MASSAI
Brooks is a well known conservative, but not a lock step neocon.
If one bothers to read the actual op-ed (not sure who decimated/edited my original post?).....you can see brooks doesn't JUST speak to the last election but every election since 94......AND no more partisanship for/against the right than the left.....imo.
Also, that Contract ON American congress, that lasted til 06, 12 years was the first for 40 years. Considering they made our own potus their enemy, ignored terrorism until 911, ignored illegal immigration, rubberstamped an unnecessary invasion/occupation, allowed a runaway executive branch, and allowed energy, banking, healthcare, oil and war corporations to call all the shots, it may well be another 40 years before anyone trusts them again.
My guess is that the ONLY path back to power for republicans is to purge their party of the remaining FAILED neocon influence, actually fullfill the idea of representing WORKING Americans instead of the richest 1% and giant global corps and banking and stop with the hate, division, and extreme partisanship-placing politics over country.
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But this is not merely a story of weakness. It is a story of resilience. For no matter how often their hollowness is exposed, the jocks still reweave the myth of their own power. They still ride the airwaves, claiming to speak for millions. They still confuse listeners with voters. And they are enabled by cynical Democrats, who love to claim that Rush Limbaugh controls the GOP. They are enabled by lazy pundits who find it easier to argue with showmen than with people whose opinions are based on knowledge. They are enabled by the slightly educated snobs who believe that Glenn Beck really is the voice of Middle America.
So the myth returns. Just months after the election and the humiliation, everyone is again convinced that Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and the rest possess real power. And the saddest thing is that even Republican politicians come to believe it. They mistake media for reality. They pre-emptively surrender to armies that don't exist.
They pay more attention to Rush's imaginary millions than to the real voters down the street. The Republican Party is unpopular because it's more interested in pleasing Rush's ghosts than actual people. The party is leaderless right now because nobody has the guts to step outside the rigid parameters enforced by the radio jocks and create a new party identity. The party is losing because it has adopted a radio entertainer's niche-building strategy, while abandoning the politician's coalition-building strategy.
The rise of Beck, Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and the rest has correlated almost perfectly with the decline of the GOP. But it's not because the talk jocks have real power. It's because they have illusory power, because Republicans hear the media mythology and fall for it every time.
David Brooks writes for The New York Times.
www.dispatch.com
