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Liberals backing away from their preelection and election-time commitments have a touch of the wrong Marx — Groucho, not Karl. A quotation attributed to the comedian goes something like this: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them, well, I have others.” And that’s the problem. Even if we might be inclined to welcome a tepid, mealy-mouthed mea culpa from Brooks and company, who can trust them? And who wants their advice now? It seems far better to trust those who have long reached and maintained the conclusions and positions that cynical elites are now pretending to discover — the same people who’ll still believe those things, and be correct, when the political winds blow in a new direction.