On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks stated that conservatives have a “basis in thinking that a lot of federal spending was going toward one ideological side more than the other. And so, that defund the left, which conservatives have talked about since I was a baby pundit many centuries ago, now they’re actually doing it.”
Brooks said that “when I was a baby pundit in my 20s, working at places like National Review and The Wall Street Journal editorial page, I recall writing pieces that said, defund the left. And in those days, we conservatives were upset about something called the Legal Services Corporation, which we thought was — skewed left. And since then, to be fair, the government has contracted with, I think, two-thirds of the nonprofits in this country to provide services. And a lot of those — money goes to pretty left-wing organizations. So, conservatives had some basis in thinking that a lot of federal spending was going toward one ideological side more than the other. And so, that defund the left, which conservatives have talked about since I was a baby pundit many centuries ago, now they’re actually doing it.”
He continued, “The problem is that, say — well, we’ll talk about ourselves, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Republicans have been going after that since diapers — since we were all in diapers. But there are always enough Republicans who understood what Jonathan just said, that, hey, I’m in Maine here and I like having some local media. And so, there was always that rump that would stop it. That rump is gone. And so, all the defunding the left that conservatives have been dreaming about for decades now, they’re doing it. And I should say perceived left. It’s not always that the institutions they think are left are left, anybody who doesn’t agree with them is left. And so, they’re having their way.”
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