As my colleague P.J. Gladnick previously reported, Brooks accused conservative talk radio hosts Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity of hurting the Republican Party:
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.
Hours after Brooks's piece was published, Kernen went off on the Times columnist (video embedded below the fold, h/t TVNewser):
Everyone at these town hall meetings was a plant or a nutcase? Everything's written off, there's really no one that disagrees with the edicts of [liberals]?...How can Fox News double MSNBC and CNN combined? How do they have the top ten?...Air America can't sell an ad. There's no one that wants to listen to them...Let me guess: liberals are so cerebral and erudite that they don't, they don't, they're at the opera. They're at the opera, they don't listen to talk radio or watch TV. They're reading Sartre. Is that what you're telling me? I love that, David Brooks is a conservative? Well you tell Rush that his 100 million a year, or whatever he makes isn't real. Those are, those are fake 100 million. David Brooks, I mean is he a wolf in sheep's clothing? Who is this guy, I mean, really, he's the conservative? You know what, he is conservative for the Times.
Delicious!
