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SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including what we learned about the Supreme Court this session, new presidential candidates Gov. Chris Christie and former Sen. Jim Webb, as well as controversial comments made by Donald Trump about immigrants.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): And, as we do every Friday, we turn to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks, who joins us today from Aspen, Colorado.
So, gentlemen, the Supreme Court, I think you could say it went out with a bang this week, David, issuing historic decisions on everything from same-sex marriage to the president’s health care law, much more, and with some interesting divisions among the conservatives.
What have we learned about the court, do you think, from this session, and how much of an issue is it going to be on the campaign trail?
DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times: Well, the interesting one to me is the same-sex marriage decision, which hit a lot of social conservatives extremely hard.
A great sense of fear that they are going to be labeled as bigots if they disagree with gay marriage, a sense that the culture war they have been fighting is one they have lost. And I’m — interesting to see how they reacted.
My basic view is that for 30 years, a lot of social conservatives have been fighting a culture war oriented around the sexual revolution, around contraception, gay marriage and other issues having to do with sexual activity. And I do think that that’s sort of not the fight they’re going to win anymore. The country is moving pretty far to the left on that.
And I would like to see social conservatives do in public what they do in private, which is to do a lot of work for — show work for the poor, heal the social fabric, tithe to the poor, heal the lonely and really address some of the economic and social dislocations we’re seeing in the country. That’s an endemic part of the social conservative lifestyle, but it hasn’t been part of their public message.
And that’s been a disaster for them. So I guess I think the wise choice, both from a Biblical and also from a political point of view, is to emphasize to the public that the key cultural revolution we need now is one to repair the social fabric, and the sexual revolution and views on the definition of marriage are important. And no one’s asking anybody to renounce them, but should be second-order businesses, given the actual problem we face today.
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