Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) just quoted "conservative columnist" David Brooks on the Senate floor.  The end is near.  If David Brooks is a conservative then my entire perception of what true conservatism means is all wrong.

David Brooks?  Conservative? 

I don't think so.

Seriously, when Democratic senators are quoting from David Brooks columns on the Senate floor I'd say it's time for Brooks to just fill out his "change of party" card at the voter's registration office.

When you're on the same side of the field as Steve Benan, you know you're not a conservative:

Brooks went on to say that the conservatives who dominate the GOP “do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities,” “have no sense of moral decency,” and “have no economic theory worthy of the name.”

This is pretty tough language for a conservative columnist. Indeed, it’s the kind of language that can help change the conventional wisdom about the nature of the talks themselves.

Benen is, of course, responding to this column by David Brooks in today's New York Times.

And the fisking by Stacy McCain begins in 3...2...1....

(H/T:  Memeorandum)

Stacy McCain takes David Brooks to the woodshed in response to his weekly column in which Brooks lambastes Republicans:

You can read the whole thing, which I think you will agree constitutes conclusive proof of the utter uselessness of David Brooks. From time to time, as a sort of accidental consequence of the Law of Large Numbers, Brooks will criticize liberals from a conservative perspective — the blind pig finding an acorn, as it were. Yet when push comes to shove, Brooks habitually tries to push Republicans toward a Democrat Lite agenda of Big Government. 

It gets better:

His erudition and facile recitation of policy details lends an aura of seriousness to his arguments. He constantly rehashes the political obstacles to implementation of a limited-government agenda (which are real enough) as a way of suggesting that such an agenda is an impossibility. And if, as Brooks says, a meaningful reduction in the size, scope and expense of the federal Leviathan is a non-starter, then conservatives who argue for limited government are either naive or dishonest.


This is a perfidious accusation of bad faith, and for this baseless slander, Brooks should be loaded aboard an Air Force C-130 and air-dropped over Afghanistan without a parachute.

Read the whole thing. It's brilliant.

Is it David Brooks Fisking Day? Rush thinks so. Rush quotes last Thursday's Charlie Rose show:

David BROOKS: The biggest shock to me, I thought, the guy's 47, the guy's barely been in Washington. Can he run an effective administration? Yes. Charlie ROSE: And an effective campaign, too. BROOKS: He has run a tremendously effective, efficient managerial administration. That is the biggest surprise and I think the biggest story of the first hundred days. Because if he didn't do that, if he didn't have the essential level of competence, nothing else would matter, people would not trust him. But he is a competent manager.

RUSH: I don't want to spend a lot of time refuting any of this because it's pointless. Competent manager? He's running a marketing campaign rather than being president. He's running a PR campaign rather than being president. He's being president, don't misunderstand, but it's all perception. It's not reality. Everything that they're trying to fix is falling apart. Everything they're trying to fix is getting worse, and yet, the perception is this guy's brilliant, is great, great managerial skills, competent, very, very intelligent, like me, these people all think. I hate to do this to you, folks, but you gotta hear it. This is Charlie Rose and David Brooks just slobbering, literally slobbering over Barack Obama.