New York Times' so-called "conservative" columnist David Brooks had some surprisingly harsh words Friday for the objective of his affection currently residing in the White House.
"President Obama is an intelligent, judicious man who can see all sides of an issue. But every once in a while he tries to get politically cute, and he puts on his Keith Olbermann mask."
Given Olbermann's recent canning by the saintly Nobel Laureate Al Gore, this was practically the height of derision.
Brooks continued:
I suppose it’s to his credit that he’s most inept when he tries to take the low road. He resorts to hoary, brain-dead clichés. He wanders so far from his true nature that he makes Mitt Romney look like Mr. Authenticity.
I guess Brooks - ever cognizant of his New York audience - felt the need to balance out the disparagement with some Republican bashing.
Regardless, his disdain for the President stemmed from the Commander-in-Chief's recent attack on Wisconsin's Republican Congressman Paul Ryan and the budget the rising conservative star has offered.
Be advised, Brooks is no fan of the Ryan plan which in his view "could lead to self-destructive cuts in scientific research, health care for poor kids and programs that boost social mobility."
But his real criticism was with the President's response to it:
Obama cast himself as the fiscal moderate who embraced the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles approach. (Perhaps we were all asleep during the Simpson-Bowles-Obama consciousness tour.) Then he unleashed every 1980s liberal cliché in the book, calling the Republicans a bunch of trickle-down, Trojan horse-bearing social Darwinists.
Even worse, Brooks accused Obama of "imagining" cataclysmic elements in the Ryan plan:
He imposed some assumptions that are nowhere to be found in the Ryan budget. He compared Ryan’s reduced spending increases with proposed growth, not current levels.
Just imagine how many liberal heads were exploding all over Manhattan Friday as they read such heresy in their precious New York Times.
But Brooks wasn't done:
The Ryan plan, he charged, “will ultimately end Medicare as we know it.”
In 2011, when Ryan first proposed a version of this budget, Politifact, the truth-checking outfit, honored this claim with its “Lie of the Year” award. Since then, the Ryan Medicare proposal has become more moderate and much better. Obama’s charge is even more groundless.
Indeed. The reality is that virtually every economist on both sides of the aisle - even the perilously liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman - agrees that changes are going to have to be made to Medicare to keep it solvent.
Despite this, from the moment Ryan's 2011 plan was released, virtually every media outlet in the nation - including the New York Times - attacked it for killing Medicare, which as Politifact boldly noted was an out and out lie.
The same misinformation is being disseminated now by the Left concerning Ryan's 2012 plan, and Brooks surprisingly isn't having any of it.
After explaining some of the inconvenient truths about this budget proposal - facts that have sadly been ignored by most of the Obama-loving media - Brooks continued with the scolding:
Ryan has at least taken a big step toward an eventual fiscal solution. He’s proposed necessary structural entitlement reforms, which the Democrats are unwilling to do. He’s proposed real tax reform, which the Democrats are also unwilling to do.
The first truth is that we will have to do these big things to avoid a fiscal calamity. The second truth is there is no one party solution; there has to be a merger of respectable ideas. The third truth is that gimmicky speeches obscure the president’s best character and make it seem as if he doesn’t understand the scope of the calamity looming in front of us.
And that's what makes Obama no better than Keith Olbermann who pathologically ignores facts when they get in the way of his agenda.
Bravo, David. Bravo!
(H/T Mediaite)
