Bobo explains it for us

David Brooks is off his meds again.

Well, that’s the charitable explanation for “The Lincoln Caucus”, today's column by the second-dumbest man ever to hold a regular gig at the NYT. The less charitable explanation is that he knows this is bullshit and published it anyway:

...I’m suggesting some number of delegates organize themselves into a caucus called the Lincoln Caucus. The Lincoln Caucus would not be an explicitly anti-Trump caucus or an anti-Cruz caucus. It would just be a caucus made up of delegates who are not happy with the choices currently before them.

I'm not sure a single hotel room will hold this crowd. You might want to reserve a suite. Please proceed, David.

I’m suggesting that the delegates who signed up to be members of the Lincoln Caucus make a pledge to work and vote together at the convention. The first thing the Lincoln Caucus would do is plant a flag for a different style of Republicanism. Members of the caucus would remind the country that there still are Republicans who believe in prudent globalism, reform conservative ideas to lift up the working class. There are still Republicans who believe in certain standards of polite behavior in public and pragmatic compromise.

And all fifty of them are right here in this cloakroom! It’s for damn sure none of ’em are in the House of Representatives.

If the Republican ticket gets devastated in November, members of the Lincoln Caucus could say, “We stood for something different,” and they’d be in a good position to lead the rebuilding process.

Because there's nothing that the misogynistic, white supremacist, snake-handling, knuckle-dragging, dominionist brownshirt fuckwits comprising the GOP “base” are yearning to hear more than “We told you so, you appalling rustics!”

But the Lincoln Caucus would primarily serve more immediate ends. First, the Lincoln Caucus would work with the rules committee to get rid of any party bylaws that inhibit delegate flexibility at the convention.

Uh-huh. Why shouldn't the delegates have the flexibility to ignore the will of the voters, fuckwits though they be, who sent them to Cleveland? Starting in November, I imagine Brooks will be telling us that we need more flexibility in the Electoral College.

[This process] would also create a democratic path toward a Republican nominee who is not Trump or Cruz. Remember, the members of the caucus would be delegates, not Washington insiders. They would be a committeeman from Missouri or a state rep from Ohio. They’d be tied to the grass roots, and the press would be all over these people at the convention. This is the best way to get a non-Trump/Cruz candidate without sparking riots in the streets.

Yeah, good luck with that, Dave. Also, your average committeeman from Missouri and state rep from Ohio isn't the chamber of commerce type you used to run into at the Applebee’s salad bar. He's likelier to be a raving teahadist. Hell, he's likely to be leading the riots after he learns that his betters have settled upon Connecticut Republican Rodney F. Richpigge IV as the party's standard bearer.

Mostly, members of the Lincoln Caucus would stand up for the legitimate rights of the party. In our republican system, it is parties that choose nominees; not primary voters. Parties are lasting institutions that manage coalitions, preserve historical commitments, protect us from flash-in-the-pan demagogues and impose restraints on the excessively ambitious.

In other words, the passions of the rabble should properly be guided, corrected and, if need be, overridden outright by sensible chaps who think like…David Brooks. I am so looking forward to this train wreck.

For the rest, I'd observe, at the risk of irking Godwin's ghost, that today’s GOP has as about much right to name a faction after Lincoln as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party would to have formed a Dietrich Bonhoeffer Caucus.