Parroting of the Republican talking points

David Brooks over at the NYT is parroting the typical Republican talking points.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/opinion/20brooks.html?hp

Here are some current typical Republican talking points he's squeezing in here, and why they're bad arguments:

1. "the middle is rising up in revolt in the tea party movement" (although he's careful not to mention the tea party) Where's your source, except for Glen Beck and Fox News? Sure, there's a tea party "movement", but it's still relatively small, and Obama's ratings are still relatively high.
2. "Obama and friends are arrogant and think they know everything with their technocratic analysis" Arrogance is a cute spin on obama's cabinet's credentials, but these people certainly don't think they know everything, and you can hardly blame them for using rigorous analysis to understand what's going on. More importantly, they also don't make things up when they don't know something, or when they don't have enough evidence to support their side, and they don't have a record of distorting science.
   
3. "there are sweeping changes going on that people don't agree with" There are always sweeping changes going on in government. There will always be things people don't agree with. But many people are also happy with the changes occurring. See the reader's comment below.
   

I'm not arguing that the Democrats are perfect. U.S. citizens have reasons to be angry at them, too. But these talking points -- outrageous as they are -- are not the right reasons. Instead, Republicans seem to think that real Americans are too dumb to understand more sophisticated arguments, or else that these reasons are not emotionally captivating enough for a broad audience.

In any case, one NYT reader points out in the column's comments that "Brooks only quotes Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute studies".

Another NYT reader (Stefan Cover) makes a good point about how bureaucracy is not really the target of peoples' anger--

Come now - this is not about the role of government; this is about control. Most of the angry would be perfectly happy with lots of bureaucracy if they felt that it served their purposes and was controlled by those who shared their social and political views. Most of their anger is spawned by feelings of disenfranchisement, not by the proliferation of bureaucracy. You vastly overestimate the intelligence behind the backlash