Mr. President, You've Now Lost David Brooks

It was a clear spring day in 2005.  The trees were swaying the in the breeze, and the birds were singing a joyful song.  The sun crept out behind the veil of clouds and gleamed it's majestic rays across the fruited plain.  And David Brooks and Barack Obama were seen holding hands skipping down a dirt path that cut along the countryside hills...

At least maybe that's how it all started in Brooks' mind.  But the love affair is finally over.  Here is Brooks in his column in last Sunday's New York Times:

I’m a sap, a specific kind of sap. I’m an Obama Sap.

When the president said the unemployed couldn’t wait 14 more months for help and we had to do something right away, I believed him. When administration officials called around saying that the possibility of a double-dip recession was horrifyingly real and that it would be irresponsible not to come up with a package that could pass right away, I believed them.

Brooks goes on to catalog the myriad of ways Obama has not catered to get the vaunted independent vote:

Yes, I’m a sap. I believed Obama when he said he wanted to move beyond the stale ideological debates that have paralyzed this country. I always believe that Obama is on the verge of breaking out of the conventional categories and embracing one of the many bipartisan reform packages that are floating around.

But remember, I’m a sap. The White House has clearly decided that in a town of intransigent Republicans and mean ideologues, it has to be mean and intransigent too. The president was stung by the liberal charge that he was outmaneuvered during the debt-ceiling fight. So the White House has moved away from the Reasonable Man approach or the centrist Clinton approach.

 What is now obvious to Brooks was obvious to most people a few years ago.

But here is the kicker:

The president believes the press corps imposes a false equivalency on American politics. We assign equal blame to both parties for the dysfunctional politics when in reality the Republicans are more rigid and extreme. There’s a lot of truth to that, but at least Republicans respect Americans enough to tell us what they really think. The White House gives moderates little morsels of hope, and then rips them from our mouths. To be an Obama admirer is to toggle from being uplifted to feeling used.

The White House has decided to wage the campaign as fighting liberals. I guess I understand the choice, but I still believe in the governing style Obama talked about in 2008. I may be the last one. I’m a sap.

Brooks, who amazingly used to write for The Weekly Standard and functions as the Times'  in-house "conservative," faults Republicans for being extreme and rigid, but the saving grace for Brooks is that they are at least open about their crazy ideology.  But of course Barack Obama voting down a bill banning partial birth abortions and the overall Democrat stance on abortion is well within the mainstream... 

At least Brooks has finally seen the emperor's clothes.  The scary part is that it took the castle to come crumbling down around him.