Thursday, March 22, 2012

DAVID BROOKS AND GAIL COLLINS SHAKE ROMNEY'S ETCH A SKETCH

Even I made fun of myself for not foresseing that Eric Fehrnstrom's "Etch A Sketch" remark was a horrible gaffe -- but maybe I wasn't 100% off the mark in what I wrote. I told you this about the suggestion that Romney will just erase his recent past and shamelessly move to the center for the general election:

... insider journalists want this to be true, because most of them really, really don't want to confront the possibility that the Republican Party (many of whose members are their friends, dammit!) has gone completely bonkers.

So they'll sell the message that Romney is going to be a Republican in the Eisenhower/Ford/Poppy Bush mode -- no matter what he says...


Well that certainly seems to be how David Brooks and Gail Collins are thinking. This is from their latest online chat:

David: I'm wondering how much Romney will be able to pivot and leave that whole mess behind. Everybody is upset that Romney's longtime aide Eric Fehrnstrom compared the primary season to an Etch A Sketch -- you can shake it and start anew. But that gave me hope that Team Romney is thinking about a re-launch, which is what they need.

Gail: You always did say you preferred Romney because you thought he'd mutate into a totally different person after the primaries. I will now think of it as the David Brooks Etch A Sketch theory....

David: ...On issues like when fertilized eggs have a soul, my impression is that Mitch Daniels was right on that one. The country wants a truce on that so we can focus on other things. Whichever party raises the issue in people's minds will suffer because many voters just don’t want to think about it.

Gail: While it's impossible to tell what Romney really believes about almost anything, I do think that when it comes to matters of women and reproduction, his instinct is to keep the government out of it.....

David: Somehow in my gut I think he's actually where he was when he ran in Massachusetts. But his private views, if any, don't matter. If elected president he will avoid socially divisive issues (as Reagan and the Bushes did when possible) but stay true to the Republican line when necessary....


Yeah, David? You think he'll avoid socially divisive issues if he wins? If he wins and the GOP takes both houses of Congress, do you really think he'll be able to avoid those issues? Do you think the crazy people In Congress and their financial and interest-group backers will allow that to happen, even assumi9ng that's what he wants?

I don't believe 27% of the country wants a truce on these i8ssues -- the crazy base wants to fight these issues to total victory. Enable them and you won't be able to stop them.

But keep dreaming those sweet, delusional centrist dreams, David. And you too, Gail.

4 comments:

M. Bouffant said...

What a pair of ninnies.

On issues like when fertilized eggs have a soul
What next? Will one of the Presidential Q&A moderators ask the candidates how many angels can fit on the head of a pin?

Danp said...

Not to beat a dead horse, but these guys see politics as a game, and etch-a-sketch is just a game strategy. It says nothing about the actual character of the player. They're rooting for him and this is just a non-shooting foul.

Kathy said...

"But his private views, if any, don't matter."

That's telling. Brooks knows in his heart that Romney has no core and will swing with the wind. Which pretty much negates the idea that he'll come back to his "real" centrist views if he's elected.

BH said...

It bears remembering, too, that even if Brooks'/Collins' fantasy came true, their conception of "centrist" is pretty damn "rightist" from any perspective left of Calvin Coolidge.

The fact that nonentities like these two are very handsomely paid for dispensing this pap is one of the things wrong with these States.