Band of Brooks Brothers

When you make a rapid ascent from college classroom to metro newsroom, you may miss a lot. Plucked from the University of Chicago by none other than William F. Buckley himself to toil at National Review, David Brooks then made a dazzling climb up the editorial ladder to where he is perched today at the New York Times.

In the course of his career, he might have overlooked some pivotal trends in America. “The public is not only shifting from left to right,” he wrote in a recent column. “Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.”

“The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise,” he notes. He doesn’t note declining temperatures and the attempts of global warming alarmists to hide them.

“The educated class supports abortion rights, so public opinion is shifting against them,” he observes. Actually the shift started with the advent of the sonogram.

“The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting,” he claims. Actually it was never all that popular among the non-elect.

Similarly, Brooks can’t bring himself to acknowledge that left-wing activism comprises virtually all of the experience of many in the White House, particularly those who have gone from it, ala Van Jones. “The Obama administration is premised on the conviction that pragmatic federal leaders with professional expertise should have the power to implement programs to solve the country’s problems,” Brooks states.

He disdains the TEA party movement: “Right now, it is an amateurish movement with mediocre leadership,” he asserts. Apparently, he didn’t notice that TEA party regulars were more likely to have read the bills their congressional representatives were proposing than, well, their representatives.

“In the near term, the tea party tendency will dominate the Republican Party,” he predicts. “It could be the ruin of the party, pulling it in an angry direction that suburban voters will not tolerate.”

“But don’t underestimate the deep reservoirs of public disgust.”

1.)    Republicans have been booed at TEA party events they tried to dominate;

2.)    Who got angry and called TEA party participants teabaggers?

3.)    Where but the suburbs do you think the TEA partiers come from?

He may be right about the “deep reservoirs of public disgust” though.  Just look at the Times’ circulation numbers.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.