Excerpt on the GOP
MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist: Well, I think it is a lack of self-confidence, surefootedness. They didn't know what they wanted to say. They weren't sure.
The only one who was really critical that I saw was Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania, who basically took the line that has been developed by both Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. And that was that the -- Barack Obama, by not supporting Hosni Mubarak in his hour of need, was turning his back on a great ally.
And that -- that became the position. But there was nobody there really celebrating the moment of freedom and taking that, picking up that banner. And that -- that -- I think that does belie a lack of confidence, surefootedness, on a terribly important issue.
JIM LEHRER, Editor Newshour: Do you agree -- David, do you agree with Mark that what -- what these folks, these 11,000 people want is a candidate -- maybe not the whole Republican Party, but these 11,000, they want somebody who can beat Barack Obama; it isn't about they have a certain set of issues that they want a candidate...
DAVID BROOKS, New York Times columnist: Not for these 11,000. These are true believers.
JIM LEHRER: OK.
DAVID BROOKS: These are -- this is not your Republican committee person who owns a car dealership somewhere out in the country.
MARK SHIELDS: Yes.
DAVID BROOKS: These are true believers. And they will -- they are going to have a straw poll. And, traditionally, somebody like Ron Paul will win this thing.
And so they want the hard-core stuff. And so -- and they want -- they want to establish principle. And the other aspect of this group, increasingly true of the party activists as a whole, is they are quite libertarian, not that interested in social conservative issues. And so they will tend to gravitate towards somebody like Paul.
Just on the -- on the Egypt thing...
JIM LEHRER: Yes.
DAVID BROOKS: ... there -- there was an interesting split among the Glenn Beck types, really with delusional ravings about the caliphate coming back, and I would say the conservative establishment, which saw this as a fulfillment of Ronald Reagan's democracy dream.
And there was that interesting split. And there were really some fights, including between Bill Kristol and Glenn Beck this week...
MARK SHIELDS: That's right. Yes.
JIM LEHRER: Kristol taking the position that...
DAVID BROOKS: ... saying, this is wonderful. What are you raving about? It is not the taking over of the Muslim fundamentalists.
And Glenn Beck, and you -- for the first real time, you began to see a lot of really serious conservatives taking on Beck and people like that, and saying, you know, your theories are just wacky.
Ah! Sane conservatives ARE watching the wackos.
Excerpt on Egypt
JIM LEHRER: All right, let's go, finally, back to Egypt.
David, what word would you use, historic, cosmic, or whatever about...
DAVID BROOKS: Cosmic -- cosmically historic, meta-cosmic?
JIM LEHRER: Yes.
DAVID BROOKS: You know, I mean, Hisham Melhem said it -- said earlier it's -- there just are very few countries that are really at the beating heart of the Middle East. And Iraq and Egypt are two of them. And they are both stumbling in some form toward democracy. And that is bound to have huge ripples.
And the second is, if you just take a long historical sweep of this, you go back to about 1974, when the Portuguese dictatorship fell, you go around the world, 85 autocracies have fallen. Historians will look back on these...
JIM LEHRER: Eighty-five?
DAVID BROOKS: Eighty-five. One hundred countries have seen threats at least to autocracies, and 85 have fallen. And they haven't all made it to democracy. Some of them are sort of in a gray zone in the middle.
But, when historians look back on our era, they will be struck by how this contagion, this went -- you know, leapt up around the world in places unexpected. And people have a sense in their head that: I want to be -- to have dignity, I have got to be in a certain kind of country, democratic and open. And if I don't live in that country, I feel humiliated.
And that is sort of a mental change that has just swept the world.
JIM LEHRER: Mark?
MARK SHIELDS: Joyful, ecstatic. It's a -- it's bottom-up. This wasn't orchestrated from the top, no artillery, no carpet bombing, no IEDs, unlike Iraq, no -- no body counts, just a remarkable, remarkable, historic achievement.
And I think that it puts a brand-new face for those outside of the Middle East on Islam. I mean, this is -- al-Qaida hates what happened, is happening right now in Egypt. I mean, this is an -- this is an achievement of such signal proportion, you can't -- look, this is a, what, 90 percent Islamic nation.
And you look at Muslim faith, and you look at that right now, and you say, wait a minute, how different can they be? They crave democracy. They -- self-determination.
JIM LEHRER: It was a secular -- it was a secular...
MARK SHIELDS: Secular, better for their future. I mean, just a remarkable, remarkable moment, and encouraging.
This should be a message to non-Muslim people of "the West."
As for Americans, we should NOT paint all Muslims as terrorist. It was one faction of fanatic Islamists who attacked America on 9/11.
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