Must-Read: : Freedom Frauds: “David Brooks is getting a lot of positive attention today for this column…
…in which he dissolves into despair and anxiety over what has become of today’s ‘radical’ and ‘ungovernable’ Republican Party…. All of this is well and good as far as it goes. But I think it neglects one of the most plausible explanations for what’s happening: A lot of what we’re seeing today may not be the result of the radicalized faction’s ‘incompetence,’ but rather the result of its fraudulence and hucksterism…. It isn’t that [the Tea Party are] too incompetent to realize that these [shutdown-threatening] tactics [will] fail. Rather… they [keep] alive the charade for far too long that these tactics would ultimately force Democrats to surrender… not… frauds… getting… to continue telling the story they want to tell.