# "When Did The GOP Lose Touch With Reality" by David Frum **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 28, 2011, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality-by-david-frum/604320 "2011-11-28T05:29:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality-by-david-frum/604320/1 "2011-11-28T05:29:30Z")
> **[David Frum on the GOP’s Lost Sense of Reality -- New York Magazine - Nymag](https://nymag.com/news/politics/conservatives-david-frum-2011-11/)** > > It’s a very strange experience to have your friends think you’ve gone crazy. Some will tell you so. Others will indulgently humor you. Still others will avoid you. More than a few will demand that the authorities do something to get you off the \[...\] A few quotes from the article: > [@](#): > > I’ve been a Republican all my adult life. I have worked on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, at Forbes magazine, at the Manhattan and American Enterprise Institutes, as a speechwriter in the George W. Bush administration. I believe in free markets, low taxes, reasonable regulation, and limited government. I voted for John McCain in 2008, and I have strongly criticized the major policy decisions of the Obama administration. But as I contemplate my party and my movement in 2011, I see things I simply cannot support. > [@](#): > > This is, unfortunately, not merely a concern for Republican voters. The conservative shift to ever more extreme, ever more fantasy-based ideology has ominous real-world consequences for American society. The American system of government can’t work if the two sides wage all-out war upon each other: House, Senate, president, each has the power to thwart the others. In prior generations, the system evolved norms and habits to prevent this kind of stonewalling. For example: Theoretically, the party that holds the Senate could refuse to confirm any Cabinet nominees of a president of the other party. Yet until recently, this just “wasn’t done.” In fact, quite a lot of things that theoretically could be done just “weren’t done.” Now old inhibitions have given way. Things that weren’t done suddenly are done. > [@](#): > > 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.” > [@](#): > > It’s the job of conservatives in this crisis to show a better way. But it’s one thing to point out (accurately) that President Obama’s stimulus plan was mostly a compilation of antique Democratic wish lists, and quite another to argue that the correct response to the worst collapse since the thirties is to wait for the economy to get better on its own. It’s one thing to worry (wisely) about the long-term trend in government spending, and another to demand big, immediate cuts when 25 million are out of full-time work and the government can borrow for ten years at 2 percent. It’s a duty to scrutinize the actions and decisions of the incumbent administration, but an abuse to use the filibuster as a routine tool of legislation or to prevent dozens of presidential appointments from even coming to a vote.[…] This isn’t conservatism; it’s a going-out-of-business sale for the baby-boom generation. Powerful stuff, and hits the core of how I feel about the modern republican party, as well as most of their voters, very well. Thoughts? Criticisms? Discuss. ---
**Author:** ![Naxos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/50afbb/32.png) [@Naxos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Naxos)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality-by-david-frum/604320/2 "2011-11-28T05:34:00Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > Thoughts? Criticisms? Discuss. He’s just not as bad as the people voting for the likes of Gingrich and the incumbent Republicans in Congress. But he does support conservative politics, which are racist, exclusionary, exploitative and always support the wealthy minority elites to the detriment of the majority of working and poor people. That much he admits he does. He’s not complete trash, but trash, nonetheless. ---
**Author:** ![Esox\_Lucius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@Esox\_Lucius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esox_Lucius)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality-by-david-frum/604320/3 "2011-11-28T05:54:46Z")
Come on, give him credit. That’s actually sane stuff coming from a conservative for a change. His style of conservatism never ruined the country like the new style will. ---
**Author:** ![Naxos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/50afbb/32.png) [@Naxos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Naxos)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality-by-david-frum/604320/4 "2011-11-28T06:04:41Z")
> [@Esox\_Lucius](#): > > Come on, give him credit. That’s actually sane stuff coming from a conservative for a change. His style of conservatism never ruined the country like the new style will. It certainly did. He and his kind stood by and applauded when Reagan and Bush blew the deficit and debt through the roof for 16 years. He stood by and applauded during the last 40+ years of systematic funneling of the country’s wealth to the top 5% of the wealthy population. He stood by and applauded in support of all the lies to justify the recent wars in the M.E. He’s trash. If he says he won’t vote for Republicans again in his life I may reconsider. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality-by-david-frum/604320/5 "2011-11-28T06:09:26Z")
Basically, relatively sane but evil Republicans decades ago made a political deal with the devil with the most insane and bigoted members of the Right, who have now largely taken over. And only now are some of them feeling buyer’s remorse. Well, if they’d had some principles in the first place then the present situation wouldn’t have arisen. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality-by-david-frum/604320/6 "2011-11-28T06:17:24Z")
For the record: Esox made the most sane post of the last 4. -.- ---
**Author:** ![Belowjob2.0](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Belowjob2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Belowjob2.0)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality-by-david-frum/604320/7 "2011-11-28T06:24:25Z")
I have the feeling that the Republican leadership is due for a “have you at last no sense of decency” moment. What they’re doing is outrageous and destructive and can’t continue. At some point, the fire they started burns down their own house. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality-by-david-frum/604320/8 "2011-11-28T06:27:58Z")
I was just discussing this with some friends. Frum is a decent person (at least he’s the most reasonable Republican I’ve seen as a talking head) and it takes a lot of courage to point out the craziness in his party now. ---
**Author:** ![Naxos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/50afbb/32.png) [@Naxos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Naxos)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality-by-david-frum/604320/9 "2011-11-28T06:42:09Z")
> [@Lobohan](#): > > I was just discussing this with some friends. Frum is a decent person (at least he’s the most reasonable Republican I’ve seen as a talking head) and it takes a lot of courage to point out the craziness in his party now. B.S. Before the Iraq war there were one or two nationally published conservative commentators that were doubting the validity of the Bush admin. claims of knowing where the WMD were. A couple of national conservative media voices also doubted the sanity of the fiscal recklessness of the Republican administrations since the 1980’s. They all quickly shut up their traps in submission to the directive of their political alliance to conservatism. Conservatives crossed the point of no return several decades ago. They gave their thumbs up for destructive acts that had detrimental effects in all aspects of society. Some of them can claim to have second thoughts now, and that’s better than nothing, but they did contribute to a large scale of destruction and until they acknowledge it, whatever they say is meaningless garbage. ---
**Author:** ![Esox\_Lucius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@Esox\_Lucius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esox_Lucius)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality-by-david-frum/604320/10 "2011-11-28T06:48:05Z")
> [@Naxos](#): > > It certainly did. > > He and his kind stood by and applauded when Reagan and Bush blew the deficit and debt through the roof for 16 years. > > He stood by and applauded during the last 40+ years of systematic funneling of the country’s wealth to the top 5% of the wealthy population. > > He stood by and applauded in support of all the lies to justify the recent wars in the M.E. > > He’s trash. If he says he won’t vote for Republicans again in his life I may reconsider. I said _Frum’s_ style of conservatism. Although he worked for a while with the Bush administration, he roundly condemn Bush’s record in the article. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality-by-david-frum/604320/11 "2011-11-28T06:52:40Z")
The problem is that the modern GOP didn’t reach where its at now in a vacuum. For years, people like Frum slowly eroded public confidence in our elected officials and government, demonized unions, stripped the poor of its protections, and deregulated industry. Its fine to repent. I’ll be ecstatic if more conservatives start thinking like Frum now. But its almost like too little too late. And whatever changes they wish to see, given how responsible they are for these insane groups and ideas right now, I have little confidence that they’ll pull back enough to be able to see themselves in the mirror and realize how complicit they are in all this ---
**Author:** ![Esox\_Lucius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@Esox\_Lucius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esox_Lucius)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality-by-david-frum/604320/12 "2011-11-28T07:07:22Z")
> [@Belowjob2.0](#): > > What they’re doing is outrageous and destructive and can’t continue. At some point, the fire they started burns down their own house. David Frum makes that exact point, too: “In funding the tea-party movement, they [Republican billionaires] are actually acting against their own longer-term interests, for it is the richest who have the most interest in political stability, which depends upon broad societal agreement that the existing distribution of rewards is fair and reasonable. If the social order comes to seem unjust to large numbers of people, what happens next will make Occupy Wall Street look like a street fair.” ---
**Author:** ![Icerigger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icerigger/32/432_2.png) [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality-by-david-frum/604320/13 "2011-11-28T11:22:46Z")
I think maybe a few of them are realizing the wheels are starting to come off the wagon. For the past 30 years the supply siders have almost succeed in destroying the middle class along with the industrial capacity of the nation. Before, the middle class was important because they were the ones who manufactured the goods that made the large companies profit, this is no longer the case. The sad truth is the middle class had to use excessive credit to prop up their falling wages leaving a hollow shell, I really believe it’s too late to change things and we are headed for the ultimate collapse. BTW Frum is an asshole and his wife is one of those full blown anti-feminist women who believes women should be in the kitchen, excluding herself of course. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality-by-david-frum/604320/14 "2011-11-28T13:32:40Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Basically, relatively sane but evil Republicans decades ago made a political deal with the devil with the most insane and bigoted members of the Right, who have now largely taken over. And only now are some of them feeling buyer’s remorse. Well, if they’d had some principles in the first place then the present situation wouldn’t have arisen. Kind of like the German generals who turned against Hitler. After they started losing the war… ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality-by-david-frum/604320/15 "2011-11-28T13:45:45Z")
How do any of the things you detractors are talking about address what the guy actually said? What are you claiming that he said that is either evil or destructive? It honestly seems to me to be the most reasonable defense of conservatism I’ve ever seen. He even condemns the corporatism inherent in the party today. He condemns taxing the poor and not the rich. For this poster, he has taken nearly all the things I object to about conservatism, and turned them on his head. I actually had to fight to remember why I consider myself liberal rather than conservative. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality-by-david-frum/604320/16 "2011-11-28T15:20:03Z")
No conservative is surprised to read stuff like this from David Frum, who has been veering steadily leftward for years. That said, it’s delightful to watch the guy get pilloried by the far left! It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy! I mean, what did you think, Dave- that the lefties were suddenly going to embrace you as one of them? But hey, I know- try self-flagellation. Try sackcloth and ashes. Maybe THEN they’ll like you (and even if they don’t, we conservatives will enjoy watching you humiliate yourself further). ---
**Author:** ![newcomer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e5b9ba/32.png) [@newcomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/newcomer)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality-by-david-frum/604320/17 "2011-11-28T15:27:40Z")
Is the point here that Bush Administration was the Republican shining light? And all this venom from the guy who came up with “axis of evil” phrase. That’s some mighty mind righ there. I think he is just being a tiny bit self-serving and somewhat bitter that nobody is calling him for advice. Plus he got fired from AEI so what’s a guy to do? ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality-by-david-frum/604320/18 "2011-11-28T15:49:56Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > No conservative is surprised to read stuff like this from David Frum, who has been veering steadily leftward for years. > > That said, it’s delightful to watch the guy get pilloried by the far left! > > It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy! I mean, what did you think, Dave- that the lefties were suddenly going to embrace you as one of them? > > But hey, I know- try self-flagellation. Try sackcloth and ashes. Maybe THEN they’ll like you (and even if they don’t, we conservatives will enjoy watching you humiliate yourself further). Did anything he write resonate with you? Or are you just going to reflexively dismiss anything he says now because he’s “veered left” and must therefore be wrong because he’s on “the other team”? ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality-by-david-frum/604320/19 "2011-11-28T15:52:29Z")
What we’re looking at is one of the past cheerleaders for Republican intransigence and aggressive religiosity and utterly insane rhetoric realizing that the yokels actually BELIEVE all of the bullshit that his party spread around in order to attract said yokels, and now the political operators of the party are more or less REQUIRED to treat said bullshit as an operating paradigm instead of a campaign slogan. He’s not appalled that all of this is associated with his party. He’s appalled that his party was forced into actually _adopting_ all of this by the base that he and his ilk created. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality-by-david-frum/604320/20 "2011-11-28T16:16:42Z")
> [@Euphonious\_Polemic](#): > > Did anything he write resonate with you? Or are you just going to reflexively dismiss anything he says now because he’s “veered left” and must therefore be wrong because he’s on “the other team”? I’ve been familiar with David Frum for years. He was ALWAYS the kind of “conservative” who enjoyed posturing to liberals as the “reasonable” one, unlike all those other uncouth yahoos on the right. Frum has ALWAYS been the kind of guy who wrote articles with titles like “The Conservative Case for \_\_\_\_\_\_\_ (fill in your pet liberal cause).” Which means he NEVER inspired much trust among conservatives, even when he was ostensibly one of us. On social issues, Frum always leaned left. On economic issues, he’s gradually moved leftward (“um, you know, maybe high taxes and a massive welfare state aren’t so bad”). Indeed, the ONLY issue on which Frum was reliably conservative was foreign policy, and even then, that’s only if you equate “conservative” with “hawkish” (Pat Buchanan wouldn’t). Frum was ready to drum ANYBODY out of the Republican party who wasn’t a hawk on the Middle East. After that, he has a lot of nerve posing as the voice of the Big Tent. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality-by-david-frum/604320.md?page=2)