David Brooks: Ben Shapiro Is Failing To Police The Conservative Movement, “Though I Admire Him For Trying”
PBS NEWSHOUR: David Brooks of The Atlantic and Jonathan Capehart of MS NOW join Amna Nawaz to discuss the week in politics, including the GOP’s midterm convention and the identity of the party.
DAVID BROOKS, THE ATLANTIC: I would say we’re seeing in the Republican Party first on the influencer side a crack-up. And so you got Candace going over to here, Tucker Carlson go over to here, Ben Shapiro trying to play William F. Buckley and police the movement and failing, by the way, though I admire him for trying. And so on that level, there’s just like — and that’s like show business. Among the Trump supporters I know, I would say there’s exhaustion, disappointment, some sense of betrayal, but they’re not turning Democrat. But they but they are — they’re flatter. They’re emotionally flatter. And then I think the long-term thing is, Donald Trump has — with the exception of tariffs and immigration, he’s undercut the intellectual consistency of the party, because he’s all over the place on everything, including these $ 5,000, which is like super Keynesian pump priming at a time of inflation, which is like the worst thing you want to do. So it’s just intellectually incoherent. So that’s a little complicated to say that the Republican still has a good story to tell. They’re cracking up on the ideological level, and then they’re sort of adrift intellectually.
