Oct 10 2008
David Brooks on Sarah Palin
I always liked David Brooks (ever since the Bobo book). Just read his column on NYT today, his basica idea: the GOP that used to live on ideas is now gone forever. Palin is just the latest figure in a movement that has fundamentally changed the character of the party:
Republican political tacticians decided to mobilize their coalition with a form of social class warfare. … What had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole.
The Republicans have alienated whole professions. Lawyers now donate to the Democratic Party over the Republican Party at 4-to-1 rates. With doctors, it’s 2-to-1. With tech executives, it’s 5-to-1. With investment bankers, it’s 2-to-1. It took talent for Republicans to lose the banking community.
Conservatives are as rare in elite universities and the mainstream media as they were 30 years ago. The smartest young Americans are now educated in an overwhelmingly liberal environment.
I take no comfort in the demise of the Rockefeller Republicans. Whenever a viable opposition becomes an enemy, it posions not only politics but civic society too.
I don’t know what goes on in McCain’s mind right now: sure, he knows this is his last shot at the presidency. Sure, he feels he is more entitled to be the POTUS than Obama. But by degenerating the campaign into personal attacks–is that what he spent 5 years in prison for?