Brooks decries the viciousness of the Right

Davey and Goliath
Originally uploaded by vegacura.

I really haven't a clue what David Brooks is getting at here (Time$elect). That the rightwing nutosphere is beyond the capacity of reasoned debate? This is new? That it's hard, hard to be a principled Republican statesman? Impossible, I'd say. That to be one likens the statesman to a knight of Camalot? Wha?

But anyway, this is fairly amusing.

The elevator guy is cheerful and the subway operators are polite, but there is something about the subterranean trip from the Capitol back to your Senate office building that gets you down. The dinginess. The barren walls. And you don't need that right now. You're a Republican senator supporting the immigration compromise.

For weeks now — months, actually! — you've been besieged by the close-the-border restrictionists, who shut down your phone lines and scream at you in town meetings. You've been hit with slopping barrages of manure by Limbaugh, Savage, Levin and every other talk-radio jock in the Northern Hemisphere. People who don't run for office don't understand how disorienting it is to have your base, your own people, suddenly turn carnivorous and out for your flesh.

They say you and your fellow immigration compromisers are performing the biggest act of political suicide in modern history, and you wonder whether they are right.

What bothers you about the restrictionists is not that they are primitives or racists. They're not. It's their imperviousness, their unwillingness to compromise. They don't have the numbers to govern, but they think they have the numbers to destroy.

Oh, no, not Limbaugh and Savage.

Limbaugh was offering an opinion of the media, not of the race of a QB.

Limbaugh said Sunday that McNabb received undeserved credit for his team's success that came from media outlets with "social concern" and "very desirous that a black quarterback do well."

McNabb, who was runner-up for the MVP award in 2000 and has led the Eagles to two straight conference title games, said Wednesday, "I'm sure he's not the only one that feels that way. But it's somewhat shocking to actually hear that on national TV." McNabb scoffed at the notion of preferential media treatment: "A free ride from the media in Philadelphia? That's a good one."

And if "anyone was offended by his comments," he's sorry. After all, his sensitivity is well known.

"Mayor Nayger." What a "fracking " tool. The racism that is pouring out of the mouths of the apologists is sickening. I'll have a spot by Mark "Puke" Williams later and it doesn't get any worse than him.

And of Michael Savage, what more needs be said?

When I hear someone's in the civil rights business, I oil up my AR-15!

His views have always been paragons of nuance.

In fact, Christianity has been one of the great salvations on planet Earth. It's what's necessary in the Middle East. Others have written about it, I think these people need to be forcibly converted to Christianity but I'll get here a little later, I'll move up to that. It's the only thing that can probably turn them into human beings.

And Mark Levin? The very embodiment of thoughtful, reasoned debate.

So, in other words...Shorter David Brooks: "We've created a monster!"

You're catching on, Davey, you're catching on.