Tricky, tricky.....

In today's op-ed, David Brooks says some shocking things: that the Republicans of the Congress have become exceptionally corrupt. His basic argument is that in 1995 conservatives attempted to use (corporate) interest groups to the purposes of the right, and were instead captured by them. In this, Brooks asserts, they accelerated a similar process by which the old Democratic majority had become corrupted.

On the surface there is much here that a liberal can agree with. When a conservative says that Republicans are a bunch of corporate shills, someone on the left is probably going to be so impressed by this confession that they will be eager to agree with everything else Brooks has to say. This is Brooks' usual tactic, which I have made it my job to point out (over and over and over again).

In reality, there are three insidious moves in this piece. First, Brooks breezily asserts that yesterday's Democrats were as corrupt as today's Republicans. This is patently false. Yes, there were the occasional crooked leaders, but the "arrogance of power" that Republicans complained about was less about being on the take than it was abusing (or just ignoring) the minority. Oh, and by the way, the DeLay majority has been far more dismissive of minority rights than the Foley majority would have dreamed of being. When did George Mitchell ever try to get rid of the filibuster?

Brooks' second move is to claim that the Republicans were originally idealistic young revolutionaries, only to have those ideas perverted by the political process. Now there may have been a few members of Congress, or journalists, who were this starry-eyed. But I was there when Gingrich was in the full flush of his power, and the interest groups were writing the legislation then too. Maybe Gingrich and his flunkies weren't taking home suitcases of cash, but they were still beholden to corporate lobbyists.

Which brings me to Brooks' third move, which is to conflate all lobbyists. All interest groups are not created equal. When the Democrats were in the majority, they were pulled between the left-wing groups, with whom they were in ideological sympathy, and business groups, who fronted the money to get re-elected. This created a kind of balance in policy-making that we lack today. Now the left has been entirely silenced, and business interests are running amok. The Republicans are thoroughly dominated by corporate America, and they always have been. There was no "corruption" because there was nothing left to corrupt.

Brooks has apparently recognized that the corruption of the Republican Majority has reached such a point that there will be a political backlash. So he is trying to insulate the broader conservative movement from the fallout by generating the following narrative: the conservatives of 1994 were true idealists, dedicated to cleaning out the filth of Washington, but alas they have succumbed to its temptations. This narrative both advances the basic conservative argument that government is inherently bad, as well as suggesting that the modern conservative movement itself is not inherently corrupt. Which of course it is.

This is a very plausible story that Brooks is advancing, which if it becomes conventional wisdom will mute the political impact of DeLay's coming fall. Don't let him get away with it.