Needless to say, I do not share Pete Abel‘s positive response to David Brooks’ “Liberal Suicide March” column today. In fact, after reading the entire column — every self-important, fatuous word of it — I wish I had done like Barbara O’Brien and refrained:
I can’t bring myself to read David Brooks’s latest, which is headlined “Liberal Suicide March.” You can read it if you want to. I just want to link to some of the commentary inspired by the column.
It’s revealing as hell that Brooks thinks Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress is “out of touch” with…. not ordinary Americans…. but with moderates. Like him, for example, and the other members of the media and political chattering classes whose lives are completely divorced from the reality most Americans face every day.
It’s not that interesting to watch the Democrats lose touch with America. That’s because the plotline is exactly the same. The party is led by insular liberals from big cities and the coasts, who neither understand nor sympathize with moderates. They have their own cherry-picking pollsters, their own media and activist cocoon, their own plans to lavishly spend borrowed money to buy votes.
From big cities and the coasts, now, is it? And just exactly where is David Brooks from? Toronto, as it turns out. And look at a few of the places he’s worked: The Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard! I mean, please. There’s nothing wrong with being a conservative or working for conservative publications, but don’t pretend that when you oppose making the wealthiest Americans pay a surtax to help fund health care reform that includes a public option, that you are speaking for the vast majority of Americans, who are far more likely to be situated like this, than like this.
Then, again, he isn’t even claiming to be speaking for ordinary Americans who are losing insurance by the thousands every week. He is speaking for himself — for his own narrow little stratum of extremely well-paid, amply and comprehensively insured, politically and socially well-connected pundits and politicos. He is a Bubble Dweller, par excellence.
Sen. Jim DeMint was much more honest than David Brooks when he declared, in that now infamous conference call with conservative activists, that if they (Republicans and conservative Democrats) can kill health care reform, “it will be [Obama’s] Waterloo. It will break him. …” If Obama does succeed in getting the health care reform package he wants, with a strong public option and the surtax on the wealthy, it will make him, not break him. Sen. DeMint knows that. If Americans did not want the health care reform package that Republicans — full strength and decaffeinated — insist Americans are so opposed to, why would bringing it down “break” Obama and be his “Waterloo”? The only winning scenario for the GOP is defeat for Obama on health care reform.
Steve Benen wrote about this yesterday:
The strategy is surprisingly transparent — slow things down, kill real reform, crush Obama.
Now, as a tactical matter, this makes sense. DeMint, Steele, Castellanos, and Kristol are Republicans, who a) don’t support health care reform; and b) are committed to undermining the majority party and the president. Opposition parties are supposed to oppose, so these characters are playing their appropriate role. (The real-world consequences for Americans and their families would be devastating, of course, if the GOP approach is successful, but I’m speaking only to the political strategy.)
I just like to point out, from time to time, that these folks can’t succeed on their own. They simply don’t have the votes. They can call for delays, changes, watered down bills, obstructionism, etc., but Democrats are in a position to finally reform health care anyway.
The only way for this Republican strategy to succeed — literally, the only way — is for Democrats to help them. The GOP has its plan, but no way to execute it effectively. They’ve already been turned out by the electorate.
Success or failure of health care reform will be dependent entirely on whether members of the governing party side with members of the minority party.
So, to bring it back to David Brooks’ column, he is right that there is a “suicide march” going on in Congress — but it’s not the liberals who are on that march. It’s the conservative Democrats — Blue Dog, centrist, call them what you will. They have nothing to gain and everything to lose by banding together with Republicans to kill health care reform. Obviously, they don’t see it that way, but they will be the first to be looking for another line of work after the midterm elections if Obama’s health care package goes down.
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