On Friday’s PBS NewsHour, pseudo-conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks offered disbelief that Donald Trump’s anti-amnesty position on immigration would win the day with Republicans. They’re not “complete idiots,” he suggested. Brooks insisted the “talk radio part” of the Republican party is “waning, frankly,” and that the platform of Dole, McCain, and George W. Bush would return.
The PBS anchor was having trouble believing the Republicans weren’t doomed already.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But, David, you don't think the [anti-Trump] delay, the fact that it took some of the other candidates some time to come forward with their statement, makes a difference?
DAVID BROOKS: No. It was a matter of days or even hours. They had to formulate things.
What matters is that whether the Republican Party rediscovers where George W. Bush was on immigration, where John McCain was on immigration, where a lot of -- where Bob Dole -- where a lot of previous nominees have been.And the party has wandered into an anti-immigration or an anti-immigration reform direction as a result of the rise of the talk radio part of the party. But that part of the party is waning, frankly, and I think it will be very possible for Jeb Bush or Rubio, whoever the nominee is, to be where McCain was and to be where George W. Bush was. Those are not ancient history of the Republican Party. The party will rediscover that moment....
The “talk-radio part of the party” is always losing or else destroying the GOP, but what about the PBS wing of the Republican Party? That wing may be just Brooks, and other Republicans who are largely indistinguishable from Democrats.
And then there are the Democrats, whose “talk radio part of the party” is down to pretty much Thom Hartmann, Bill Press, class clown Stephanie Miller, and the People’s Republic of Pacifica. Now that’s some serious waning.
This is a fairly common refrain for Brooks, who thinks the “talk jocks” are all bluster and no army, as he wrote in an entire Times column titled “The Wizard of Beck” in 2009. After championing McCain, Brooks thinks his failure in 2008 showed the weakness of talk radio:
So what is the theme of our history lesson? It is a story of remarkable volume and utter weakness. It is the story of media mavens who claim to represent a hidden majority but who in fact represent a mere niche — even in the Republican Party. It is a story as old as “The Wizard of Oz,” of grand illusions and small men behind the curtain.... [Apparently Laura Ingraham isn’t worth demeaning, or Brooks is a male chauvinist.]
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 PBS anchor returned Brooks to her notion that Donald Trump is causing lasting damage to the Republican Party.
WOODRUFF: But you don't see the -- you see the Republican Party coming through this, that this is not going to have a lasting -- do lasting damage?
BROOKS: I have this naive assumption that people are not complete idiots. (Laughter) It just want to -- just in terms of the issue, I think the merits are on the side of the sort of comprehensive immigration reform George W. Bush championed.
But “the merits” didn’t prevail when George W. Bush pushed it, and it hasn’t prevailed ever since. So who precisely are the weak men with armies that don’t exist?
