To understand David Frum, you need to know the unabridged version of The Emperor’s New Clothes. Before that little kid yelled out and everybody finally admitted the emperor was naked, two other people make a ruckus.
The first one was an honest, straightforward fellow who showed up early in the procession. He had been a fan of the emperor for a short time, but he soon recognized that his highness was the kind of idiot who would let a couple of smart tailors parade him around with his junk hanging out. For honestly declaring that the emperor was naked, as well as an idiot, the emperor ordered him beheaded, and all the emperor’s courtiers threw rocks at him.
The second man was an ex-courtier who had gotten his position by sucking up to a prior emperor, even though he knew that the previous leader, like this one, was a moron. When the new emperor finally decided to parade around in the buff, and well after the first man was beheaded, the second man decided to announce that the emperor was naked. Unfortunately, his timing was a bit off, but since he was a member of the last wrecking crew, the emperor took pity on him. He merely had his guards kick him in the ass and point him in the other direction. Later, after the little boy yelled out, man #2 spirited him away, threw him down a well, and took credit for the ensuing revolution.
I’m sure this isn’t too subtle, but if you’re blotto like me, you might have missed that David Frum resembles man #2 far more than man #1.
Here’s a man who came up with “Axis of Evil”, who wrote a book defending the Iraq War and advocating the same treatment for Syria, and who ultimately endorsed Sarah Palin even though he knew she was completely unqualified. His problem today was timing, not an excess of honesty or nobility.
mantis
Ayup.
Now who’s the kid?
Svensker
I like this story. Is there a sequel?
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@mantis: The Quittah from Wasilla? Cantor?
MikeTheZ
Gah! Melissa Harris-Lacewell on Countdown called the teabaggers who have been launching attacks terrorists! Did she not get the “white people aren’t terrorists!” memo?
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: I thought McCain was the 6 year old…
WereBear
Couldna happened to a nicer guy.
dan robinson
Amen!
He is one of the jackasses who doesn’t like where his path has taken him and he thinks his ability to recognize his situation ennobles him.
Wrong-o.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Agreed about the timing and lack of nobility. But there is another and more sinister aspect of what happened to Frum. And that is the further distillation of pure wingnuttery that is the republican party. Bush’s henchmen, like Frum, were bad enough, and I would argue many farthings to the irresponsible right than his pappy, and Reagan and his capos. Now even Frum of Axis of Evil fame and preventative war via Cheney’s one percent solution thuggery, is too weak a tea for the baggers, and assorted other nuts that have taken over the GOP.
Now the darlings are Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, and I can’t help but wonder their expiration date for right wing purity.
## and BTW, I do like how you write mistermix.
mcc
It’s worth noting that if you look at what David Frum is saying, it comes across (at least to me) as much less “what you’re doing is dishonest and corrosive to America!” and much more “what you’re doing isn’t working very well!”. He seems to complain more about the tactical downsides to the current scorched-earth strategy than the real-world effects of that strategy. So his objection is not so much to lying and fearmongering but rather to lying and fearmongering badly, what we see here is essentially a professional objecting that the guys holding his old job are not doing it with as much finesse as he used to.
Which if you think about it, is the really scary thing: The Republicans have moved beyond kicking out people who feel what they are doing is wrong and are now into the realm of kicking out people who point out when they are making tactical mistakes against the Democrats.
JGabriel
@MikeTheZ:
About time someone did. Good for her.
.
beltane
What this means is that the GOP has shrugged off the neoconservatives and has gone back to basics and its roots in the Know Nothing Party. The AEI is soon to be irrelevant itself, with our without David Frum.
And Another Thing...
There’s also a chance that in person, he’s just an obnoxious guy who takes himself VERY seriously and is a pain to work with. I’ve seen him on TV on a variety of shows, and he just always comes off as a humorless, prudish a$$hole. There might not have been anybody willing to stand up for him in spite of his heresy.
phantomist
Are any of these people Scott McClellan?
Elisabeth
Frum lost his health insurance, too.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/03/aei_hits_david_frum_where_it_h.html
schrodinger's cat
Were the Republicans always this extreme? Or is this a more recent phenomenon?
Robin G
Quite. And we’re spiraling closer and closer to my Robspierre prediction.
Robin + 2
Incertus (Brian)
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Now the darlings are Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, and I can’t help but wonder their expiration date for right wing purity.
Well, it took them 4 years from Goldwater to get the Presidency back, but 30 to get Congress, and even then they couldn’t hold on to it that long. And I’m not convinced they’ve hit Goldwater level yet, though 2012 could certainly be it.
williamc
Thank fucking God!
I’m so tired of reading about David Frickin Frum as a hero all day! Has this whole country just gone mad and already forgot about the crap these Bush people did to us? WTF? Stop lionizing this prick and lay into him!
You nailed this. He’s walking around like the hero fireman that’s riding in to help put out a forest fire, expecting all of us to forget that HE’S ONE OF THE FUCKING ARSONISTS! I don’t take kindly to having my patriotism challenged by people who wrote the words of a President denying and defending torture (as he used to do all the time), and I sure as shoot don’t need him now that the crazy he helped unleashed is roaming the countryside destroying other people’s property…
Surreal American
Or which people will replace them as bedroom poster icons for the wingnut bobby soxers.
valdivia
OT and I don’t know if this has been mentioned in other threads but Ezra and Glenn Greenwald are going at it pretty hard at it on Twitter.
Linkmeister
I’d say person #1 is John DiIulio, the guy who coined the “Mayberry Macchiavelli” phrase.
beltane
@Incertus (Brian): Barry Goldwater will be seen as a high point in comparison to the depths they are approaching. They’ll still never get less than 45% of the vote thanks to Limbaugh and Fox nation.
eemom
@valdivia:
ya mean they’re fighting? Kewl!
Ez-ra! Ez-ra! Ez-RA!!
we can haz linky?
MobiusKlein
@williamc: He’s one of the arsonists that started having second thoughts. He went along with the cool kids doing wacky hijinks, but felt dirty about it, and finally admitted stuff after the statue of limitations expired.
Calouste
@mcc:
This.
Frum doesn’t see being the Party of No as a bad policy, he sees it as bad politics.
The dial is on 11 over what? Socio-economic policy really. And there are still real emotional issues to come that appeal to the rubes (immigration, DADT repeal), and of course the important stuff for the neo cons, like the expiry of tax cuts for the rich and -dismantling the New American Empire- withdrawal from Iraq. And where is that dial going to go? It’s going to break.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@schrodinger’s cat: I would say yes, at various times, though they used to call themselves democrats, among other things. The difference now, and why it will get worse imo, is the alignment of the parties between North and South and the rapidly changing demographics in this country favoring minorities that are catching up to the traditional white majority.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
God, I’m glad to hear someone put this into words. How many months elapsed between Frum’s book “The Right Man”, and the next one that called for Republicans to abandon Bushism? Barely a year, IIRC. And it was after that he went on Rachel Maddow to pick a fight about manners. Fuck him.
Dave Ruddell
It’s funny, I saw the title of this post, and thought “Hey isn’t that a song lyric? By that bald Irish…Sinead O’Connor! That was her name! Now what was the name of that song? ohhhhh, I get it”
Well played.
Robin G
@schrodinger’s cat:
The foundations were laid during the Reagan years, when the Republicans realized there were a lot of disaffected Southern former Dems to be had, and they started cultivating these useful idiots (see: Moral Majority). Then Clinton became president and cable news networks were in every living room, and the Republicans forged whole new propaganda machines to better utilize those useful idiots. They even found it worthwhile to get some of those useful idiots elected to office, because they’d be relatively easy to control, allowing for solid, top-down party unity.
But then they started relying too much on the useful idiots, and allowed the ratio of idiot to manipulator to grow too unbalanced. During the Bush administration, led by the King of the Useful Idiots (who was occupying the White House), the idiots started to take over. Now the original Republicans can’t control their beast. They’ve spent thirty years cultivating a party of morons, and now there’s no one but the morons left.
At least, that’s how I see it. I’m kind of drunk.
Robin + 2
valdivia
@eemom:
:)
yes fighting. Ezra Ezra!
linky
starts a few posts down about 2 hours ago
Joey Giraud
Whipping up fear and loathing in the 30 percenters is powerful voodoo, but damn dangerojus. The fire is starting to get out of control.
Frum is just afraid. Coward.
Urza
@schrodinger’s cat: Conservatives were always this crazy. You can look back to Clinton, civil rights, Kennedy, the New Deal, Civil War. Nixon had some serious paranoia issues with the young people all seemingly going hard liberal back in his day. I say conservatives because the ideology isn’t always tied to the same party. Also it goes back farther than the civil war, and honestly there’s a stream of this kind of crazy throughout history if you care to look for it.
It was inevitable the more they claimed conservatism and that the country was center right that the craziness would come back out.
You don’t remember them this crazy because they used to have false flags like tricle down economics to cover it over. During the Clinton years, much of the same carefully worded rhetoric was being used to incite those they always keep in the back pocket to take action. It hit a bit of a crescendo right before the Oklahoma City bombing. Then they shut up after a couple hundred innocents were killed, and moved on to the impeachment which was how they poisoned a generation of republican minds into thinking democrats are so awful. No we don’t need to get into their foibles, those were all minor mistakes that needn’t be investigated.
mr. whipple
LOL x eleventy gazillion.
The Bearded Blogger
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: @Calouste: I think, morality aside, the best electoral strategy for democrats would be to encourage and fuel the crazyness/purity spiral, forcing independents and moderates into the democratic camp. The cost would be a crazyfied, polarized and intransigent 30% of the country, which is not enough to win elections or control federal legislative chambers
The Bearded Blogger
@Urza: The thing is, they now have big media and internet as tools. A crazy man with a bycicle is not the same as a crazy man with a bulldozer
And Another Thing...
@schrodinger’s cat: There has been for at least 60 years. The most famous name is the John Birch Society. As a teenager I had a religion teacher who used to show us these Red menace films…which are quite like the current “the mooslims are coming to kill us.” They weren’t Democrats, most of them were Republicans. Today, the Eagle Forum is a direct descendant that was founded to avoid the stigma that the Birchers developed. They are a significant political force in Utah.
williamc
@MobiusKlein:
But Frum doesn’t sound like he disagrees with the policy that the teabaggers are advocating (and I think we have to admit, most of the R Party is these folks), he just doesn’t think they can win behaving like they are behaving and he wants them to listen to his way to win and they aren’t listening. That doesn’t sound like wising-up, that sounds like a tantrum.
@Robin G:
I don’t care how wasted you are, that seems about as perfect a summation of the past 30 years of Republicanism as one could come up with.
Pigs & Spiders
Anyone watching Lawrence O’Donnell interview 11 year old Marsellis Wallace? Pretty hysterical.
Ash Can
Frum’s assitude notwithstanding, it sure figures that AEI’s reaction would be to shoot the messenger.
MikeTheZ
House is voting on the reconciliation bill. Voting running at 147 yeas out of 216 needed. Of course no ReThugs vote yea
MikeTheZ
@Pigs & Spiders: The kid seems smart for age, but yeah, its awkward.
Pigs & Spiders
@MikeTheZ: Oh, the kid definitely has some brains, but the studio he’s in has clearly intimidated him. Lawrence did a pretty good job adjusting though.
mr. whipple
@Pigs & Spiders:
Kid is adorable.
JGabriel
schrodinger’s cat:
The Birchers were close to this being this extreme, but the mainstream GOP, led by rhetoric from Buckley and the National Review ironically enough, shut them out.
What we’re seeing now is extremism that has been gradually growing since the 60’s, starting with:
– Goldwater’s embrace of the far right;
– followed by Nixon’s embrace of the Southern Strategy;
– Reagan’s addition of appeal to religious fundamentalism through Falwell’s Moral Majority, and extreme deficit spending with the intent of breaking the government’s ability to fund social programs;
– adding Bill Kristol’s and Newt Gingrich’s strategy of constant opposition in the early to mid-90’s, along with encouraging a similar, but militarized, opposition to Democratic government in the militia movement (leading to Timothy McVeigh and setting a standard today’s tea partiers will no doubt feel a need to exceed);
– in the past decade, alleviating ethical qualms over violence and striking first through the Bush Administration’s practice of torture, etc., and the Fox News Channel’s mainstreaming of eliminationist rhetoric;
– and, most recently, the organizing and mainstreaming of cadres of thugs, via Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project and the Tea Parties to carry out violence at the district level.
So, no, the Republicans haven’t always been this extreme, but it’s a goal that one faction, at least, has been building towards for almost half-a-century.
.
WereBear
@Pigs & Spiders: Yes. He’s such a sweet kid; I wish him all the best.
ed
Nixon. Some go back to Goldwater, but Nixon’s really the beginning of the Modern Republican Party and when the Southern Strategy was initially employed. (Maybe Zeus to Goldwater’s Titan?) Rick Perlstein’s excellent “Nixonland” gives a nice history. The devolution from Nixon to Atwater to Rove/Cheney to Palin/Beck/Limbaugh is eerily predictable. Spooky even.
Anne Laurie
@mcc:
Shorter Frum: It’s perfectly okay if the Emperor chooses to parade around naked, but His Majesty should spend more time in the gym when he so chooses, because his saggy, flabby, fishbelly-white arse is putting the more sensitive among us off our expensive dinners.
Martin
@JGabriel: And the post-9/11 promise of a permanent Republican majority reset the expectations of a lot on the left. At that moment, Reagan became center or left-of-center in this new permanent American era.
williamc
@The Bearded Blogger:
Sorry but that’s a horrible idea, for me anyways…you would leave the rest of us (those that live in the “crazyfied, polarized and intransigent 30% of the country” as you call it aka “The Deep South + the Upper Midwest”) who aren’t crazy trapped in places run by these nutjobs, and I don’t know how the economy of the nation survives with a third of the populace as raging, poo-flinging ignoramuses who believe that cutting taxes raises revenues, everything the government does to help people is soc!al!sm, and war again anyone is always good…
And Another Thing...
@JGabriel: Very good summation. Thanks.
Mnemosyne
@valdivia:
Ezra to Greenwald:
I think that’s what kids today call “pwned.”
Urza
@The Bearded Blogger:
Quite right their ways of disseminating the mind virus have certainly upgraded significantly in the last 15 years. However, the principles are the same through the ages. The newspapers in the south were talking up the revolution for decades if the north took away their slaves. Then Lincoln was elected, he would have kept slavery to keep the union together but they already believed that was impossible cause they were told he was coming to take their slaves/guns/women/freedom and there was no factcheck.org to counter the spin.
Of course, today has changed ever so slightly. Back then it was lead by the intellectuals lying to the public to get what they wanted. Now I’m starting to think that what might be called republican intellectuals actually believe the outright lies and not just the philosophical lies. Its one thing to think tax cuts are good for the economy and cut debt magically, its a whole other matter when you honestly start believing insurance for people with less money will lead to Stalinism. By intellectual I mean the actually smart people, not Palin etc. Whether the leftover brainpower used to be the useful idiots as Robin G. described or they actually were the smart ones creating the mess is another question.
It could all be solved very easily except they’ve decided to refuse to accept facts. The moment you refuse to accept contradictory information as even a possibility there really isn’t a good way to move people away from that ledge.
valdivia
@Mnemosyne:
yes! not only pwned but with class.
Polish the Guillotines
@JGabriel: This. Well summarized.
In the end, the GOP has cultivated two of the most authoritarian strains in America: unreconstructed Southern racists and religious fundamentalists. What remains of the GOP is self-selecting for maximum ignorance and maximum violence.
MikeTheZ
Dems need 9 more votes to pass reconciliation. 16 dems yet to vote.
mr. whipple
@Mnemosyne:
I looked thru the tweets but have no idea what this was about.
Help?
mr. whipple
@MikeTheZ:
Jeebus. They better not have to hold this open. VOTE!
Mnemosyne
@mr. whipple:
I’m not totally sure myself, but it sounds a lot like the kind of stuff Greenwald was spouting the last time he showed up here. “You’re all Obots! Why are you attacking me? I don’t need no stinkin’ facts!”
dr. bloor
@Mnemosyne:
Great. Two intelligent guys reduced to making points, 140 characters at a time. All the heft of speed chess.
Calouste
@The Bearded Blogger:
I don’t think the Democrats need to do much because purity spirals are more or less self reinforcing and pretty hard to pull out of. Example: the Tories in the UK went into one in the 90s and it only got stronger after they lost power in 1997. Now even though they have recovered from their spiral (which revolved mostly around the EU in their case), they should be able to take over from Labour in this year’s election on the basis of the economic difficulties, but opinion polls show that the voters are rather weary to hand them power. They are in the leade, but not very convincingly so.
MikeTheZ
Reconciliation bill passes.
Redshift
@And Another Thing…: I was in college with him, and he was a smug bastard even at that age. (I didn’t know him personally, just through his insufferable columns in the school paper.)
Pigs & Spiders
@MikeTheZ: I believe the proper term is: w00t!
Violet
@mantis:
Perhaps the kid is Elizabeth Hasselbeck. She called out Sarah Palin for posting the crosshairs graphic on The View today. And she called the way the Republicans are handling this “despicable” and their actions “dangerous.”
Good for her. Never thought I’d say that.
MikeTheZ
@Pigs & Spiders: But its in the House, and so for the final time in this debate…
NANCY SMASH!
mr. whipple
@Violet:
Wow. That’s great.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mnemosyne: Something about Ezra being a shill for the administration. I couldn’t be bother to read GG’s tweets. I’m sure 2,000 word expose, followed by seven updates over the course of a week, will begin within twelve hours.
ed
Frum’s an opportunist, pure and simple (as our story suggested). That’s it; that’s all. He took advantage of being a Bush Apologist when if you weren’t you hated Freedom. There’s a void for a “Right Wing Intellectual” who’s out of step with Fox News that he’s chosen to fill. As with Sully, I’m going to need a lot more apology from Frum before I’ll bother giving a shit what he thinks about anything.
Daragh McDowell
mistermix – not to forgive Frum entirely of his past sins, but John did write a post earlier today about his Damascene conversion. And if Frum really is seeing the light, that’s something that should be welcome at the very least on tactical levels. Just like ex-cult members often turn out to be the most powerful critics of the cult, ex-… well I can’t think of a properly descriptive noun for what Frum was, but the point is he good be a powerful asset for progressive causes generally.
Why do I think this? Mr. John Cole! Former konservative kool-aid drinker, now writer of one of the best progressive blogs on the interwebs, and a man who made a genuine positive contribution to one of the most important acts of social welfare legislation in the country’s history.
And sorry if that sounds like I’m sucking up, but I think its genuinely true.
Mnemosyne
@Mnemosyne:
I think it’s probably all about this post, where Greenwald accused Ezra of “painfully absurd propagandistic attempt(s)” to defend the administration. Make sure to scroll down for the patented whiny update of, “That’s what I said, but that’s not what I meant!”
Greenwald should know better than to try and out-wonk Ezra. Nah. Guh. Happen.
MikeJ
I now this has naught to do with politics, and may insult our host, but as a citoyen of Washington, fuck West Virginia.
Robert Waldmann
Doesn’t the balloon juice style sheet require mr Mistermix to end his post with + number describing how many beers he’s had ? I’t rate the post a + 6 at least.
+0
Really. Haven’t had a drop. I spelled i’d “i’t” because I’m laughing too hard to type correctly.
williamc
@dr. bloor:
Uh, thank you.
I’m always one for a good word fight, but this hardly counts as one. I’m a fan of both, but if they are going to have a disagreement, why not do it in long-form where the obviously both excel? They are bloggers fergawdsake!
Twitter arguments! Really? Damn, we don’t seem far from Ass the Movie…bring on the Brawndo!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Violet: She went off to see the Wizard? Who went with her to get courage and a heart?
soonergrunt
@Robin G: That’s pretty much it. When Brick Oven Bob and Makewi are the soul of your party, it’s time to eat the shotgun.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Daragh McDowell:
Nah, I think Cole was just a very confused libtard all along. Alex Keaton syndrome, seen it before. For Chrissakes, the dude was and is a Deadhead. Though that is a matter for skepticism, but not per political leanings.
Frum is and will always be a wingnut neocon, though I do give any gooper kudos for speaking out against the current rage virus republicans, and especially that cost him his job.
eemom
@valdivia:
splendiforous! Thanks for the link.
Though, in fairness, Greenwald is at an obvious disadvantage in any forum that limits him to less than 93 pages plus 29 updates, never mind that Twitter 43 character (or whatever it is) thing.
soonergrunt
@JGabriel: and nobody over there ever once stood up and told them “no. We’re not doing that. That way lies madness.” or more simply “you’re a fucking whackaloon. Go sit in the corner, eat your paste, and let the adults run things.
Violet
@MikeTheZ: NANCY SMASH! Did she use The Gavel?
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I don’t know. But it’s worth watching. I really never thought I’d see her do anything like this. Maybe the violence is scaring her. Wouldn’t be surprised to see her receive death threats after saying something brave like that. Sigh.
schrodinger's cat
@JGabriel: @General Egali Tarian Stuck: @And Another Thing…: @Urza: @Robin G:
Thanks guys for your thoughtful and well thought out responses. Another question, how much of the country do you think these extremists represent. They are noisy and they are in control of a major political party, but can they come to power again?
Jules
Thank you mastermix for the reminder about what a bastard Frum has been.
I was feeling a bit bad for Frum, now not so much.
Robert Waldmann
Doesn’t the balloon juice style sheet require mr Mistermix to end his post with + number describing how many beers he’s had ? I’t rate the post a + 6 at least.
+0
Really. Haven’t had a drop. I spelled i’d “i’t” because I’m laughing too hard to type correctly.
oh and
General Egali Tarian Stuck
” Bush’s henchmen, like Frum, were bad enough, and I would argue many farthings to the irresponsible right than his pappy,”
No Sir. A farthing is not a distance. It is a unit of currency as in “David Frum’s word is not worth a farthing.” I think the word you were after is “furlong” which is a furly long unit of distance (201.16800 meters sez google).
I can understand why your fingers didn’t let you type a word so similar to “furlough” while noticed that Frum is worse than Bush Sr’s henchmen (cough Willy Horton cough for the blotto among us).
OK so I am typing this because I thought furlong was spelled “furlough,” but I insist, I haven’t had a drop. I can’t spell when I’m sober.
eemom
@Redshift:
Anne Applebaum, his BFF too, right? Don’t recall if she was equally insufferable back then.
And Another Thing...
@Redshift: Thanks for the info. Wonder if he was “mentored” by the Young Republicans…aka Thug Training.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Robert Waldmann: How about Fathom, that’s fairly deep.
schrodinger's cat
Thanks guys for your thoughtful responses to my question. One of my earlier comments saying the same is stuck in moderation.
mistermix
@Daragh McDowell: John is man #1.
Redshift
@eemom: Dunno. If she was around, she didn’t make an impression.
The Bearded Blogger
@williamc: As I said, that would be the best strategy if you put morality aside. Don’t know if its the best course of action all things considered… alcoholics sometimes need to hit rock bottom… maybe the GOP needs a 12 step program to get off the rageahol…
@Urza: It’s important to acknowledge that the GOP is not merely a political phenomenon but a psychological one as well… whatever happens politically in the near future, there’s gonna be a mental scar on the country for at least a decade or so…
@Calouste: The purity spiral has its own momentum, of course, but it could be sped up by democrats, for example by putting forth votes on relatively innocous legislation with large perceived symbolic import on the part of wingers. Also, exposing their crazyness more forcefully would fuel the spiral…
And Another Thing...
@Mnemosyne: Ezra rocks !! He and Anthony Weiner are now stars…and they earned the visibility.
Ajay
Well put.
The problem is given how bad and out of touch Frum is, he looks significantly saner compared to the current Retard Party, which is essentially batshit insane.
Kiril
mistermix, you seem nice enough. But whatever it was you did to this metaphor, even Dick Cheney agrees it was torture.
Redshift
@And Another Thing…: Maybe, though I think it was probably more Junior Wingnut Welfare. It was Yale, and conservatives were a small minority even in the Reagan era; we had a couple of conservative organizations, but I don’t think we had College Republicans per se. He was probably sucking up and making connections (Robert Bork’s son was also there) so he could join the “intellectual” side and be an apologist for Rovian tactics rather than learning how to take part himself.
Chuck Butcher
I couldn’t quite work up to feeling sorry for Frum.
jenniebee
His problem today was timing, not an excess of honesty or nobility.
I’d say it’s more the times than the timing. Frum is a dyed-in-the-wool anti-populist and (gasp!) elitist. He didn’t say anything yesterday that wasn’t in keeping with everything else he’s been saying for the last year and everything he’s stood for for the last decade, and the shorter on that is: zomg if the rubes are in charge the world will turn upside down so quick put them back in their place!
The Frum/Buckley kind of Republican and the Limbaugh/Beck/Palin kind of Republican were always uneasy bedfellows, but Frum/Buckley were willing to jolly the L/B/Ps along as long as the washed-in-mind-but-not-body crowd worked for the Republican elite and demanded nothing but rhetoric in return for it. What we’ve been seeing gradually emerge over the last thirty years is the presence of Republican Leaders who aren’t in on the joke – people like Bachman and Palin who actually believe the rhetoric. And once they gained a critical mass within the actual halls of leadership, the Frum crowd lost control.
You would think that the elites at least would have the education to know the history of their own class, that they would know that the success rate on containing and controlling juiced up mobs is pretty low. What’s the point of having a class of people who get access to any education and every advantage if it doesn’t make them any more fit to make leadership decisions than a point guard from Alaska who left [one] college because she gets anxious around ethnics?
El Cid
I don’t have the tiniest empathy for Frum. If he does a full David Brock, let me know.
Otherwise, sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
Texas Dem
Or as we would say down here in Texas, “If you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas.”
nelson
mistermix I am from a border town MN and ND, and we all have been raised with rifles, not hand guns. This might be from a previous post, but I live now in northern calif. One of my guys at speede, the oil change guys, went and shot his weapon on new year’s eve up in the air, and the bullet came down and brained him. What goes up comes down, he died. I know all the math folks will say that is nuts, but sometimes life sucks. Does anyone watch what is happening on c span, Washington Journal, It is all neo cons, and when they are on their staffers all call in. If not their staffers, it is always old people, I do not like it. The air waves are controlled by nuts. Oh, I am a mom with two sons (who graduated college) and a husband.
The Truffle
@El Cid: I just wish the man would move back to Canada and take his wife with him.
So many productive people want to come to our country, and we take these fools?
tyrese
Nixon years, believe it or not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
mr. whipple
There were a few, but they got tossed. Specter and Chaffee come to mind, as does Crist in FLA. And early on in the Obama admin, a few sane ones(Even Steele) tried to speak up until Limbaugh et al got the crazies on them.
Frum is right. This strategy might gain them a few house seats and keep a few bucks rolling into the RNC coffers, but as a strategy to win back the WH and majorities it’s simply insanity.
Texas Dem
As other people have observed, you can tell a movement is dying when it is more interested in punishing heretics and finding traitors than it is winning converts.
tyrese
not necessarily nuts, but sufficiently unlikely that we wouldn’t believe it without some evidence.
The Truffle
@Violet: Bitsy Hasselback is a right-wing affirmative action hire. She’s not going to lose her job over this. She is basically the Alan Colmes of The View.
ed
Meh. Re-read “Why the South Must Prevail”. Buckley was one of Them. Wildly overprivileged, but one of Them, nonetheless.
Chuck Butcher
@tyrese:
If the bullet is heavy enough versus its profile for wind resistance it will get quite a head of steam going. A spread out human, considerably less dense than a bullet, will get to over 100 miles per hour. If the bullet maintains its spin rather than tumbling you start to talk real speed and 1/4 to 1/3 ounce going 200 miles per hour is going hit pretty damn hard.
In a vacume it would come down as fast as it left the gun, fortunately not the case. Hitting yourself is really damn unlikely.
mr. whipple
Big, fat orange cat!
mr. whipple
“People are injured, sometimes fatally, when bullets discharged into the air fall back down. The mortality rate among those struck by falling bullets is about 32%, compared with about 2% to 6% normally associated with gunshot wounds.[5] The higher mortality is related to the higher incidence of head wounds from falling bullets.
A study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 80% of celebratory gunfire-related injuries are to the head, feet, and shoulders.[6] In the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, about two people die and about 25 more are injured each year from celebratory gunfire on New Year’s Eve, the CDC says.[3] Between the years 1985 and 1992, doctors at the King/Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, treated some 118 people for random falling-bullet injuries. Thirty-eight of them died.[7] Kuwaitis celebrating in 1991 at the end of the Gulf War by firing weapons into the air caused 20 deaths from falling bullets.[7]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_gunfire#Falling-bullet_injuries
JGabriel
Martin:
I disagree with that assessment. No one on the left, especially anyone old enough to experience and remember the Reagan years as an adult, would ever consider Reagan as remotely left-of-center, or even centrist.
But …
There is one important event I left out of the summary at 43, and that is Karl Rove’s promise of a permanent Republican majority (which you properly noted), and the way it reset expectations on the right, such that they were even more enraged by the Democratic takeover of the legislative and executive branches 2006-2009.
Clearly, by their reasoning, the Democratic ascendance could only have happened through trickery, cheating, and betrayal – backstabbing – given how frequently they were assured that we are a “center-right country” and the promise of permanent, eternal, power and glory, forever and ever, world without end, amen.
.
Panurge
@Calouste:
I suppose that’s why they’ve got the Liberal Democrats in the U.K. I think third parties could serve a real purpose over here if they weren’t such romantics about their prospects. Bottom up, folks…
Llelldorin
@ed:
My impression is that both parties ca. 1930 had a real core of nastiness in them: racists in the Democratic Party, red-baiting know-nothings in the Republican Party. What Nixon did was come up with a Grand Unified Paranoia (communists are responsible for the civil-rights movement!) that let them poach the nastiness from the Democratic Party.
Unfortunately, the Democratic Party was left a bit like the good Kirk in The Enemy Within, or like Rimmer in Polymorph — without the assholes, but also without the populist fire that had once been the party’s driving force. We’ve finally been recovering that recently, thank heavens.
drag0n
Frum’s mother had a lot of brains actually, and it is quite possible that some of those brains are starting to seep out of his genes and into his opinions.
Besides, I am not sure this is the best venue to shit on a conservative who is maybe, just maybe, on the verge of seeing the light.
Jim Once
@Violet:
Yes, Elizabeth H. of The View. And yes, good for her. But this is the same youngster who was pouting yesterday about her really, really bad day because Simon on American Idol was so mean, and she also had to deal with that terrible health care reform bill. It was just a bad, terrible, awful day for poor Liz.
drag0n
@Elizabeth
Unless Frum has renounced his Canadian citizenship then his loss of health insurance should not be a big deal.
Mike in NC
David Scum has been fellating the far right for far too long. Can’t we deport him and Krauthammer back to Canada for some reason?
Cacti
That liberals can muster sympathy for Frum is a testament to their humanity in general.
Even taking the most sympathetic position possible, there’s no denying he was hoist with his own bloody petard.
A member of the Axis of Weasels was devoured by the political monster he helped create.
If that isn’t poetic justice, I don’t know what is.
Jane2
I’m not the biggest David Frum fan in the world, but I’m not sure that “endorsed Sarah Palin” is accurate. He called it a bold and shrewd choice, but questioned whether it was a responsible or wise one…hardly an endorsement.
Cat Lady
@Daragh McDowell:
John Cole is teh shiznit.
I’m in awe of this blog. It gets better and better every day. DougJ’s post titles are worth the price of admission alone. ;->
ed
Frum on how evolution should be taught in public schools: (in 2005):
What a jackass. Frum’s gonna have to wash my car a few thousand times before I forgive him for that crap.
ed
Adding because I can’t edit:
So majority religion trumps science (and apparently, minority religion), according to Frum. This is classic Frum equivocation. Either he really believes this or he’s not exactly a profile in courage. Either way, he’s a jackass.
Cacti
@ed:
Car washing is too lenient.
He needs to scrub the crapper with his tongue.
Allan
David Frum will do fine without the AEI. Smart of him. When he nailed his theses to the Republican Church door, he knew what was coming.
In his case, getting fired’s not catastrophic. Unlike, say, Heckuvajob Brownie or the kid whose mom was bumping uglies with John Ensign, he’s actually intelligent enough to be able to earn a living without being subsizided by the great Wingnut Welfare State.
He’s a prim Nixonian scold, but he’s not dumb.
Batocchio
Right on. Frum was a hack, and still will hack away if it suits him. He sounds more smart today in comparison to the insane people in the GOP. But for a few years now, he’s been marketing himself as a “reasonable conservative” to the NPR crowd and others. While I think the GOP would be better off if he were the norm for them, there’s really nothing he gets right that other people don’t get right, and there are plenty of people who are far more insightful. I’m willing to hear him out, but I’m not going to forget that he’s an ideologue and a bullshitter.
Marc
I don’t think any liberal/democrat/progressive who has linked to anything David-Frum-related in the last week thinks he’s a good guy or a hero or turned from the dark side.
He’s been linked to, quoted, Facebooked and Twittered because its a rare occurrence that a conservative tells the truth about what’s going on in the Republican party (i.e. “we followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement”, “the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us”, “mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information”, “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we’re discovering that we’re working for Fox.”).
Its rare cause usually there’s repercussions, as evidenced by the AEI firing.
brantl
It’s great to hear someone measure David Frum correctly. All he is, is a mediocre weathervane for mid-stream Republican zeitgeist. There is no honor in him.