David Brooks: Tea Partiers are 'Wal-Mart hippies'

Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks assailed the Tea Party and the extreme nature of today's Republican Party Tuesday on ComedyCentral's The Colbert Report.

"The Tea Party is where the money is at, baby," said Stephen Colbert. "Why aren't you saying crazy stuff your in columns and if you pardon the expression, put some asses in the seats?"

"Well, the Tea Parties they're like the hippies," Brooks responded. "The hippies wanted to stick it to the man and they were anti-establishment. So the Tea Parties are like the Wal-Mart hippies."

Colbert jested that Brooks should be less moderate and shun news organizations that aren't sufficiently conservative.

"You go on PBS," noted Colbert. "That's the enemy camp. You cannot be friends with these people. Okay?"

"There's a conservative news channel and there's a liberal news channel," Colbert continued. "There's a conservative paper and a liberal paper. There's a conservative puffed corn chip and a liberal puffed corn chip. How can you possibly be in the enemy camp?"

"Self loathing," said Brooks. "I've made it a career of self loathing. My joke is that being a conservative at the New York Times is like being chief rabbi at Mecca."

"I actually think the world is complicated and I'm not for moderation for its own sake," he continued. "There's actually like a tradition in American life that started with Alexander Hamilton," explained Brooks. "But it's about the idea that you use government a little, not a lot, to increase social mobility. So, that's what I actually believe in. I'm part of a dead tradition."

Colbert responded, "Ronald Reagan is rolling over in his grave." Brooks laughed and said Reagan was much more moderate than today's Tea Parties and the modern Republican Party.

This video is from Comedy Central's The Daily Show, broadcast March 3, 2010.