David Brooks Rips Romney (Then Calms Down)

David Brooks in his column just up at the NYT torches his candidate, calling him Thurston Howell Romney.   It's welcome, but comedic, given Brooks' praise for Romney and Ryan in the past.  "First, it suggests that he really doesn’t know much about the country he inhabits. Who are these freeloaders? Is it the Iraq war veteran who goes to the V.A.? Is it the student getting a loan to go to college? Is it the retiree on Social Security or Medicare? It suggests that Romney doesn’t know much about the culture of America. Yes, the entitlement state has expanded, but America remains one of the hardest-working nations on earth."

The people who receive the disproportionate share of government spending are not big-government lovers. They are Republicans. They are senior citizens. They are white men with high school degrees. As Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution has noted, the people who have benefited from the entitlements explosion are middle-class workers, more so than the dependent poor.

Romney’s comments also reveal that he has lost any sense of the social compact. In 1987, during Ronald Reagan’s second term, 62 percent of Republicans believed that the government has a responsibility to help those who can’t help themselves. Now, according to the Pew Research Center, only 40 percent of Republicans believe that.

The final thing the comment suggests is that Romney knows nothing about ambition and motivation.

Unfortunately, just when you think Brooks claims he can't stomach Romney any longer, he simply states that he has acted inept,  because he is trying to be something he is not, and perhaps will straighten out when the "incompetence" phase is over.  In other words:  Not knowing the country, the culture, the social compact,  ambition and motivation is not enough to lost Brooks' vote!  It's too much for Brooks to simply say: As usual, I was wrong about something.