David Brooks Realizes He Was Hoodwinked

March 3, 2009 · Filed Under Barack Obama, Politics

NY Times columnist and token conservative David Brooks was one of the biggest cheerleaders in the run up to the presidential election. Liberals loved to cite Brooks as the proof that even republicans supported Obama. The reality is that Brooks doesn’t speak for anyone in the republican party. He’s a “conservative” elitist who can barely contain his contempt for regular folks or for candidates like Sarah Palin who didn’t go to Harvard. Nothing makes David Brooks swoon like an Ivy League education.

He waxed poetic in his columns during the campaign about how Barack was really an undercover moderate who would govern from the center. Regardless of his socialist rhetoric, once in office Obama will temper his rhetoric and become a truly great president. He went on to describe Sarah Palin as a “cancer in the republican party” which even looking back remains an incredibly ugly and uncalled for remark. His most recent act of treason was to attack Bobby Jindal’s speech the other night.

But now six weeks into Obama’s presidency, Mr. Brooks is having second thoughts:

Those of us who consider ourselves moderates — moderate-conservative, in my case — are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was. His words are responsible; his character is inspiring. But his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice. As Clive Crook, an Obama admirer, wrote in The Financial Times, the Obama budget “contains no trace of compromise. It makes no gesture, however small, however costless to its larger agenda, of a bipartisan approach to the great questions it addresses. It is a liberal’s dream of a new New Deal.”

Maybe Brooks should take a break from the NYC cocktail circuit and listen to what us little people have to say one in a while. We all knew Obama meant what he said. He promised “Change” and said it would be socialist change (only he worded it more delicately). With a total lock on every branch of government the left is still pinching itself, because it cannot believe it has truly unchecked power. Every big spending, liberal policy dreamed up over the last 30 years is going to become reality and people like David Brooks can certainly share in the blame.

Obama is such a committed leftist that he’s willing to sacrifice his potential re-election for the sake of transforming America into a socialist nanny state. All the cries from democrats over the last eight years about the cost of Iraq ring stunningly hollow in the wake of the unprecedented spending by the new administration. We’re going through trillions the way we used to go through millions. The war in Iraq was pocket change compared what has been spent just in the last 6 weeks, and we’re just warming up.

-Chris Jones