In today’s column, David Brooks blah blah blahs about the Sun and the moon and how everything is in an abstract equilibrium and how basically the parties are in a celestial balance but the balance is receding but in proportion etc etc etc, queue politically self-serving but problematic conclusions from problematically reductive polls. The usual bullshit.
Then, he writes this:
In policy terms, the era of the two moons is an era of stagnation. Each party is too weak to push its own agenda and too encased by its own cocoon to agree to a hybrid. The supercommittee failed for this reason. Members of the supercommittee actually took some brave steps outside party orthodoxy (Republicans embraced progressive tax increases, Democrats flirted with spending cuts), but these were baby steps, insufficient to change the alignment.
In what universe did Republicans “embrace” progressive tax increases? Here’s how the WaPo described the tax component of the Republicans’ final offer:
The offer, delivered Thursday to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), included no cuts to the Pentagon other than attrition in the civilian workforce. It also included just one small tax increase, focused on owners of corporate jets, failing two key tests for Democratic negotiators.
David Brooks does not know what an embrace is. Explains a lot.
“Now, our [supercommittee] Members continue to talk among themselves and with their Democratic colleagues about ways to reach the committee’s goal, and whether Democrats will agree to ANY spending cuts without job-killing tax hikes,” a GOP leadership aide said in an e-mail, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations.
Preliminary guess: Brooks’ mother didn’t love him.
Thinking about his definition of flirting, though, I suspect somewhat deeper early-childhood psycho-sexual scars than can be accounted for by just that.
Martin Gelin‘s pithy distillation of reality:
David Brooks says Democrats “flirted” with spending cuts. They offered 2 trillions in cuts.
#flirt
Massive cuts to the social safety net whose consequences would be lived brutally by society’s most vulnerable people and families. Medicare, MedicAid and all of the social support programs funded through non-defense discretionary spending.
Any reasonable observer asked to analogistically describe the Democrats’ negotiating behaviour in sexual terms might choose something like “eager submission to public sexual humiliation… something involving leashes, stiletto-heel ass-scars and whip marks.”
To Brooks, this is flirting.
There must be some really fucked up porn in that guy’s browser history.
