I've heard a lot of idiotic statements in my lifetime, but this one by David Brooks on the PBS Newshour this Friday evening takes the cake. Brooks is so desperate to paint Mitt Romney as some "every man" during this GOP primary race, that he actually goes so far as to call him someone who is "running to be Tom Sawyer" and he thinks that's going to work for his campaign.

This makes my head hurt trying to even figure out what there could possibly be about Mitt Romney that would make the analogy of Tom Sawyer pop into that centrist loving, GOP apologizing, false equivalency propagating head of his, so I'm not even going to try. I'll leave that to anyone else that wants to analyze what goes on in the brain of David Brooks.

In the mean time, here's his hackery from this Friday's the PBS Newshour:

JIM LEHRER: All right, let's talk about Romney for a moment, beginning with you, David. How do you read the situation on Romney right now, where he stands and what his prospects are in Iowa?

DAVID BROOKS: He's exuding confidence. I think his people are exuding confidence.

I went to a rally this morning in the rain, and he was he was with Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. And it was just a smooth, effective, not-too-long, but sort of a corporate race. It was like George Bush in year 2000.

And what's interesting is the tactic he's taking. It's very short on policy. It's very long on patriotism. He talks about driving across the country looking at the national parks. He talks -- he sings, or at least recites, some verses from "The Star-Spangled Banner." It's as if he's running to be Tom Sawyer.

And I think it's a way to establish a connection with voters, even despite questions they may have about Mormonism or anything else. I think it's a way to distinguish, in his eyes, between him and Barack Obama. He's more mainstream.

And then, again, this theme of returning, as -- posing as Tom Sawyer, he's returning to some earlier values. And, you know, that may play this year. Mark is absolutely right. Rick Santorum and a lot of the candidates are very negative, the guy who won it four years ago, Mike Huckabee, very positive. But the mood here has darkened appreciably. And maybe they're in tune with what the voters are hearing right now.

And they pay this guy how much money to write a column for the New York Times every week? David Brooks... more proof that wingnut welfare pays much better than actually having anything you talk or write about actually based in reality.

For more on why David Brooks should never be allowed to write another column or appear on television again, I highly recommend Driftglass' tireless work following his legacy of whitewashing horrible right wing Republican policies and trying to dress them up to sound reasonable to most of the public.