Of all the partisan Republican pundits on the scene, David Frum is probably the most sensible. But occasionally he issues one of these pieces, in which his partisanship completely clouds his judgment: A Great Week for the GOP.

1) The Republican caucus accepted a deal to avert a government shutdown. The deal is a huge victory for governance Republicanism over talk radio conservatism.

It’s a “huge victory” because the GOP took the country to the very brink of a government shutdown over far-right issues like Planned Parenthood, NPR, and the Environmental Protection Agency… then backed down at the last minute? That’s a very odd definition of “victory:” fight like crazy for ideological nonsense, then cave in at the last possible opportunity.

2) Glenn Beck’s show was canceled. There remains plenty of angry extremism on the airwaves: Limbaugh, Levin, and so on. But the collapse in Beck’s ratings represents a heartening repudiation of John Birch society conspiracy-mongering by rank-and-file conservatives – despite the shameful attempt by Fox News to mainstream this junk.

This “repudiation” of conspiracy-mongering by the base exists only in David Frum’s imagination. I’ve seen absolutely no sign that the GOP base is turning away from conspiracy theories and atavistic racism, and the influence of groups like the John Birch Society is stronger than ever.

And despite the decline in ratings, Glenn Beck’s show was very popular with right wingers, right up to the end. A much more important factor in the canceling of Beck’s show: Fox News had lost tens of millions of dollars, due to the advertiser boycott. The show was canceled because Fox News was losing money. “Repudiation” had nothing to do with it, and Beck remains a hero to the right wing base.

3) Donald Trump shouldered aside Newt Gingrich in Republican primary preferences. This may not sound like good news but bear with me: It used to be that the person offering the Obama-is-African-not-American message to the Republican primary electorate was a former speaker of the House, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a Fox News contributor: in other words, an eminent and respectable personage. Now Trump has stolen the Gingrich spotlight, knocked Gingrich out of the top 3. With the result that the bearer of the Obama-not-American message is a clownish TV personality in an absurd hairdo. That’s progress. Birtherism is being quarantined within the GOP. Better if it were repudiated and extinguished, but although this week was positive, it was not miraculous.

“Birtherism is being quarantined?” Is Frum kidding? A major new political figure comes out as a Birther and sees his popularity skyrocket in the polls, and Frum thinks this is “quarantine?”

On the contrary, Birtherism is absolutely running rampant in the GOP base — every poll shows that it’s spreading, not decreasing — and Fox News and right wing radio are pimping this brain-dead conspiracy theory more than ever.

This piece by David Frum is pure wishful thinking, with almost no relation to current right wing reality.