David Frum on why the GOP has lost its mind

Politics • November 2011 • Views: 3,720

An extremely well written essay by David Frum about how the GOP has gone completely off the rails. As a former Republican myself, his account rings very true.

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12 comments

freetoken Mon, Nov 21, 2011 3:49:18am

An unusually lengthy essay compared to what most pundits put out. But my question for Frum is simply this: what took you so long to realize these things?

(I Stand By What I Said Whatever It Was) Mon, Nov 21, 2011 4:03:12am

I guess that means that in the eyes of the average GOP voter, Frum has completed his transformation from RINO to Commie.

Charleston Chew Mon, Nov 21, 2011 4:32:19am

For Frum, the GOP has become a kind of "Hotel California".

Charleston Chew Mon, Nov 21, 2011 4:38:12am

This paragraph bears repeating:

It was not so long ago that Texas governor Bush denounced attempts to cut the earned-income tax credit as “balancing the budget on the backs of the poor.” By 2011, Republican commentators were noisily complaining that the poorer half of society are “lucky duckies” because the EITC offsets their federal tax obligations—or because the recession had left them with such meager incomes that they had no tax to pay in the first place. In 2000, candidate Bush routinely invoked “churches, synagogues, and mosques.” By 2010, prominent Republicans were denouncing the construction of a mosque in lower Manhattan as an outrageous insult. In 2003, President Bush and a Republican majority in Congress enacted a new prescription-drug program in Medicare. By 2011, all but four Republicans in the House and five in the Senate were voting to withdraw the Medicare guarantee from everybody under age 55. Today, the Fed’s pushing down interest rates in hopes of igniting economic growth is close to treason, according to Governor Rick Perry, coyly seconded by TheWall Street Journal. In 2000, the same policy qualified Alan Greenspan as the “greatest central banker in the history of the world,” according to Perry’s mentor, Senator Phil Gramm. Today, health reform that combines regulation of private insurance, individual mandates, and subsidies for those who need them is considered unconstitutional and an open invitation to “death panels.” A dozen years ago, a very similar reform was the Senate Republican alternative to Hillarycare. Today, stimulative fiscal policy that includes tax cuts for almost every American is “socialism.” In 2001, stimulative fiscal policy that included tax cuts for rather fewer Americans was an economic-recovery program.

CuriousLurker Mon, Nov 21, 2011 5:00:25am

re: #2 000G

I guess that means that in the eyes of the average GOP voter, Frum has completed his transformation from RINO to Commie.

LOL, sometimes you really have a way with words. Too true.

Decatur Deb Mon, Nov 21, 2011 5:17:24am

Wohah--used to read the Frum Forum just to watch him squirm. Once it became obvious that he was wrong but not dishonest, the fun went away. What happens when bloggers turn away from unsupportable positions? Must be a history of that somewhere...

JRCMYP Mon, Nov 21, 2011 6:11:31am

I've always like Frum. Even when I didn't agree with him. He and Juan Williams should start their own network. lol

(I Stand By What I Said Whatever It Was) Mon, Nov 21, 2011 6:16:54am

Powerful part:

[I]t’s telling that that movement has failed time and again to produce even a remotely credible candidate for president. Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich: The list of tea-party candidates reads like the early history of the U.S. space program, a series of humiliating fizzles and explosions that never achieved liftoff. A political movement that never took governing seriously was exploited by a succession of political entrepreneurs uninterested in governing—but all too interested in merchandising. Much as viewers tune in to American Idol to laugh at the inept, borderline dysfunctional early auditions, these tea-party champions provide a ghoulish type of news entertainment each time they reveal that they know nothing about public affairs and have never attempted to learn. But Cain’s gaffe on Libya or Perry’s brain freeze on the Department of Energy are not only indicators of bad leadership. They are indicators of a crisis of followership. The tea party never demanded knowledge or concern for governance, and so of course it never got them.

(I Stand By What I Said Whatever It Was) Mon, Nov 21, 2011 6:24:24am

Equally powerful:

[T]he thought leaders on talk radio and Fox do more than shape opinion. Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics. Outside this alternative reality, the United States is a country dominated by a strong Christian religiosity. Within it, Christians are a persecuted minority. Outside the system, President Obama—whatever his policy errors—is a figure of imposing intellect and dignity. Within the system, he’s a pitiful nothing, unable to speak without a teleprompter, an affirmative-action phony doomed to inevitable defeat. Outside the system, social scientists worry that the U.S. is hardening into one of the most rigid class societies in the Western world, in which the children of the poor have less chance of escape than in France, Germany, or even England. Inside the system, the U.S. remains (to borrow the words of Senator Marco Rubio) “the only place in the world where it doesn’t matter who your parents were or where you came from.”

aagcobb Mon, Nov 21, 2011 6:46:21am

re: #9 000G

Another example, outside the system, global warming is a significant threat to the well-being of humanity which requires serious action be taken. Within the system, its a hoax being perpetrated by a combination of money-grubbing "scientists" and Marxists bent on destroying America.

Romantic Heretic Mon, Nov 21, 2011 6:47:17am

I've been following David Frum for years. He originally wrote a column for the Toronto Stun, I mean, Sun. He always struck me as one of those self satisfied, heartless 'conservatives' who was born into privilege (his mother was one of the premier journalists in Canada at the time) and used politics to excuse his good fortune. In short, my lip curled in contempt every time I read him.

He now strikes me as less heartless, but still sale satisfied. And I'm gaining a lot of respect for his courage and honesty.

He and I never agree on policy but my lip doesn't curl in contempt every time I read him now.

Charleston Chew Mon, Nov 21, 2011 8:34:05am

re: #7 JRCMYP