Oh, so I guess he’s over-reacting and conservatives aren’t electing batshit-insane people who want to enact destructive policies.
If you’d bothered reading the article, you’d see he’s saying the exact opposite:
I am haunted by the Bush experience, although it seems almost presumptuous for someone who played such a minor role to feel so much unease. The people who made the big decisions certainly seem to sleep well enough. Yet there is also the chance for something positive to come out of it all. True, some of my colleagues emerged from those years eager to revenge themselves and escalate political conflict: “They send one of ours to the hospital, we send two of theirs to the morgue.” I came out thinking, I want no more part of this cycle of revenge. For the past half-dozen years, I have been arguing that we conservatives need to follow a different course.
IOW, he realized he made a mistake and is trying to make up for it. He also says that as bad as Bush was, the tea party-driven agenda today is even worse. Coming from a conservative, that’s a positive step for the sanity of politics in the U.S.
You mean No True Conservative.
When Bush and Reagan are to the left of the tea party, Frum can hardly be accused of becoming a leftie, but it’s typical that your response to his criticism is to attack and demonize him. The Islamo-fascists in Iran admire your methodology.
I’d guess it was when the USSR fell. Deprived of the biggest clearly-defined enemy, the Republicans began seeing enemies everywhere, since doing so has proven to be an effective political strategy. Nowadays, it ain’t commies that Americans need protecting from, it’s other Americans!
The call is coming from inside the country!
Short answer: “He’s just a RINO, nothing to see here, move along.”
Is Frum worried the GOP can’t win with this kind of hard-right line, or is he afraid of what happens when a GOP of that form does win?
I keep hearing that the wacky far right religious maniacs control the GOP.
So, how come a liberal counrty clubber named Romney is all set to win the nomination handily?
Because the whackjobs tried to float people who reflect their ideas. But as it happens, they’re uniformly stupid and uninformed.
Cite: Perry, Bachmann, Cain and Trump.
It amazes me when people who have worked in politics there whole lives suddenly realize what should be obvious to everyone. This reminds me of something from the blog Asymetrical Information: Jane’s Law about politics-The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane.
Parts of the opposition party goes nuts every time a member of the opposition is elected. Reagan was hated as a doddering old rascist fool who longed to cause nuclear war. Bush 1 was hated as an out of touch oil tycoon who started a war for oil. When Clinton was president there were theories about drug smuggling into Arkansas airports and lists of Clinton associates who mysteriously died. Bush 2 was hated as an idiot who could barely walk and chew gum at the same time and an evil genius who lied us into a war to enrich his vice president. Now Obama is portrayed as someone who can’t talk without a prompter and only cares about his golf game and where Michelle goes on vacation next.
This is the nature of democracy. Passion is what motivates people to become involved with politics, volunteer, donate, and vote. Jeremiads are what make people passionate, not soft soap. Thus we get the incendiary rhetoric that dominates today.
However, if you look beyond the rhetoric and to the actual substance there is plenty going on with the GOP that anyone who care about policy should be proud of. Governors such as Christie, Walker, Jindal, Daniels, and McConnell are successfully championing innovative fiscal reforms. The house Republicans got behind Ryan’s plan which is a responsible plan for leading the government away from fiscal collapse. The GOP plan in the supercommitte had good ideas for eliminating deductions so the government can raise tax revenue without hurting the economy.
At three a.m., yet.
He wants the GOP to step back far enough to salvage its relevance. At this point, I’d rather see it crash and burn and wait for some other party to coalesce and offer a sane alternative to the Democrats.
See posts #2, #4 and #5. Even they are more in touch with reality than you appear to be.
There is no one more fervent than a recent convert. Witness David Frum. Or, for the other side of the coin, David Mamet.
Better still, nobody emerges to the right of the Dems; rather, the Dems themselves move right to fill the vacuum and snap up the votes – and they need not move very far at all, to absorb the whole of the rational center-right – while at the same time a viable new party to the left of the Dems emerges, say, the Working Families Party, and that could be our new two-party system. A party system which gives the far-left a kind of a home where they’re at least listened to some (that is, the WFP would be a big enough tent to hold Commies and such), while at the same time leaving the far-right homeless and marginalized like the left has been for the past several decades. It’s perfect! 
Frum has not converted to or from anything recently, he has been a Republican as long as he’s been involved in American politics.
This is one of those situations where your politics will appear to “change” over a decade or two if you only hold still, in your views, while your party shifts leftward or rigthward around you.
It sounds like both. He’s very aware that if the Republicans don’t rein in the crazy soon, then the 2012 election is already lost. And he also seems very aware that if the crazy continues to gain prominence in the party, then 2016 and 2020 are as good as lost as well.
But he also seems genuinely appalled at some of the people who have taken up the Republican banner and the causes they stand for.
Context. It’s Terr, therefore he’s saying that Frum, because he’s actually advocating for a retreat from some of the more insane and heartless characteristics of today’s Republican Party, has converted to Communism. Or to the Democratic Party. Same thing, really, in Terr’s mind.
“They’re evil” does not demonstrate an especially impressive command of reality, as opposed to a discussion of the facts. The Republic Party is an organization with some pretty alarming issues - hell, they don’t have issues, they have a subscription - but “they’re evil” doesn’t show any sort of understanding of what they are or of reality in general. And calling David Frum a racist is just ignorant, so that’s quite in opposition to reality.
I mean, Frum has already been likened to a Nazi. The thread was Godwinized within 14 posts.
Neither does a representation of any of the Pub fiscal or budgetary ideas floated in the past couple of years as things to be taken seriously.