I guess Trump got to you, too.
Once upon a time, I'd read history and wonder how a man like Hitler was allowed to rise to power. Or, after it became clear what sort of man he was and what sort of agenda he represented, why decent people didn't rise up and turn him out. Although I am not equating President Trump with Hitler, I now understand what happened much better. People see something they don't like and want to oppose it. And "the populist" rises up and tells them that not only do they have a right to oppose it, they should blame "the others" for it. And not only blame them, but be afraid of them. Donald Trump is not the first to play this game. Since Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy. the Republican Party has played on the fears of people who want to believe that some combination of women, blacks, gays, Arabs, socialists, liberals, Communists, pacifists, atheists, judges, immigrants are to blame for all the things that have gone wrong in the United States. Congratulations, the strategy worked. You win. We all lose.
8
I know the exact date I left the GOP. When watching James Buchanan's Culture War speech at the 1992 convention. I was 27. Made me sick. I filed my change of party to Independent, I think, the next day. Trump's election neither stunned nor surprised me anymore than Roy Moore's win will stun or surprise me. The only thing that surprises me is how long it has taken people like Mr. Brooks to become stunned and surprised. What party are you remembering? Reminds me of Ben Hecht's poem which also is quoted at the beginning of Gone with the Wind: "There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind...” A DREAM remembered....much of it was never reality Mr. Brooks. You are remembering a DREAM.
13
Mr. Brooks predicts, "If Republicans accept Roy Moore as a United States senator..., they will have made their party loathsome..."
Mr. Brooks, they have already accepted Roy Moore. It's a done deal. The RNC is supporting Moore financially and the leaders of the Republican Party (Trump, McConnell, et al.) have overtly or tacitly endorsed him. Fewer than, what, 10 Republican officeholders are speaking out against Moore. If he wins, he will be seated.
Now, what's this about the danger of Republicans, evangelicals, and other Moore supporters becoming "loathsome"? With the party of Denny Hastert, David Vitter, Larry Craig, David Foley, and now Joe Barton, Trent Frank, and undoubtedly others; not to mention the sex-criminal-in-chief, none of this is new. No difference with those evangelical leaders either: Jim Bakker, Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggart (now back advertising gospel CDs on TV), and so many others. Mr. Brooks, they've been loathsome for years.
Certainly, the Democrats have their own share of sleaze balls.
But there's a difference: Republicans constantly drone on about their high minded Principles, and how that distinguishes them from the more worldly Democrats.
Mr. Brooks, the lost world of moderate Republicans (Javits, Rockefeller...) has been gone for decades and it's never coming back. So please stop the perpetual lament.
11
David Brooks....please.
Trump is exposing what the Republicans have been for decades. The Trump Id has ripped away the ego/superego that made the GOP agenda appear (to many) outwardly less vile. But the politics, policies and goals really haven't changed much. You've been a supporter of this. For a long time. Time to wake up and admit what you have supported. The project you have been a part of. Time to risk your riches and leisurely lifestyle. Have some courage and, at the least, publicly leave the GOP. And for goodness sake.....Bernie Sanders also promotes a sort of populism. But be clear on what kind of populism is being offered---> what we are seeing is more akin to fascism than populism. You always play yourself off as a scholarly intellectual type.....aren't you Jewish? Are you seriously not seeing the parallels between 1930s Germany and USA today??
6
You worshipped (and still worship) Reagan.
You believe in trickle-down.
You had no problem with Gingrich.
Or FOX news.
You supported Bush and his war+tax cut program (sure Trump is awful, but has he done anything as damaging as Iraq+tax cuts?).
You may have offended by Palin, but did you vote Obama?
When the GOP went all-out anti-Obama you criticized his "aloofness" instead of GOP intransigence.
Now you're running for cover looking to disassociate yourself from Trump and even the GOP. Sorry--no pass. YOU BUILT THIS. In fact, you're spent more than 30 years work toward this glorious apotheosis.
Crocodile tears.
13
War is next, remember
Good morning Mr. Brooks ... hopefully you enjoyed your long period of hibernation!
6
The GOP is, present tense, rotting? Was it the smell? Has Brooks had his nose in the sand all this time?
His "good, honorable Republicans..." is an oxymoronic cow pie in the sky.
There haven't been a lot of good, honorable republicans since before the Saint or Gingrich and Norquist reared their ugly heads or Buchanan spawned pitchfork wielding know-nothings into voting against their own self interests.
Brooks is on a treadmill, round and round he goes, and can't get off. First it was: Trump's new, an aberration, different from more recognizable white, male, business-adoring GOP and he'll never be GOP nominee; even if nominee, can't be president; even if president, the GOP will shrug him off and do the right thing.
Brooks' head is in a Buckleyesque cloud in a time when being GOP was oh so veddy gentlemanly. He refuses to see where his party has been for the last 30 plus years: in a fight against women over employment and their own bodies; dismantling labor and the middle class; anti-immigrant, race baiting. It denied, gerrymandered, cheated and stole elections and Supreme Court justice seats, whatever it took to get elected, remain in power, not give an inch to democrats.
Trump's no different from any other republican. He's dumber and crazier, and way uglier. But he's all GOP through and through.
He will slime the party for decades.
7
The GOP has been rotting since Ronald Reagan initiated the inclusion of racism and hate, lying and attacking. How could you all not have noticed? You all left any semblance of morality, ethics and honesty around a couple of generations ago. You raised and trained crazy, and now you are stunned that it is in control. Of course the weak-kneed, rabbit-like Dems never launched an offensive, so there was nothing to keep the viral disease of idiocracy in check.
3
I have read most of the comments and you are all wrong. The republican party started its rot, canker and formed lizard skin with: "Tricky Dick" Nixon and his speech writer James Buchanan remember: "Positive Polarization." The Silent Majority Speech and more down the line. We no longer have a democracy we have a democrazy.
7
I used to be a Rino, but went Independant when Bush Sr brought Dan Quayle to DC.
5
Trump and Moore are not the problem. The GOP is rancid to its core.
The GOP no doubt has some very good people in it still. And a number people like yourself, David, that support the GOP, again good people. But, if the GOP is rancid, and it is, if those good people stay in the rancid organization or continue to support a rancid organization, then are they still good people? If I continue to belong to a party that supports and elects a serial child molester to the Senate because we need his vote, then do I not lose my standing in society as a good person? I think so. I think if you support a Roy Moore-Donald Trump GOP you are no longer a good person.
After all, all people including good people still have free will.
4
I recognized the rot earlier than Mr. Brooks. Milton Friedman started his drift then lunge into ideology along with Nixon's Southern Strategy and Reagan's flirtation with the Moral Majority. The current stench in the White House represents an accumulation of fellow travelers anchored to a core of established wealth and religion echoing a pre-Enlightenment era. Your list of Republican heroes and accomplishments of "hierarchical..excellence" demonstrates your dim-wittedness in recognizing what drove away those who once looked to the Party for leadership in areas of fiscal responsibility and civil rights. Better late than never, Mr. Brooks, but you have much work to do
before you really catch up to the Enlightenment.
3
When I started reading this op-ed, I thought that it was Charles Blow writing. When David Brooks begins to sound as alarmed and infuriated as Mr. Blow, We really have reached a tipping point in our national politics.
I fear the rest of this presidency and it's long term effects on our democracy.
7
What? Me an Evanhypocrite? I wouldn't have voted for Trump if he had grabbed the privates of a family member - just remember that. And if he grabbed the privates of a liberal - well, they just had it coming for having the wrong politics. And if he grabbed the privates of a homosexual, they just had it coming for having the wrong sexuality. And if he grabbed the privates of a person of color, well you get the idea. Because the President wouldn't have done that unless they deserved it , right? And that's just the way it is.
1
Brooks speaks the truth, but he needs to go back further than "Sarah Palin and the spread of Fox News" to find the beginnings of the rot!
4
Nixon, Buchanan, Palin, Cheney, Gingrich, Moore, Trump.
Science denial
Anti intellectualism
White supremacy
No church-state separation
Trickle down economics
When you leave something out to rot, it takes time for the rot to be apparent.
5
Powerful article! Maybe it's time, David, to follow George Will's example and leave the Republican party.
3
The rot started a long time ago - apparently it took the stench of Donald Trump for people like David Brooks to notice.
The GOP is on a hell-bent mission to enrich its donors - that's been going on for decades and it just keeps deepening.
George W. Bush fleeced the Clinton era surplus and gave it to his donor base in tax cuts. Then launched a multi-trillion dollar war financed by public debt, enriching the military complex (Cheney's Halliburton) and the oil sector.
Citizens United empowered the donor class to finance campaigns and buy elected officials. Gerrymandered districts artificially propped up GOP (tea party no less) representatives in the House.
There have been dozens of efforts to co-opt our democracy for the benefit of the plutocracy over the last 17 years (and more) - but David Brooks is only now calling foul. Where would we be if a more friendly President were in charge, but also had the same underlying agenda? A President who smiles as he twists the knife into our democracy (like Mike Pence)?
If people like David Brooks really stand on principle, we need a more forceful rejection of the GOP's ruthless efforts to privatize our country and enrich the donor class. It's not enough to just take some easy jabs at the pathetic characters who are currently at the helm. The rot goes much deeper than those obvious blemishes on the surface - we need a full rejection of the modern GOP's mission.
5
Before the nomination of Donald Trump, the Republican Party was struggling. After that event, is was apparently doomed. George F. Will, as I recall, only half-jokingly speculated that Trump might be a Democratic agent sent to cause a Republican train wreck.
Then the Republicans decided to load everything they had aboard the train and ride it as far as it took them, praying (if people still pray after selling their souls) that they could roll down a grassy embankment with their treasure at the end.
At present the Republicans are roaring ahead at full throttle, but I think they have a disastrous wreck in their future after all. This train is not bound for glory.
2
All sad but true. Most often I don't agree with the Republican ideas (such as trickle down economics) but I definitely respected the folks on the other side of the aisle and appreciated the difficult debates that yielded sound policies.
But I don't recognize this Republican party. I fear the worse is yet to come as the lawmakers on the right, drunk with power, seem hell-bent on burning everything to the ground. These dangerous ideas, without foundation, guiding the small handful of mostly old, white guys, are setting in motion a level of destruction from which we may never recover. Our very democracy is at serious risk with the extreme corruption, lies and total loss of civility permeating every corner of government.
Every Republican owes this country a giant apology and as a citizen first, needs to take a stand and take back our democracy - and that means we start by stopping putting party over principles.
3
The GOP is rotting from within. This isn’t news. It started with Nixon.
4
Suddenly Republicans seem to be pro Russian. It seems that they will bend them selves into any shape to stay with Donald Trump. They would rather have a child molester in the Senate rather than a Democrat. They now seem to have a Russian agent as president. Even though they’re only 30 percent of the population they think they’re the only ones that should have a say in Muellers court. Even though it’s hard to find anyone with any intelligence that would be a Trump supporter. Hillary Clinton was spot on when she called them deplorable. They have shown that they will commit treason at the drop of a hat. It’s a fact that they are not capable of leadership. At least not in this country. I could think of a banana republic or two where they might do just fine.
3
The GOP has lost its G.
1
The GOP has been the bacteria and fungi decomposing the nation for decades. Eisenhower was the last decent one. Where have you been.
Ethics, decency, the collective good ... none of these matter. All that matters is money, and getting more to the already rich. Making rot great, again and again. Disgusting beyond belief. The red states are clearly hopeless.
3
The GOP are disgusting. They are only in it for themselves and their fat bank accounts. What's incredible is that the Trump supporters still don't see the truth.
2
This ain't populism. It's blatant corporatism (some corporate leaders even claim not to want these tax cuts) or perhaps a fascist mafia (like Russia).
1
As long as your party is dedicated to the enslavement of women, all other concerns will be ignored. As long as you deny bodily autonomy to half our population, your party will do unspeakable evil in the name of righteousness.
5
The only “reasonable middle ground” that has existed in the GOP for the past 35 years, Mr. Brooks, is in your cloistered, coddled, out-of-touch brain. Anyone who has paid attention to the Reagan years and beyond knows that the GOP’s descent reached its natural nadir with the election of Trump. There is nothing surprising about this, no sudden appearance of horrifying rot. You were perfectly OK with religious bigotry, cruelty to the poor, and barely cloaked racism as long as those things still appeared in the form of calm, well-spoken guys in suits who pretended to care. You own the bloviating madman in the Oval Office just as much as any other Republican. Sorry, sir, we’ve burned your lifeboat.
1
I agree with all David says regarding Trump and the hypocrisy of the GOP. There is, however, one major flaw in his reasoning. David seems to be aligned with Hillary regarding how he views the “deplorables”, who David refers to as populists. David takes the elitist view that deplorables/populists are stupid and evil and must be quashed by the elite. Trump instead panders to this group; and, in a narrow sense, Trump is right.
Hillary defined this group as “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it.” David, you, I, and probably everyone reading your piece would agree that such behavior is deplorable. We are probably talking about slightly less than half of the US population that fall into this group to some degree. The hypocritical support of this group by Trump and the GOP is disgusting, as you state. What is essential, is to recognize the “deplorables” as a legitimate faction of our society, who deserve the right to be heard and treated with respect, rather than being dismissed by we elite as deplorable, stupid and evil sub-humans.
1
Eh, even when Obama was President, it was no fun following politIcs because it was painful to see such a fine President having to deal with a slime ball Congress. Maybe things had to get worse before they could get better. And in that is the optimistic view of why it is good that things have gotten worse.
It’s Hollywood too. When was the last time a romantic comedy film had a story that took place in the South ? It’s either the East coast or California. Beautiful young, educated women don’t move to Alabama. And so the South has an inferiority complex. They don’t want to endorse the ways of those smart folks from Ivy League colleges. They are not « euro-wannabes « . And so all that is smart and good, it’s what they are against.
Dear David,
You are one more voice crying in the wilderness. The wilderness is America. Dark, inhospitable, doomed to irrelevance.
AG
Calgary, Canada
David, WAY too little, too late.
You have giving this intellectual rot cover for decades, and still are carrying their bitter, poisoned water, by trying to justify supply-side as anything by an utter fraud.
Give it up, do some soul-searching and publish a REAL mea culpa.
Until then, knock it off!
1
“What shall it profit a man,” Jesus asked, “if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?”
This is the most fitting line to describe D(t)rump who has always been willing to win at any cost. And he might have won, but he has long lost his soul. (In fact, even materially he is a proven loser--bankrupted many times.)
No wonder he is the only public figure who can rouse abhorring feeling in me, anytime he is on TV, because I can sense even from afar he is ugly inside out.
2
"A lot of good, honorable Republicans used to believe there was a safe middle ground."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Good one, David! Good one! Now, tell us the one about how the GOP isn't all about their wealthy donors! Or the one where Republicans are so patriotic they'd be outraged at the mere suggestion that Russia interfered with our elections! Or the one where conservatives honor the rule of law! Or how about the one where Republicans are the pinnacle of morality and would never countenance a pervert and tax fraud like Roy Moore in the Senate, of all places? Side-spilters, every one - and the GOP - they've got a million of them!
P.S. As abhorrent as DJT is, you can't blame all of this on him. It started decades ago, when the party's moderates were called RINOs and told to get out if they couldn't join the goose-step, and when the word "liberal" became an epithet and a slur, and then sealed their fate when they embraced the money and agenda of the far-right in the name of trying to start a hundred-year reich. Trump is just the rancid icing on the party's rotted layer cake.
1
David Brooks would have us believe the Republican Party has been kidnapped and raped by its fringe.
To me, an outsider, it looks a lot more like an elopement and consensual sex.
2
I finally agree with you Mr. Brooks, the Republican Party is nothing but rot on top of rot. I can only hope the party will be cremated completely in the near future.
3
David Brooks has finally reached the moral tipping point.
Thank you, David.
The University of Chicago is showing. Those core college courses taught you what matters. It’s about time.
A word of caution. It’s going to get much worse.
Here in my favorite paper we will Read of a cataclysmic mess that dwarfs the great goon in The White House.
I ignighted what’s coming. And it makes me sick.
Indeed, it’s making us all sick, and some of our best and brightest know.
It will take the mothers to blow out Trump. See Harvey.
It will take the mothers to address the God awful mess we’ve created.
Mothers, not tribal fathers.
Start with our mothers, grandmothers and daughters.
They may be our last hope.
1
What do you know, Mr. Brooks has seen the light. Dems and reasonable folk have been saying this for years. I guess better late than never, but it seems to be too late to save his party. They just keep swirling and swerling further and further down that toilet.
1
Thank you David for your eloquent description of the rot that has infected the GOP. I also feel politically homeless particularly living in Alabama where a sexual predator and twice-removed state Chief Justice seems to be on the precipice of being elected to the US Senate.
1
Both parties are very tribal and neither recognizes the biology that drives sexual harassment, and much of our decision making. Liberals worship Rousseau who believed humans were basically "good". Conservatives worship Adam Smith who believed humans were "reasonable". Darwin disproved both a hundred years later. The male libido is responsible for our species survival. Setting limits on its expression should occur in a less hysterical environment. Behavioral economists like Shiller of Yale and psychologists like Picker of Harvard have provided supporting evidence for Keynsian economics. You are one of the most insightful journalists I know. Yet you ignore what science is telling us. The Democrats need adult supervision and Republicans need policing. Neither will admit it because both are too tribal. We need a third party; a party of reason.
1
It isn't just the Republican party that is rotten; a very large segment of our society, our citizenry (30-40% perhaps) is rotten to the very core. Witness the racist denigration of Pres Obama, demonization of Hillary Cinton, support for the obstructionism and downright hostility of McConnel(who stole Judge Garland's seat and gave it to Gorsuch with total impunity) and Ryan and the rest of the GOP rot. This segment of the population showed no civic responsibility to point out this abhorent behavior. This segment particularly in Alabama is ready to send a disgusting child predator to the US Senate and GOP and DT are already waiting for him with open arms.
Almost half of Americans are rotten to the core. Own up and clean up!
2
I really appreciate columns and comments from conservatives calling out their party for the ever increasing examples of political malfeasance, willful ignorance, doubletalk, and outright deceit that become viler every day: George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Nicole Wallace, Mike Murphy, Steve Schmidt, Joe Scarborough, etc. The list keeps growing and the tone becomes harsher. It is music to our never Trump ears.
But, until Trump's base, and it truly is, starts reading the WaPo, NYT, or watching CNN and MSNBC, or members of the Republican Party put the national interest above their party and their own self-interest, the next three to seven years could be ugly. There used to be some leadership in the Republican Party, like Dennis Hastert, Bob Livingston, Tom DeLay, Bob Barr, John Ensign, and Pete Domenici. Oh right, never mind. I meant Jim Jeffords and Arlen Specter and Lincoln Chafee.
1
Well put Mr. Brooks. What a pity you equivocated for months before the election and failed to lift up Hillary as clearly the best choice.
The GOP is not so much rotting away as it is becoming a new political entity. For a party that was in the minority for decades, these are heady times. They have gerrymandered, belittled Democrats and blacks, and encouraged their base to love lofty ideals such as freedom, school choice, gun ownership, and a simple baker's right to discriminate against gay couples. Ahh, the power ! The victory with Gorsuch! Mr Brooks, do you regret your part in the seizure by conservatives over Anerica? Ever review your former op-ed pieces foe erors of thinking? You were complicit, however benignly, in this hideous takeover by church-goers who worship at the table of Dives while kicking Lazarus.
This would have been a great opinion article about 30 years ago.
I think the "rot" of Trump is kind of like the mushrooms you see growing on a tree that people associate with rotting, when mushrooms appear the tree has been rotting a long time. 50 years ago the GOP adopted the "Southern Strategy", tossing aside the moderate GOP of fiscal conservatism and social moderation/liberatarianism to gain the South and its angry white, racist voters (And Reagan was no moderate, anyone remember his speech in Mississippi touting 'States Rights", the ultimate rally cry of segregationists and racists?). They embraced the religious right with their obsession with Sex and abortion and gays (while of course totally turning Christianity upside down with their attacks on the poor as unworthy and being 'parasites', which the evangelical Christians of course ignored or worse, defended. People like Buckley and Goldwater predicted if conservatism became the province of the loony right, it would die, but the sad truth is it has led to the GOP maintaining power because hate and ignorance are much more powerful than reason. Worse, the opponents of this, the moderate republicans, fell into this, my next door neighbor voted for Trump because "he hated Hillary", hope he likes his tax bill, the religious moderates who hate the evangelicals keep quiet, the young people, who hate the GOP social message and such, don't vote, and black and minority voters, deprived a minority candidate, stayed home...as Burke said, evil triumphs when good men do nothing, and nothing=gop
1
The oddest thing of all is that all of Trump's Republican supporters fully understand that he is a very sick man.
3
Come on, David. What do you really think? Give to me straight. I can take it. Don't sugar coat it!
Trump is cool, right?
Love you, David. I purchased and read your last book. I watch you on Friday nights. But nobody voting for R's -- and Republicans themselves -- reads your column or the NYT. This is just cocktail party material.
Mr. Brooks, Sure hope you will shine the same light on the Democrat Party. You are needed to be the conservative counterpoint, so I hope you won't squander your credibility!
many believe the GOP has been rotten since reconstruction.
1
During his reign, income tax rates of the top personal tax bracket dropped from 70% to 28% in 7 years while payroll taxes increased, as well as effective tax rates on the lower two income quintiles [Source: "Social Security and Medicare Tax Rates," Social Security Admin. AND "Effective Federal Tax Rates: 1979-2001," Bureau of Economic Analysis]
By the middle of 1982, facing spiraling self-made deficits, Reagan signed legislation for a $98.6 billion increase in excise and other taxes, raising payroll, income, and gasoline taxes. Suave liar that he was, he refused to call them taxes, insisting on the term "revenue enhancers."
As early as 1965, Reagan referred to Medicaid resipients as "a faceless mass, waiting for handouts." As California's governor he said: "Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vaction for freeloaders." [Source: The Ssacramento Bee, April 28, 1966]
Reagan cut the budgets for social welfare programs such as education, food stamps, low-income housing, school lunches for poor children, Medicaid, and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). [Source: NY Times, January 8, 1986, David E. Rosenbaum, "Reagan Insists Budget Cuts are Way to Reduce Deficit."] He cut a pittance from these desperately needed programs while he proposed $1.5 trillion over five years in military budget expenditure: obscene!
1
The ethos of Trump, Moore et al is simple: convince enough folks you are trustworthy and decent, then you must be. When caught short, do what works: spit, claw and shriek at your accusers (the press).
Thank God we still have a free press, it's generally the first to go.
One of your best columns ever, Mr. Brooks. Thank you.
I did not know John Paul II was a Republican. Also, you might want to recheck Buckley's thoughts on race. What you fail to comprehend Mr. Brooks is that Trump and Moore are the logical result of electing increasingly stupid Republican presidents and a party which believes its own lies.
I'm laughing at all this self-righteous Ds who think their party is full of moral beacons. So soon they forget the rapist bigot who sat in the Oval Office for 2 terms. So quickly they overlook the current and former members of congress who grope, assault, or bed with abandon.
Both parties are full of elected officials (and those who elect them) who are flawed, fallen humans. We sometimes don't live up to the ideals we stand for and fight for. The sniping against the current president isn't unlike the sniping against former presidents, and it's just as unhelpful as it always has been.
When did the GOP begin to rot? With the debut of Fox News?
How about the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine by Ronald Regan,
and the debut of Rosh Limbaugh and the inevitable Hate Radio!
Here is a tid-bit from Wikipedia on Rosh Limbaugh:
The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine—which had required that stations provide free air time for responses to any controversial opinions that were broadcast—by the FCC in 1987 meant stations could broadcast editorial commentary without having to present opposing views. Daniel Henninger wrote, in a Wall Street Journal editorial, "Ronald Reagan tore down this wall (the Fairness Doctrine) in 1987 ... and Rush Limbaugh was the first man to proclaim himself liberated from the East Germany of liberal media domination."[19]
And furthermore, the GOP and its allies appear to care not one wit what they have sacrificed. As the comedian-in-chief would say: sad, sad, sad.
The GOP rot started many years before Trump's election and its road to perdition was supported all the way by GOP apologists like Brooks. Trump is merely the culmination of that journey. To be shocked by Trumps actions or McConnel and the GOPs decision to fund the election of child molester to the senate is to be willfully blind to the last 20 of American politics and Brooks is very willing to be blindfolded and pretend to be shocked.
Sorry, David, it started with your idol Reagan. He dismantled unions, although at one time he led one. It was more important that he and his wife dined with their billionaire "kitchen cabinet" than tolerate workers making a decent wage. He tripled the deficit. He supported the murderous Generalisimo's in Central America, trade arms to Iran, supported Thatcher's immoral murder of political prisoners in Ireland and told people to simply "vote with their feet". He was the first to dismiss safe clean and efficient renewable energy. Bush II and Cheney went on a nation-building spree that left hundreds of thousands dead in Iraq and Syria in order to punish Saddam for an attempt on his Father's life. Yes, Palin, McCain, Fox News, Birtherism were all part of it the coalescing of power, but it started with Reagan. As far as John Paul II, what say you about the right wing crypto-fascist government now rising in Poland? - They are devout Catholics, no? Excellence indeed.
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This couldn't have been put any better. Thank you.
Trump with an 82% approval rating amongst Republicnas should be a good indicator that there are very few honorable middle ground republicans left. It is time for you to switch parties Mr. Brooks or to start one of your own. the GOP is on life support and sooner or later there will be a power outage or someone will be kind enough to pull the plug.
Having been a lifelong Republican I too finally said “no more “ when I voted for Obama. When the Tea Party movement started and my golf friends at the club where I belonged at my beach home in Alabama began espousing such racist views I quit the club.
I started spending more time at my mountain home. Then I noticed the same thing happening. A few years ago I would have told you that these are really fine people who donate money and some even volunteer. What I learned was shocking to me. Getting involved with The Tea Party had given them permission to vocalize their real feelings about equality of race, women, religion, poor people, and outsiders.
Being born and raised as an upper classed white person in Alabama I say forget all the nice titles like Tea Party, Alt Right etc. Call them what they are
WHITE SUPREMACISTS.
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It's pathetic when all someone has to be proud of is the amount of melanin in his skin. Where did people get that idea?
Of course the rot is appalling, but what's actually of note here is that David Brooks seems to have just noticed. These nostalgia pieces are unseemly, David Brooks. Once you realize how many people have been hurt in the long process of this decay and rotting, maybe you'll realize that these paeans to the glory days are inappropriate and offensive. Soul searching - you can do it!
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Good, honorable Republican in the day of Trump is an oxymoron.
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I agree with all of this. I'm a millennial, and for my entire life, Republicans have campaigned on one thing and then done the opposite once in power. They say they support families, and yet don't support one measure to make having kids easier in the modern economy. They say they support small businesses, but they focus tax breaks on corporations. They say they value fiscal responsibility, but they not only waste billions of dollars on defense spending (often to companies owned by friends), but they orient the entire federal government toward subsidizing cars, highways, and suburban sprawl. They're simply in it for the culture war. They don't care about the health of this country in the least.
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I rather doubt M. Brooks description of Supply-side logic but I might well be wrong there. There might have been an attempt to change incentives for the small, let us even say Main Street, entrepreneurs under Reagan. I don't recall any such feature of those tax cuts. Rather, I recall a blanket cut of taxes on all business activity which rather obviously benefitted the large over the small. Which is pretty much what is on offer now.
Demand creates a supply by well understood processes. A Conservative would stick with that.
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What are you, David Brooks, going to do about it, however belatedly? How Sarah Palin, Sharon Angle, NRA-ownership, voter suppression and disenfranchisement, birther lies, a stolen SC justice, and so much more didn't represent the Rubicon for you is beyond me, but now you're here, so what are you going to do? You're purportedly a smart guy, so you know facing a test is about choosing the 'best answer, not the 'right' one. Here's your test: isn't it time to support a mass defection to the DemocratIC party till a much humbled and re-made conservative party emerges? That's how to stop this and I don't see you saying that.
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Excellent analysis.
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"There is no middle ground." Our nation is now engaged in a civil war, and it will not end until reason and respect for the rule of law defeats the populists and the Drunk Uncle who leads their parade.
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Rotting? Already rotten, I think.
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The rot of the G.O.P. hadn't begun with Sarah Palin. Rather, the modern day rot of the GOP., my parent's beloved party, began with government lies that propelled Vietnam, followed by the lies of Mr. Nixon that nearly brought about a constitutional crisis, followed by Mr. G.W.Bush, whose bold-faced lies effected the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Not to dismiss Mr. Bill Clinton's whoppers, still relevant, and, of course, Mr. Franken in his eerily prophetic book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them".
Well, everyone culpable
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Don't blame the lies of the Vietnam War on the Republicans alone. The biggest lies were told by Lyndon Johnson.
The only "good" Republicans were the ones that got off the crazy train a few years ago when the Tea Party ran rough shod over everyone. Or maybe the ones who got off the crazy train when Republicans tossed their lot in with the Moral Majority who had one agenda - a Christian theocracy. Or maybe the ones who got off the crazy train when the Republicans decided to hitch their wagon to the Southern Strategy.
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David, I’m a recovering moderate Republican (fiscally conservative/socially liberal), which means I was probably considered a yellow-dog Democrat by other Republicans, and now as an Independent, would be considered Left-wing. The party that once praised Robert Mueller and now turns on him, like some Comintern hacks, SAD!
Both parties are so wrapped around the axel that I can’t join either. Republicans are so loathsome in embracing a Trump, and Moore, as well as the rest of the lowlifes. Democrats, more interested in solving everyone’s grievances, can’t fight their way out of a paper bag but find it easier to immolate their own
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I am reminded of a pertinent history lesson: Neville Chamberlain and his policy of appeasement of Germany in the late 1930's. That didn't work out well either.
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Mr. Brooks: you suggest Jeff Flake committed political suicide but later in the piece you bemoan people like Mitt Romney for not doing exactly what Jeff Flake did, which was to say "enough is enough"
Your party of years of meanness has backed themselves into corner where the choice it sell your soul to the devil or commit suicide...sad.
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Mr. Brooks, I love you, love your columns and your thoughts. The only problem with this column is that it will never be read by those individuals who need to read it, mainly because you're using words they don't understand. When you have someone in the WH who has a vocabulary limited to "beautiful, big, huge, sad, bad, bigly (not even a word), your words are wasted. We have reached an intellectual desert where the occasional oasis that appears on the horizon is a rotten, infested cesspool. I'm losing hope that we will find our way out of this. But keep writing, because that may be all we have to sustain us for awhile.
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The same Romney that begged Trump for a job?
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Doubt R ever begged T for a job. More likely an aggrandizing lie from Trump like, “Time Magazine offered me Person of the Year, but I turned them down,”
What you describe has been steadily occurring since 1964, Brooks. When the republicans took up with the racists in the South, after the Democrats passed civil rights laws, it’s been one thing after another. Trump is merely the personification of their rhetoric for more than 50 years. And by the way, your buddy Buckley didn’t think much of those other than whites , did he? But the real underlying purpose of your party is to use government to enhance the position of the wealthy, which suddenly you seem to be uncomfortable with, eh?
3
Thank thank you for calling out Fox News. They are the leading cause of the partisanship and rot we see in the current G.O.P.
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Where is the brave soul who will find the courage to establish a party that will be a home for reasonable Republicans (you) and reasonable liberals (me)??
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Evangelicals need to stop calling themselves Christians, because their words and actions are antithetical to the teachings of the late great JC.
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Correct. And so are the Democrats.
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Yup! I’m repulsed and politically homeless. You’ve got that right.
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It only took three day's for the scales to fall from Saul's eyes. For David Brooks it takes 30 years. The racist, reductionist strategies of the GOP go back even farther. This is not news, but the a process reaching it's logical conclusion. A tragedy? Yes. A surprise after half a century? No.
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>
I think saying, thinking....that the GOP is rotting when they control the House, Senate, SCOTUS & WH is just a bunch of therapeutic optimistic nonsense, which has no ground truth.
It's a lovely thought or solipsism that may rattle around in your head, but that's about it.
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It's time for a new party. Or two. Or more.
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I am a Democrat who reads your pieces with some regularity and have great respect for you’r views.
It has felt to me as if there no one in the Republican Party who was willing to say that “!the Emporer has no clothes. “
Thank you for saying it and for saying it so well.!!
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You nailed it. The only thing I have to add is that I have always been suspicious of the Republican Party, despite your declaration that it didn't used to be filled with detestable people. I was a child when the people you mention were in charge, but my father and others like him, all populists then, were all dyed in the wool Republicans. The party has appealed to these sorts of people for at least 5 decades, to my knowledge and it has been because there was an unspoken implication that it was and is the party of the racist, white male who believes his wife should be at home, pregnant, while he packs his pistol to carry concealed on the factory floor, in case the impending Black-White Race War should break out. I'm sorry for you that you've had to write this public denouncement because it's clearly painful to you. But I urge you, Mr. Brooks, to move on & work to save our Republic, which is now in danger of disintegrating, by working to wipe away the catalyst of all this chaos and get rid of the money & influence peddlers, so the Kochs and their ilk don't completely destroy America.
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There is comprehensive scope of htis article. It helpd to see how the party got to where it is. Huskertism running rampant. God help us.
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It's taken a while, but I think you've fully arrived, Mr. Brooks.
Well put.
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The stench from the GOP's rot is overwhelming . The problem is that true followers just can't see the trouble. This is not a Republican affliction, it is a human problem.
Just like conservatives: football (=soccer) hooligans are members of a an aggrieved tribe, in their own minds constantly under attack, with the world unanimously rising against them with a cascade of lies.
Same with die-hard communists. Same with members of any cult. Same with adherents to discredited and pseudo-scientific theories (vaccines, evolution).
In all of these cases, members of the tribe keep on building pseudo-facts and pseudo-theories to rationalize and protect a core of irrational belief(s). That process was delineated by Imre Lakatos in his theory of degenerate "scientific programmes".
We know what is happening. The US was designed to protect against tyranny of the majority, however it can be trapped in the tyranny of the minority. It happened in the 2nd half of the 19th century and through WWII when business magnates were an oligarchy ("rule of the few").
It is happening again today, with the twist that the election-winning population, itself a minority, is increasingly hostile, gun-loving, and racist. I honestly fear the US polity may not survive.
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Mr. Brooks, your epiphany is better late than never. Now I urge you to gather your fellow "good, honorable Republicans" and take the GOP in Washington DC out to the trash heap of history and fast. We need all the help we can get out here.
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Finally, it has been said clearly!
Mr. Brooks, I'm not your primary-care physician, and if I was, you'd have to wait weeks for an appointment-- regardless, I'd like you to seek out an ear, nose, and throat specialist as soon as possible. Your beloved Grand Old Party has been rotten, not rotting, for decades. You just haven't been smelling it. Or, more likely, you chose not to.
Another thing: if you stir up what's rotten, it becomes a nice, fertile compost. You might know it by your party's brand name, the Southern Strategy, spread far and wide across the American heartland, right under your nose.
You're a smart man and a good read, but your willful ignorance stinks to high heaven, and has for a good long while.
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The slash and trash GOP has thrown away the baby with the bathwater. There is no "there" there anymore.
Actually if you know any run of the mill sociopaths you could have predicted the endless lies of Trump, the excuses made by his handlers and enablers, and guess what- he is going to do the exact same thing until he leaves office.
You are dealing with a person with no conscience, which is why he is attractive to the evangelicals who are using him to promote an actual predator to office. They get to feign ignorance and he gets their vote. A deal with the devil as others have pointed out.
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They've been rotting for years, and your willingness to keep looking for the good in them all that time -- I remember how excited you were about Sarah Palin -- has helped.
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When you dance with the Devil you agree to pay the piper. The Devil does not change you do.
"Now it’s clear that middle ground doesn’t exist. That’s because Donald Trump never stops asking. First, he asked the party to swallow the idea of a narcissistic sexual harasser and a routine liar as its party leader. Then he asked the party to accept his comprehensive ignorance and his politics of racial division. Now he asks the party to give up its reputation for fiscal conservatism. At the same time he asks the party to become the party of Roy Moore, the party of bigotry, alleged sexual harassment and child assault."
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Excellant analysis of the current GOP.
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"You don’t help your cause by putting the pursuit of power above character" You still don't get it, Brooks. Pursuit of power is the cause.
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and yet here we are - Mr Brooks much of the excellence of your republican
party was a mirage - the mask of decency is now off - what ugliness has been revealed.
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Mr. Brooks –
I have taunted you for months about your struggle to become (again) a mensch.
For you, I understand this has been a long journey. I think you have arrived. Congratulations.
As a child of Goldwater republicans i can see where you’re coming from, but believe that your conclusion is flawed. The republican rot started with the Red Scare of the 1950’s, and has only gotten worse. While democrats are complicit in the decades of Jim Crow laws which, to some degree, still control the South, the massive turn of the GOP to ultra-religious, alt-white nationalism is absolutely frightening. Controlled by the NRA and science denying, creationist blockheads, your party is effectively killing the middle class and any hope that we can be a true leader on the world stage. Our massive military is the one thing other countries fear about us, but even that is being undermined by the incessant cyber war being waged by our enemies. The embrace of the ‘party of stupid’ that Bobby Jindal was so worried about is now a done deal and we will all suffer because of it.
2
A thoughtful and thought-provoking piece as always from Mr. Brooks. Unfortunately, one is left wondering whether, when we look back at it in five years, it will be equated with the "Have you at long last no sense of decency, sir" moment that began the end of McCarthyism, or the few flailing voices that failed to stop the rise of Nazi Germany. Are we at the beginning or the end of the nightmare of conscience and loss of our collective and national soul that Mr. Brooks quite rightly points out did not begin (but hopefully may end) with the ascendancy of Donald Trump?
We knew all about Trump years ago.
Trump became president.
"A nation gets the government it deserves."
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The explanation of the rot in G.O.P. is much simpler than you suggest, Mr. Brooks.
The Republican Party has been taken over by the John Birch Society.
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What you think doesn't matter its what the Koch's and the other Plutocrats that make up the donor class think that matters. Isn't that obvious by now?
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Yes, the GOP is rot from top to bottom. However, you failed to provide any way out, any possible solution to a less rotten GOP.
I hope that a future article(s) of yours will offer some ideas that can change the GOP to a more normalized compassionate party. What are you going to do if they don't change into some acceptable version of a Republican party? You have already left it mentally.
And yet, like Jennifer Rubin, Brooks has not quit the Republican party. What do they see in it that can be redeemed and is worth saving?
1
For a couple decades I used to think that I had little respect for half the Republican national office holders, but 75% of the local ones were decent people. But the respectable ones keep getting fewer and fewer at all levels. Now it seems like the party is dominated by low class stupid bigots; not ignorant, but stupid. Ignorance is understandable; the person needs to learn. But deliberate and willful distortion of facts and refusal to learn is just stupid. And stupidity is not the worst. Deliberate support for gross immorality is the definition of evil. We elected an evil President and we have an evil Congress supporting him. I am also wondering about the morality of the Supreme Court. A few in Congress have stood up, but not frequently enough. I am wondering where my political home is; certainly not with the current Republican Party. They are not conservative and not responsible. They are evil.
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I'm surprised that Brooks did not mention torture, an apparent cornerstone of the GOP.
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I'll say it again, Brooks has always been part of the problem, never part of the solution. Clearly, the NYT disagrees since they keep publishing his baseless commentary, full of half-truths and inaccuracies. The one and only redeeming value of his op-eds are the truly insightful and illuminating comments with one notable exception.
Just to be fair, I don't mind an opposing viewpoint but it has no value when it is riddled with misleading statements that are supposed to be taken as fact. For example, and as every other commenter mentioned, the rot in the Republican Party started with Nixon, found its clarity with Reagan, and quickly mushroomed into a distinctly anti-government, anti-Constitution aberration that has perverted governance on behalf of a single constituency - the wealthy. The rise of the influence of the Republican Party coincides with the increase in wealth and income inequality.
Republicans and Democrats have allowed money to render representative democracy dysfunctional. For the past 20+ years we the people have been subjugated and controlled by a group of plutocrats and since the beginning of the year the Republicans have brazenly moved toward an authoritarian regime. Why this hasn't sounded an alarm and mustered people to march in the streets to restore democracy is beyond my comprehension.
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Fake news. Fake because so many of us saw this long ago. Too bad it took David Brooks so long to figure it out. It may be news to him, but it is not to me.
Rotting, perhaps (if you didn't already find them rotten & corrupt at their ideological core), but winning at everything they were really about.
But why are you picking this latest clown act to decide the gop has finally corrupted its pretenses? Why not with Gingrich, or the neocons, or Limbaugh & Fox, or Palin & the Tea-birthers?
Ever since the Southern Strategy, Republicans were always ruthlessly Machiavellian, corrupt, always stoking support with racism & selling a fake, bait & switch ideology to their constituency just to rob them blind & use them for wars & patriotic election fodder.
Republicanism has been for decades only about demonizing liberalism & fighting dirty to do it. And at this they've also won.
Redstatism rules the roost in the USA, the nastiness & hate worked, Trump is just the culmination of the contract on America. It's all been a ploy to gain power, not to benefit Americans.
If over the last 40 years you imagined there were scruples at the core of the GOP, you were deluding yourself.
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Mr. Brooks writes: "You don’t help your cause by wrapping your arms around an alleged sexual predator and a patriarchic bigot. You don’t help your cause by putting the pursuit of power above character, by worshiping at the feet of some loutish man or another, by claiming the ends justify any means."
Until there are electoral repercussions, the cause may not be helped but it is not hurt. That is the calculus.
1
Republicans have long been corrupt and immoral. The myth of "less government" is just one of the big lies. They want to get government involved in our lives at every corner. Citizens United has brought all the lies and dishonesty out into the open. Disinformation by Fox, Limbaugh has also spread the rot.
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If republicans ever had a soul, they have now sold it for a mess of gruel. Good going guys.
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