Well, it wasn’t. You said “They already use part-timers instead of giving a lot of OT to full timers.” Overtime is not a benefit. If you were concerned about fiscal responsibility, you would either support hiring more full time cops if proper service demands it or using part-timers to plug occasional holes otherwise. You wouldn’t want them building in overtime pay into standard operating procedure.
I am not going to go back and search out the the Frum quote to read it in the context of whatever else he may have said then. But since I can’t imagine he was talking about conservatism in any other context than how it is practiced today by Republicans in a democracy (okay, not exactly a democracy…), is it not fair to assume that Frum believes that if they abandon democracy, they are by definition also abandoning conservatism?
Of course you can. The Nazis were, the Falangists were, the Third Position is… it’s not the most common political position, but radical conservatism (also known as reactionary politics) isn’t exactly unknown.
It does mean those things. It can also mean a member of the Conservative Party of Great Britain, or a member of a similar party (I’m going for US Republicans here, obviously.) Surely that is how From meant it, right?
Are you saying that moves made by Democrats with the purpose of increasing the visibility of their actions are equivalent to moves made by Republicans with the purpose of decreasing the visibility of their actions?
And Republicans really need to learn that there’s more to governing than just eating a bunch of “fuck you sundaes”. The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Democrats want to make things better for everyone, and don’t care that that incidentally makes thing better for Republicans as well, while Republicans want to make things worse for Democrats, and don’t care that that incidentally makes things worse for everyone.