While media reporters have hailed the "new" PBS NewsHour for having two female anchors, the liberal-bias formula is exactly the same. PBS Republican-in-Name-Only David Brooks is assigned to trash the Republicans as extremist obstructionists, so that Democrat hack Mark Shields can agree, and add that they don't live in reality.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry is already demonstrating "commitment and passion" by conducting a reality-denying negotiation with the Russians and Syrians to "destroy" Syria's stock of chemical weapons. Brooks and Shields teamed up to endorse and promote the suffocating inside-the-Beltway statist consensus:
DAVID BROOKS: What's going on in the House, and a bit in the Senate, too, is what you might call the rise of Ted Cruz-ism. And Ted Cruz, the senator from Canada through Texas [birther jokes, anyone?], is basically not a legislator in the normal sense, doesn't have an idea that he's going to Congress to create coalitions, make alliances, and he is going to pass a lot of legislation. He's going in more as a media protest person.
And a lot of the House Republicans are in the same mode. They're not normal members of Congress. They're not legislators. They want to stop things. And so they're just being -- they just want to obstruct.
And the second thing they're doing, which is alarming a lot of Republicans, is they're running against their own party. Ted Cruz is running against Republicans in the Senate. The House Republican Tea Party types are running against the Republican establishment. That's how they're raising money. That's where they're spending their money on ads.
In the David Brooks Dictionary, legislators can't obstruct anything – spending bills, nominations, wars, anything. Progress is always defined as "doing something," completely divorced from the realities of trillion-dollar deficits and unquestionably blind to archaic documents like the Constitution. Real Republicans make sure PBS has all the subsidies they need -- since it's their job to be kicked in the gut on national television, and like it.
Shields is then able to describe Speaker John Boehner as "terrorized' by the Tea Party, as if they're holding him hostage on Capitol Hill.
MARK SHIELDS: If John Boehner wanted to pass a budget, he could do it. There are enough Democrats and Republicans in his own caucus.
The problem is, he's terrorized by the -- these people David's talking about, the Tea Party people, the rule-or-ruin people, mostly ruin, because they're not really interested in ruling. And what they're facing, Judy, is the worst of all. These are people who live in a fantasy world. They wanted to repeal Obamacare.
Obamacare will never be repealed. Now they want to defund Obamacare. And there is not a single vote on the Democratic side in the Senate to bring it to the floor if it even passed the House. So, I mean, it's a -- Harry Reid said yesterday -- and I think he likes John Boehner -- he said very candidly, he said, I feel sorry for John Boehner... because these are people not living in reality.
Brooks then took another turn of conservative-bashing;
BROOKS: And, remember, what these people, Ted Cruz and some of the Tea Party people, their object is not to win Obamacare. Their object is to take over the Republican Party. So, they really are running against the Republicans. And for Ted Cruz, it's potentially to get the nomination.
And taking this down, if it can mobilize enough Republicans so he can take over the party and become -- really transform the party, then that becomes the object. And one little straw in the wind, the Heritage Foundation, a very prominent conservative think tank, is running against Republicans. And that's part of the change that is going on here.
Then both men politely agree that these Republicans could barely carry four counties in Mississippi, haw haw haw:
SHIELDS: Sure, take over an anti-health care, anti-immigration party that has got the affection and loyalty of a diminishing number of American voters. That's what -- that seems to be -- that's why I say they're living in a fantasy.
BROOKS: There are three or four counties in Mississippi they would carry.
SHIELDS: That's right.(Laughter)
Earth to David Brooks: Please explain to your PBS audience how your brand of surrender-first moderate Republicans are doing in getting elected in the New England states. Cough. Cough.
Then there's the praise for John Kerry, who's the polar opposite of Ted Cruz, a realist of the noblest kind:
BROOKS: ...He's got, I would say, more independence already than Hillary did. For all her strength of personality and strength of character, he's sort of carved out a little course for himself in the midst of this. And, you know, maybe he can lead in a slightly different direction, in part because the reputation of the president, frankly, in foreign policy is in a little dip.
MARK SHIELDS: There is a great advantage that John Kerry has. This is his last stand. John Kerry, unlike Hillary, who at least was prospectively a presidential candidate, this is it for John Kerry. John Kerry's career will be written and defined not simply by having been a presidential candidate and a senator from Massachusetts for some 30 years, but basically what he did as secretary of state. And I think the commitment and passion he has brought to it speaks for itself already.
