I have appreciated David Brooks' conservative commentary. He works hard to expound his thinking, which is more conservative than right-wing weird, and he writes well, too.
In a New york Times column reproduced in the Albuquerque Tribune yesterday, Brooks leads this way: "After a while, you get sick of the DeLays of the Right and the Deans of the left."
Et tu, Brooks?
These guys are supposed to be parallel figures on the right and left?
But Dean is famous for balancing Vermont's budgets and getting along with the NRA. It's true he extended health insurance to almost everybody in his state, but he did so without recourse to a single-payer plan.
Oh, yes, he did say straight out that the US attack on Iraq was a diversion from the "war on terror," but that's the Establishment view, isn't it?
DeLay, on the other hand, wants Washington - meaning Big Government - to intervene in families' life-and-death decisions about their ill children or spouses.
Oh, and yes, he's been chastised by GOP-dominated House ethics panels. And yes, he's under indictment for breaking campaign finance laws.
So where's the parallel?
I hate to doubt Brooks' intellectual honesty, but starting right now, I do. I will harbor the hope, though, that an upset stomach or headache impeded thought the day he wrote that column.