Other than no-one reading anything, it's a great life

It's already clear that the burden of imposing the "smart conservative" narrative on Dubya's value-voting victory is proving too onerous a task for NYT columnist David Brooks. Because in today's attempt to attribute Dubya's success to people who live in America's answer to Slough, he trips up on the quality of life in these places:

The places I [Brooks] was writing about are so new, and civic life is as yet so spare, there are few lecture series or big libraries to host author talks.

But a few sentences later:

On the one hand, people move to exurbs because they want some order in their lives ... they head for towns with ample living space, intact families, child-friendly public culture and intensely enforced social equality.

On second thought, maybe he's onto to something. If there is a civic culture out there, it's a child centered one -- which might explain Daily Howler's utterly accurate depiction of the rationale offered by some loud-mouthed but easily offended red staters for their votes:

Boo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo! For ourselves, we’re tired of all the blubbering self-pity which emanates hourly from talk radio. We heard it yesterday, right here in this city [Baltimore], as a "balanced" panel of four talk-show conservatives cried about "elitist" Dems who went to Harvard. Boo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo! Big wet tears splashed down their cheeks as these fakers and phonies tossed hay to the herd.