David Brooks Archives - Granite Grok

OPINION: Just Shut Up

October 28, 2025 Uncle Sams Inkwell

A self-aggrandizing big-mouth, David Brooks, wrote an article for the Atlantic entitled “America Needs a Mass Movement – Now”. It’s about as retarded as you think it is. In this flaccid screed, he asks: “For the United States, the question of the decade is: Why hasn’t a resistance movement materialized here?” A resistance movement has … Read more

Concord Monitor’s David Brooks Ga-Ga over Gilford’s Edifice to Economic Illiteracy – Forgets Most Important Question

January 19, 2022January 10, 2022 Skip

I’ve held onto this since Thanksgiving as it just was an example of ideological favoritism of how to spend other peoples’ money to satisfy one’s own ideological stupidity.

David Brooks is the epitome of his own ‘moderate Republican’ vision

September 26, 2018March 1, 2012 Skip

David Brooks is one unhappy dude – I would be, too, if I was the New York Times token “Conservative “. Problem is, in order to be Conservative, one has to have a solid belief system rooted in actual conservative values – something he actually doesn’t particularly like (my previous post: strong American values are leading to “incredibly backward-looking campaign”).

Or have. I guess this shows how little one actually has to be right-leaning to be considered “Conservative” when everyone around you at the NYT is a flaming Lib. And now he’s got another strike that confirms that view in his column a couple of days ago: The Possum Republicans. A few things struck me – this first on those in the middle on keeping their political offices:

Still, it is worth pointing out that this behavior is not entirely honorable. It’s not honorable to adjust your true nature in order to win re-election. It’s not honorable to kowtow to the extremes so you can preserve your political career.

So when Brooks, the NYT Mr. Moderate, says that, two things jump out:

David Brooks – strong American values are leading to “incredibly backward-looking campaign”

September 26, 2018January 20, 2012 Skip

David Brooks is “the conservative columnist” for the New York Time (“NYT”); the adjective “Conservative” would never be used as a modifier to his name here in NH – and am most assuredly positive that my sentiment would be replicated with many others in other states. But even as he opines as a New Yorker, he is Beltway Republican through and through. In this column, he talks about how reporting on Prez campaigns has changed: used to hobnobbing with the candidates themselves, he now studies the people (you know, the ones that actually vote and to whom elections are not just an intellectual curiousity) that show up to the events to hear the candidates. Given that the “Johnny on the spot” report was from South Carolina, he also spent a fair amount of time critiquing the candidate.

But this is emblematic of what is wrong with the Republican Establishment:

I was also struck, as in New Hampshire and Iowa, by the mood of this year’s rallies. Republican audiences this year want a restoration. America once had strong values, they believe, but we have gone astray. We’ve got to go back and rediscover what we had. Heads nod enthusiastically every time a candidate touches this theme.

I agree with the sentiment, but it makes for an incredibly backward-looking campaign. I sometimes wonder if the Republican Party has become the receding roar of white America as it pines for a way of life that will never return.

Oh, so right he is – that “icky stuff”, the stuff that speaks of the heart,Values, is just so retro! Er, no, he’s dead nuts on wrong.