David Brooks – "We’re the good guys"

In his column in today’s New York Times David Brooks continues to insist that the conservatives and the Republicans are the good guys and the liberals and Democrats are the bad guys even while reporting on an interview he had with a Republican Congresswoman whose decision to retire was largely fueled by her (and her mother’s) disgust with the ads the national Republicans aired on her behalf during the last campaign.

“I was appalled by what I had to do,” [Deborah Pryce – Republican Ohio Congresswoman] said. In close races, the national parties send teams of professionals to take over campaigns, and the candidates who resist their efforts generally lose.

When Pryce spoke about the direct-mail letters that went out under her name, she did so with a look of disgust. She said that her friends kept coming to her to complain about the TV ads she was running against her opponent. Finally, her own mother told her she was ashamed of the ads.

The truth is, Pryce’s opponents did worse. But it was her own ads that she kept dwelling on, and as she spoke, I could see that she’d been fighting the war that the best politicians fight — the war within herself to preserve her own humanity.

read the entire article

You almost have to wonder how David Brook's head does not explode from the cognitive dissonance. Only the reassuring thought that no matter how dirty the Republican campaigns were surely the Democrats must have done worse saves his sanity.