The Smirking Brooks

Several of my progressive friends harbor respect for David Brooks. I can say this much. Brooks is an intellectual, which is hard to find among the Teabaggers. He's not a Teabagger, of course, just a member of the Teabagger party. The problem is that, just as there are inferior dentists, there are inferior intellectuals. Brooks, George Wills--the list is short--have standing because in the Teabagger Party they have no competition.

Now Brooks has predicted that Romney will smash President Obama in the debates. We can now test whether Brooks is, as I suspect, a smirking but intellectual idiot. We will all see the debates.

Here is my take. In the Republican debates, Romney was either dully robotic or downright weird, offering to bet ten thousand dollars etc. He seemed unable to guess how voters might respond to the remarks he blurted out. Against the weakest field of nutters possible, Romney won no one over. Supported by towers of cash, he became merely the last fool standing.  Now he's doing to smash Obama? Or is Brooks a smirking idiot?