That David Brooks actually gets paid to write this excreta while hundreds of thousands of hardworking Americans are unemployed or underemployed is unspeakably sad.

Disillusionment is always sad, and often painful. But I think the sadness and the pain derives not so much from a sense of loss and ensuing grief, as much as the self loathing that comes from realizing that you have been a fool. Disillusionment, in the end is always about your own folly. How big of a fool did you have to be to ever believe that John McCain was the cloud sculpture hero he made himself out to be? You had to deliberately discredit the hard facts. How can a serious minded and mature consciousness do such a thing? Only a willing thrall.

It' tough to realize that everything you know is wrong. If you were wrong about John McCain, what else might you be wrong about?

M.J., he's not talking about the decline of some two-bit politician. He's accepting the decline of a two-bit political philosophy. He's written an epitaph for his own personal hopes and dreams, and for the hopes and dreams of many within the Republican Party who, like the rest of us, endured the Bush years in the hope that things would get better someday. Except that the Republicans hoped they would be the stewards of that change. That's clearly not going to happen. And if Obama has any success at all, independent voters will rush to the Democratic Party, and the Republicans may well spend the next 20-30 years out in the extremely bitter cold. True, he's making the case for why McCain could have won, but mostly Brooks' piece is a capitulation. From a Republican perspective, I can imagine these days are unspeakably sad. I know the feeling. I only need to look back at the past eight years to find deep sympathy for what Brooks is going through.

Perhaps McCain is the right wing's Portrait of Dorian Gray. They were all young and idealistic once, before the lust for power and influence ravaged their minds, and queered their thinking.

Thus, we have Brooks lauding McCain for his great political instincts...when he voted with Bush 90% of the time, championed deregulation as a cure-all, and wrote a campaign finance reform bill which he himself violated.

People, when the pundits decry 'the end of *our* way of life,' they are talking about K Street, not Main Street.

Cry me a river, Bobo.

You wanna see unspeakably sad, go type in national guard on the page he linked to in the body. Those guys should have never been shipped overseas. We should have issued a draft into the active military before we backdoor drafted our college students who were told they would never be deployed overseas.

It is a outrage that these young men and women were lied to and sent off to die without being treated like any other member of our countries' general population. Our leaders should be ashamed of themselves.

Brooks is certainly unspeakable.

Suppose, despite everything you dislike about John McCain, that he had made a handful of different decisions at the beginning of the fall campaign. Such as:

* Not giving in to personal resentment of Barack Obama based on tiny perceived slights a few years ago, by running a divisive and cynical campaign.

* De-emphasizing the know-nothing wing of the Republican party and begin some kind of process to redefine its mission.

* Ignoring the Bush-era political flacks who ended up running the show.

McCain had the chance to serve his party and run an elevated and meaningful campaign. He didn't, and Brooks has every right to feel sad about it. We have all been cheated.

For a group of people who purport to be supremely determined to diminish the already-marginal influence of David Brooks on our national life, the TPM Cafe crowd is amazingly dedicated to paying and attracting attention to this man.

The New York Times is not the Vatican; David Brooks is not the pope; his columns are not papal encyclicals. Why are they treated as such, even by his opponents?

Dan - Some people of the TPM Cafe have become so brainwashed, that's why. Nobody has an open mind when they started to read the David Brooks article. I'm sure MJ had already spent time drafting his blog before the Brooks article even hit the website.

That's why I like to post things on TPM. Because the bee hive just says "you're wrong" before they've even read what you have to say.

MJ has never even met Brooks and he's bashing him as a rich, white, suburbanite. You have no idea how much money he makes, how he treats other people, etc. But he's an evil person, according to MJ

MJ - do you know Brooks personally? Is that why you call him a rich, white suburbanite? Is one thing to disagree with his views but your anger with him seems very personal

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