David Brooks doesn't speak for modern Republicans

Wouldn't it be nice if columnist David Brooks actually had some influence on the current crop of conservative poseurs?

A president can’t lead a social transformation without a visceral bond with the center of the electorate and without being in step with the rhythm of the times. Obama is lacking these things. As a result, the original Obama project, the third Democratic wave, is dead. The administration resists this conclusion, just as it took the Bush administration a while to recognize that Social Security reform, and the larger privatization dream, was dead.

Click here to read the entire piece at the New York Times.

Most of the time, regardless of the hyperventilating of other pundits, Brooks seems so measured and prudent. He reminds me of the thoughtful conservatives I used to admire years ago. After all, William F. Buckley, a ground-floor founder of the conservative movement in the 1950s/60s, was Brooks' mentor.

Now Brooks has to be many liberals' favorite conservative pundit. That, while it seems the most visible modern Republicans, Dittoheads and Tea Party loyalists are not so much acquainted with Brooks' style or his substance.

Sometimes it seems that President Barack Obama imagines he is locked in a debate with a David Brooks-type of conservative. It says here that's exactly where President Obama has been repeating the mistake that has arrested the momentum for his agenda.

In political reality, Obama is locked in an imaginary game of place-kicking a football. In this game no points have been scored, because the Republican Congressional leadership is Lucy. Ever the optimist, Obama is poor ol' Charlie Brown.

David Brooks isn't in this game, he's just watching it repeat, over and over ... like the rest of us.