Brooks Detachment Syndrome, Volume 2

by Deacon Blues

I admit to reading David Brooks, partly for the intellect, and partly for his detachment from reality about the modern Republican Party. In the aftermath of the GOP's drubbing of woeful Democrats this past Tuesday, Brooks penned another column on Friday telling us all is well with the world now that so many Republicans with religious, military, or corporate backgrounds have cut past Tea Party candidates to ascend to the Senate. To hear Brooks tell it, the GOP now can demonstrate to the country that it truly is the "dominant governing party".

Republicans didn’t establish this dominant position because they are unrepresentative outsiders. They did it because they have deep roots in four of the dominant institutions of American society: the business community, the military, the church and civic organizations.

Yet once again Brooks almost totally ignores the presence of the Tea Party in the GOP, and he assumes that all these newly-elected GOP senators with corporate backgrounds will be the adults in the room to fend off the Tea Partiers clamoring inside the Senate GOP caucus. What exactly does Brooks think will happen in the next two years when these "adults" tell the Ted Cruz's and Mike Lee's and the Joni Ernst's to sit down and let the corporate types take over again? What exactly does Brooks think will happen inside the GOP when the Tea Party sees the GOP establishment insist upon a Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush as the party's 2016 standard-bearer? How will the "governing" party look then?