New York Times columnist David Brooks argued that Donald Trump becoming the presumptive GOP presidential nominee shows that some in the US “are longing for a return to a country” “where a certain sort of white male ideal was the top of society…and they’re looking for a white male to sort of remind them of those days” on Friday’s “PBS NewsHour.”
Brooks stated, “It says the Republican establishment has been coasting on the fumes of Reaganite philosophy for too long which are not applicable to the day. It says that we have a — some people in America, who are longing for a return to a country that’s never coming back, where a certain sort of white male ideal was the top of society, and that’s never coming back, and they’re looking for a white male to sort of remind them of those days. It also says there a lot of people who are hurting for perfectly legitimate reasons. … I don’t think he’s a legitimate candidate, or would be a legitimate president, but what’s happening out in the country has to be respected to some degree.”
He added that “the Republican Party’s in a moment of cataclysmic darkness, but it’s in a moment, a pre-revolutionary moment, that we’re going to have some — probably some cataclysm in the fall for the party, and then there’ll be a moment of ferment, where all sorts of different people being — trying to speak for the party, and we’ll have almost a scientific revolution, and then some new party will have emerged in five years, but I suspect it won’t be Donald Trump, because there there. There’s no policy there there. … What interests me about what he presents to the party that could last is a weird mixture of pessimism, build a wall, pull in American roles abroad, and optimism.”
Brooks concluded, “The other thing I’m thinking about is six months, the next six months. We’ve seen in the last week — or the last day, him training fire on [Sen.] Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and on Jeb Bush. He has great ability to train fire on people. That’s going to be focused on Hillary Clinton for six months. What is that going to do to our politics? What is that going to do the way she reacts? What is it going to do to the American psyche, to have, probably a level of personal viciousness that we actually haven’t seen before, because he does erase all the rules. That’s going to have some permanent effect on the divisions within this country, and probably, at least in the short term, not for the better.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.