In a September 16 New York Times column, David Brooks wrote that Dinesh D'Souza's recent Forbes article about President Obama contained “untethered assertions” and that Newt Gingrich “embraced” D'Souza's “offensive theory” that Obama “adopted his father's position that capitalism and freedom are code words for economic plunder.”

From Brooks' column:

This doesn't mean that the Tea Party influence will be positive for Republicans over the long haul. The movement carries viruses that may infect the G.O.P. in the years ahead. Its members seek traditional, conservative ends, but they use radical means. Along the way, the movement has picked up some of the worst excesses of modern American culture: a narcissistic sense of victimization, an egomaniacal belief in one's own rightness and purity, a willingness to distort the truth so that every conflict becomes a contest of pure good versus pure evil.

The Tea Party style is beginning to replicate itself in parts of the conservative world. Dinesh D'Souza's Forbes cover article, “How Obama Thinks,” contained the sort of untethered assertions that have become the lingua franca of this movement. Obama got his subversive radicalism from his father's grave, D'Souza postulated: “He adopted his father's position that capitalism and freedom are code words for economic plunder.” The fact that Newt Gingrich embraced this offensive theory is a sign of how severely the normal intellectual standards have been weakened.

But that damage is all in the future. Right now, the Tea Party doesn't matter. The Republicans don't matter. The economy and the Democrats are handing the G.O.P. a great, unearned revival. Nothing, it seems, is more scary than one-party Democratic control.

Previously:

Memo to Forbes: D'Souza's “facts” are indeed in contention

Gingrich: Obama is engaged in “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior”

Highbrow birtherism: Conservatives attack Obama as an “African colonial”

Newt Gingrich's history of bigoted remarks