One-time Republican whacks NYT's David Brooks for shifting blame for Trump onto liberals

Conservative columnist Mona Charen tore intoNew York Times pundit David Brooks in The Bulwark for his insinuation that liberals are to blame for the rise of former President Donald Trump.

The column was a response to a column last week, in which Brooks — a longtime conservative critic sounding the alarm about the direction of the Republican Party — tried to analyze the source of Trump's popularity.

"Brooks writes that most people in elite circles think of themselves as the forces of 'progress and enlightenment' while viewing Trump fans as 'reactionary bigots and authoritarians.' Perhaps to play Devil’s advocate, Brooks offers an alternative view. I think it’s a useful exercise even if some of Brooks’s arguments got my back up!" wrote Charen. "In this alternative view, the 'anti-Trumpers,' he writes, are actually the bad guys who, through selfishness and arrogance, made Trump inevitable. Brooks employs 'we' when discussing anti-Trumpers, though the origin of his critique stretches back to what at the time were called 'limousine liberals.'"

Charen in particular takes issue with Brooks' insinuation that the "meritocracy" of who can and can't go to Ivy League schools, and therefore who monopolizes all the best job opportunities, was a source of resentment for the masses who backed Trump, noting that "among 1,364 four-year colleges they studied, only 17 could be considered highly selective, meaning they accepted fewer than 10 percent of applicants. The overwhelming majority of Americans attend less selective schools," and that in fact, "Only about 10 percent of the Fortune 500 CEOs attended Ivy League colleges."

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"It is wrong to lay all of the resentments and grievances of non-elites at the feet of progressive elites, but Brooks seems to be doing so to prod those on the left to reflect a bit more on their own role in our polarized culture," wrote Charen.

At the end of the day, she noted, the fact is that "even if progressives were guilty as charged — let’s stipulate that they’ve hoarded all the great slots at universities for themselves and snagged all the Google jobs — it still wouldn’t justify the free choice of millions of Americans to support a mentally unstable, vicious, Constitution-shredding, would-be autocrat."