Former Bush 43 speech-writer David Frum is one of the most respected thinkers in America. He is a free-market, limited-government, low-taxes conservative who has, in a single paragraph of his recent essay in New York Magazine, encapsulated the first 10 years of the 21st century more cogently than any writer to date:
In the aughts, Republicans held more power for longer than at any time since the twenties, yet the result was the weakest and least broadly shared economic expansion since World War II, followed by an economic crash and prolonged slump. Along the way, the GOP suffered two severe election defeats in 2006 and 2008. Imagine yourself a rank-and-file Republican in 2009: If you have not lost your job or your home, your savings have been sliced and your children cannot find work. Your retirement prospects have dimmed. Most of all, your neighbors blame you for all that has gone wrong in the country. There’s one thing you know for sure: None of this is your fault! And when the new president fails to deliver rapid recovery, he can be designated the target for everyone’s accumulated disappointment and rage. In the midst of economic wreckage, what relief to thrust all blame upon Barack Obama as the wrecker-in-chief.
In When Did the GOP Lose Touch with Reality, a penetratingly candid and immeasurably important essay published on Nov. 20, Frum says he is haunted by his time in the Bush administration although his role was not large, and, the real decision-makers seem to sleep well at night.
I appreciate Frum's writing because he criticizes the GOP, not with ridicule or disdain, but with deep concern — concern, because he identifies as a Republican, and he knows that there are many good people in the Republican party who recognize that it has lost its way. Frum writes about America with the same type of concern, and indeed as he explains at the end of the piece, he is committed to bringing about a course corrections within the GOP because the future of our nation as a whole (the 99 percent) depends on it.
He offers a devastating critique of Fox News and Republican radio, more powerful than any of the recriminations offered from the left:
Extremism and conflict make for bad politics but great TV. Over the past two decades, conservatism has evolved from a political philosophy into a market segment. An industry has grown up to serve that segment—and its stars have become the true thought leaders of the conservative world. The business model of the conservative media is built on two elements: provoking the audience into a fever of indignation (to keep them watching) and fomenting mistrust of all other information sources (so that they never change the channel). As a commercial proposition, this model has worked brilliantly in the Obama era. As journalism, not so much. As a tool of political mobilization, it backfires, by inciting followers to the point at which they force leaders into confrontations where everybody loses, like the summertime showdown over the debt ceiling.
Frum became nationally known in March of 2010 during the ferocious health care debate, when he was suddenly dismissed from the conservative think tank that employed him, and denounced by his former colleagues at The Wall Street Journal, just for pointing out two irrefutable facts at a time when facts were not preferable:
- The Affordable Care Act (Obama's healthcare law) derives from conservative ideas (not just Romney's Massachusetts plan, but before that, Republican health care proposals during the Clinton era)
- A Republican party that contributed ideas to the legislative process rather than trying to derail it would have resulted in stronger legislation
"Happily, I had other economic resources to fall back upon," Frum writes his ouster from the American Enterprise Institute. "But the message sent to others with less security was clear: We don’t pay you to think, we pay you to repeat." From's acumen as a storyteller is especially helpful as he recounts his escape from the world of "pseudo-facts and pretend information" and the personal cost that came with it. He opens the piece describing how he had to discuss with his wife why friends were suddenly attacking him, and later reveals that he had at one point become such a pariah in the world of Republican politics that major candidates who sought his input were at the same time afraid to be publicly associated with him.
I have many friends in the GOP who will appreciate Frum's response to extremists who seek to prevent anyone who is less extreme from claiming their identity as a Republican:
If CNN’s most recent polling is correct, only half of us sympathize with the tea party. However, moderate-minded people dislike conflict—and thus tend to lose to people who relish conflict. The most extreme voices in the GOP now denounce everybody else as Republicans in Name Only. But who elected them as the GOP’s membership committee? What have they done to deserve such an inheritance?
All Americans, however, should appreciate why Frum and other traditionally conservative Republicans like Michael Stafford and Jon Huntsman feel it is necessary to fight for the soul of the Republican party, rather than abandon it:
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.
But enough with the summary and the highlights! Go read this essay! When you finish, I predict you will, as I did, wish it were longer. New York Magazine cleverly provided me with a link to a companion piece by Jonathan Chait called "When Did Liberals Become So Unreasonable?" which is equally enlightening and fun to read.
Frum's piece is also an excellent companion to Tim Dickinson's article in Rolling Stone Magazine which I talk about here. Dickinson's thorough documentation of how the GOP became "the party of the rich" is directly related to the extremism and media induced brain-washing tactics Frum so decries. The former would not have been politically viable without the latter.
