David Frum: HCR is Waterloo alright. For Republicans.

[Vympel]

Link

Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.

It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:

(1) It’s a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November – by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.

(2) So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now.

So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now comes the hard lesson:

A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.

Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53% of the vote, not Clinton’s 42%. The liberal block within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history, and also remember the consequences of their 1994 failure.

This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.

Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.

Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views? To finance it without redistributive taxes on productive enterprise – without weighing so heavily on small business – without expanding Medicaid? Too late now. They are all the law.

No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.

[The Romulan Republic]

Awesome and insightful article, and while I obviously don't agree with all the author's political views, its nice to see a comparatively level-headed Right-winger (going just off this article anyway, as I'm not particularly familiar with the guy's history).

[FSTargetDrone]

Awesome and insightful article, and while I obviously don't agree with all the author's political views, its nice to see a comparatively level-headed Right-winger (going just off this article anyway, as I'm not particularly familiar with the guy's history).

A bit about Frum:

David Frum

last updated: November 20, 2009

David Frum, a White House speechwriter during the early years of the George W. Bush presidency and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Canadian-born writer closely associated with U.S. neoconservatism. Founder of the website FrumForum and a contributor to several conservative media outlets—including the Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal, and Canada's National Post—Frum has promoted an aggressive “war on terror” centered on the Middle East and has characterized threats to the United States in existential terms. In the 2003 book An End to Evil, Frum and coauthor Richard Perle write, “For us, terrorism remains the great evil of our time, and the war against this evil, our generation's great cause.... There is no middle way for Americans: It is victory or holocaust.”[1]

As Frum sees it, the threat of terrorism is the result of an apparently irresolvable conflict between the West and Islam. In a March 2007 opinion piece for Foreign Policy, Frum wrote, "[George W.] Bush argued that terrorism was the work of a tiny handful of extremists, repudiated by the vast majority of Middle Easterners. His fellow Americans no longer believe him. More and more are coming to believe that Islam really is inherently hostile to democracy and the West. Civilizations are clashing. Paul Wolfowitz has lost. Sam Huntington has won."[2]

In late 2008, Frum began to distance himself from some conservative factions, expressing dissatisfaction and disappointment in the U.S. right wing and worrying that the “collapsed intellectual state of the [Republican] party” would hamper its recovery from electoral loses.[3] He reassessed his ideological position, writing, “My fundamental political principles remain the same as ever: free markets, American leadership in the world, and intense attachment to inherited moral and cultural traditions. Yet I cannot be blind to the evidence that we have seen free markets produce some damaging and dangerous results in recent years. Or that the foreign policy I supported has not yielded the success I would have wished to see. Or that traditions must evolve if they are to endure. There are new principes [sic] too that must be included in a majority conservatism: environmental protection as a core value and an unwavering insistence upon competence and integrity in government.”[4]

From National Review to FrumForum

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Frum’s views on conservatism began to diverge from those espoused by the right-wing National Review (NR), where for six years he had authored the blog David Frum’s Diary. Sen. John McCain’s choice of running mates brought this division to the forefront.[5] Frum argued in a September 2008 online discussion hosted by New York magazine that he was “disturbed about the choice [of Gov. Sarah Palin] from the start.… She really could be president! And here's where my fellow conservatives really worry me. They are so attracted by the symbolism of the selection that they show no concern—never mind for her executive competence—even for her views.”[6]

Frum’s commentary helped spur a heated—and sometimes mean-spirited—debate on the NR website about conservatism and the future course of the Republican Party. In mid-November 2008, a few weeks after his NR colleague Christopher Buckley (son of NR founder William Buckley Jr.) announced his own departure from the magazine, Frum told the New York Times that he too was leaving on January 20, 2009. He said the split was amicable and that the differences over Palin were “symbolic of a lot of differences” between himself and the magazine. He added, “I am really and truly frightened by the collapse of support for the Republican Party by the young and the educated.”[7] In a follow up NR blog entry, Frum said that he was starting a new website called NewMajority.com in early 2009.[8]

Frum launched NewMajority on January 20, 2009, to coincide with the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Said a press release about the event, “The inaugural event for Republicans on Jan. 20 will not be the swearing-in of President Barack Obama; it will be the launch of NEWMAJORITY.COM, a new voice for conservatives determined to renew and reform the Grand Old Party. Led by David Frum … NewMajority.com will champion a responsive, responsible, inclusive, and environmentally-conscious conservatism. ‘If the public rejects your party's message,’ Frum says, ‘it doesn't do much good to repeat that same message -- only louder.’"[9]

In November 2009, Frum rebranded his website FrumFrum. He explained in a note to his readers that because there are “a lot of ‘New Majorities’ out there,” he and his colleagues thought it necessary to change names. “The name we all eventually settled on, after a canvass of opinions, was FrumForum: Frum because that’s who the editor is, Forum because my job is as much or more to create a venue for the opinions of others as it is to express my own.”[10]

Coining the "Axis of Evil"

Frum, born in 1960 in Toronto, Ontario, was exposed early to high-profile journalism by his mother, Barbara Frum, a well-known Canadian media personality who appeared regularly on CBC radio and television. After graduating from Yale University in 1982 and Harvard Law School in 1987—where he served as president of the local Federalist Society chapter—David Frum went on to work on the Wall Street Journal editorial board from 1989 to 1992 and as a columnist for Forbes magazine from 1992 to 1994. During 1995 to 2001, Frum worked at the Manhattan Institute, where he served as a senior fellow. With the election of George W. Bush in 2000, Frum joined the administration as a special assistant to the president for economic speechwriting, a post he held until early 2002.[11]

Frum's work at the White House gained media attention in early 2002 after his wife, the anti-feminist writer Danielle Crittenden, bragged to some friends in an e-mail, which eventually circulated to a number of press outlets, that her husband came up with the phrase "axis of evil." President Bush used the phrase in his January 2002 State of the Union address to describe the supposed threats posed by Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.[12]

Books

In 2003, Frum published his best-known book, The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush, which offered a firsthand account of the Bush presidency and the influence of the 9/11 attacks on the country and the administration. "George W. Bush was hardly the obvious man for the job. But by a very strange fate, he turned out to be, of all unlikely things, the right man," wrote Frum.[13]

In 2004 Frum coauthored with Richard Perle An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror, which defended the invasion of Iraq and promoted U.S.-backed regime change in Syria and Iran. The authors also promoted more aggressive U.S. policies toward North Korea and Saudi Arabia and derided the United Nations for being weak and bureaucratic while heralding the United States as a force for peace. "A world at peace; a world governed by law; a world in which all peoples are free to find their own destinies: That dream has not yet come true, it will not come true soon, but if it ever does come true, it will be brought into being by American armed might and defended by American might, too."[14]

The book, which appeared as the U.S. invasion of Iraq began to morph into a bloody counterinsurgency campaign, called into question the rosy prognostications offered by neoconservatives and Bush administration hawks. According to Frum and Perle, however, the problems were a result not so much of the Sunni insurgency and other developments on the ground, but rather of attempts by the "realists" in the State Department and the CIA, and by senior retired and active-duty military officers, to change the approach in Iraq and elsewhere in the region. Perle and Frum lamented: "We can feel the will to win ebbing in Washington; we sense the reversion to the bad old habits of complacency and denial."[15]

Commenting on the book, journalist Fareed Zakaria wrote: "Frum and Perle want transformation from 30,000 feet, without the moral taint of compromise. They scorn the diplomats who must deal with foreigners, not to mention the foreigners themselves."[16]

In early 2008, Frum published Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again. According to a blurb on the website of the American Enterprise Institute, “Too many conservatives and Republicans have shut their eyes to negative trends. David Frum offers answers. Frum says that the ideas that won elections for conservatives in the 1980s have done their job. Republicans can no longer win elections on taxes, guns, and promises to restore traditional values. It's time now for a new approach.”[17]

Repentant over the War?

In November 2006, Vanity Fair published an article by David Rose that listed a number of "the [Iraq] War's remorseful proponents," those erstwhile supporters of invading Iraq who had shifted their views and/or withdrawn their support of the Bush administration after the situation in Iraq steadily worsened. These included Perle, Kenneth Adelman, Michael Rubin, Michael Ledeen, Eliot Cohen, Frank Gaffney, and Frum. Rose reported that, "To David Frum ... it now looks as if defeat may be inescapable, because 'the insurgency has proven it can kill anyone who cooperates, and the United States and its friends have failed to prove that it can protect them.'"[18]

But Frum took issue with the magazine’s characterization of his views, proclaiming in the Huffington Post that there was "nothing remorseful" about his views. "It's true I fear that there is a real danger that the United States will lose in Iraq. And yes I do blame a lot that has gone wrong on failures of U.S. policy." Nevertheless, he said, "My most fundamental views on the war in Iraq remain as they were in 2003: The war was right, victory is essential, and defeat would be calamitous."[19]

I didn't bother to add the endnotes. It's all at the link.

[Patrick Degan]

In other words, a right-winger who still has a modicum of sanity unlike his fellows who all signed up for a tour in the CSS Teabag.

[Yona]

Great article and some sanity at last.

What we must understand is that the "far right" has literally been fighting for it's political life. Not to mention it's payoffs. If this bill works as well as many seem to think it will, these people will have a tough time selling any of their bs in the future.

Wait, I forgot ! Even though the bill will help health care, improve people's lives, and reduce the deficit, it still won't make these fools any smarter.

[Crossroads Inc.]

I was going to respond to this initially by basically saying "I don't understand why the Republicans are saying voting for health care will be a disaster to the Democrats."

But in truth I really do, For the past 6 months or so the Far Right has been shrieking that 'passing Health care would be the Downfall of Democrats! The people will rise up in November and cast them all out! Anyone who votes for health care is guaranteeing they will be voted out!"

It is standard Right Wing fear mongering aimed simply at casting fear to Democrats who are up for re-election in November. But as with so much from the right, the premise is utterly absurd. Any voter who would vote against a Democrat BECAUSE of healthcare is someone who probably won't vote for him in any case. And any Democrat who votes against an incumbent because of Healthcare is probably the type of Far Left activist who rarely votes.

In truth the passing of HealthCare, as many of us have always maintained, will only Improve democrats re-election chances in November. It shows that, while watered down, they have at least done Something, they have laid a foundation which can lead to further Reform. "Frum" seems to get this...

By November things may have turned around considerably, those concerned about Healthcare will see the world hasn't ended and civilization hasn't collapsed, and might just start thinking it a good idea. they MIGHT even start asking for more changes... This is something I am sure many Republicans have realized, and no doubt is the primary fear from Day one for them.. Passing Healthcare ensures more Democratic support.

Re-reading his article through, it is ironic, or perhaps not, that despite having the common sense to both see this and admit to it, the crux of the article is still based on wishing to have stopped Healthcare reform. In that regard the Republicans were successful... A yea ago the support for healthcare reform was overwhelming in America, the initial bills proposed were daring, bold and aggressive.

However in Obamas and the Dems eagerness to "Play nice" they watered and sacrificed bits all in the vain hope of appeasing Republicans who were in single step to never ever agree to anything. Even things they want. As a result, in a way the Republicans scored a phyrric victory if only by driving America into near hysteria about the bill while watering and shredding it of much of its teeth,

[LMSx]

I do like seeing how conventional wisdom cleanly switched from circa January, 2009: The Republicans are screwed for the next 8 years! to circa January 2010: how did Republicans get back so fast? Democrats are screwed in the midterms! Yes, and what makes you so sure *this* would last until November....?

I like the CSS Teabag moniker.

[Vympel]

Don't get me wrong, the Democrats still piss me the fuck off for being a bunch of weak pansies, and I didn't think they'd be able to pass anything remotely worthwhile. Whilst this isn't what people wanted, its at least something. They will lose seats in the mid-terms, that much is guaranteed.

[LMSx]

Don't get me wrong, the Democrats still piss me the fuck off for being a bunch of weak pansies, and I didn't think they'd be able to pass anything remotely worthwhile. Whilst this isn't what people wanted, its at least something. They will lose seats in the mid-terms, that much is guaranteed.

The annoying thing about Beltway CW of "losing seats" because of HC is that the Dems are guaranteed to do that no matter what; they've had such success in 2006 and 2008 that it's virtually impossible to gain any more seats, and would be an extraordinary achievement to hold what they now have. So basically now it's about whether or not the Dems enter 2011 with both houses still under their control, something I'd say was impossible if they hadn't energized the base with this victory.

[Covenant]

The worst thing about the setup is that it wouldn't have been impossible to pass something dramatically more potent if Democrats were as blindly lockstepped as Republicans, or if the Republicans didn't vote as a single block. I am not going to blame 'bipartisan' efforts for a less-effective bill, I will blame the Congressmen themselves for not having the political guts to either break ranks or hold ranks, depending on the side.

When only half of your government cares about content, that half is going to have a very hard time getting any shit done. We even had a bunch of rebellious house reps today that needed special hand-holding to get their executive order, and they still got lashed out at really violently by their Republican colleagues, as most people following this surely have heard.

If this had passed easily and unanimously by Democrats of both houses, I'd complain about Obama tilting at bipartisanship windmills being the source of it's middle-of-the-road quality. But given how cravenly job-fearing and politically diverse the Democrats are, as well as how inefficiently stubborn some can be, I honestly don't think it was a bad idea to go the middle path on this. It wasn't a total beatdown, it was a pretty narrow vote. And plus, he had been elected on a premise of working with both sides. This at least satisfies that pretense.

[Thanas]

Update:

David Frum has been fired.

his forum:

Dear Arthur,

This will memorialize our conversation at lunch today. Effective immediately, my position as a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute is terminated. I appreciate the consideration that delays my emptying of my office until after my return from travel next week. Premises will be vacated no later than April 9.

I have had many fruitful years at the American Enterprise Institute, and I do regret this abrupt and unexpected conclusion of our relationship.

Very truly yours,

David Frum

Politico claims it was due to donor pressure.


I guess we cannot tolerate differing opinions, no?

[Simon_Jester]

Especially not when the differing opinion is trying to warn you that you're charging off a cliff.

This sort of thing is why I can honestly imagine the Republican Party imploding in the next few years. They've spent so much effort building an ideological base that they can no longer do anything but what the base wants, even if it kills them.

[Surlethe]

Here is an explanation, of sorts, from him:

So what happened?

After my dismissal from AEI Thursday, I posted in this space my letter of resignation. I declined television interviews, but I did speak to print journalists about the basic facts, in a way that expressed respect for AEI and its leadership.

I spent most of today flying from Washington to San Francisco and emerged from the plane to a fierce counter-attack, including an especially unpleasant piece from Charles Murray.

Let me respond here to some specific issues in this matter.

1) Was the firing political? Obviously I cannot enter into people’s minds, and at my termination lunch AEI President Arthur Brooks insisted that politics had nothing to do with the decision. So let’s just follow the time line. Waterloo piece is posted Sunday March 22. Wall Street Journal editorial denouncing me appears March 23. Summons to lunch arrives mid-morning of March 23. At lunch I am told that AEI wishes to terminate my salary, office, benefits, and research assistance. I am however at liberty to continue to consider myself part of the AEI family. I declined that offer and wrote a letter of resignation.

2) Was the firing in response to donor pressure? At lunch, Arthur Brooks explained that AEI was facing a new kind of donor environment, in which donors were becoming much more specific about where they wanted their money to go. Arthur expressed extreme personal distress at having to terminate me. It’s possible that those words were pro forma, and that my own affection for Arthur led me to attach more weight to them than I should have. It’s very strange that Charles Murray would denounce me as a liar because I wished to think better of my former boss!

3) Did AEI muzzle healthcare scholars? I fear that in reproducing in print a private conversation from some months ago, Bruce Bartlett made a transmission error. I did not report as fact that scholars were laboring under any restrictions. What I did say was that AEI was punching way below its weight in the healthcare debate. I wondered, not alleged, wondered, whether AEI scholars were constrained by fear of saying something that might get them into trouble. To repeat: this was something I asked many months ago in private conversation, not something I allege today in public debate.

4) Was I terminated for under-productivity? If you’ll believe that, you’ll believe anything. In seven years at AEI, I wrote 3 books, over 1000 newspaper and magazine articles, millions of words of web journalism. I have made more TV appearances, delivered more lectures than I even know how to count. (I’ll be delivering half dozen such lectures in China in the month of April as a guest of the US Department of State.)

I have written speeches on an unpaid basis for politicians I admire. I worked pro bono on a presidential nomination campaign. Then, there was the campaign to oppose Harriet Miers nomination. Does AEI seriously suggest that it fired the man who led the battle that made possible Samuel Alito’s confirmation to the Supreme Court because I didn’t pick up my snail mail often enough? That’s what they said to Politico.

As for Charles’ other suggestions, well, they point in a very different direction than he’d like. I did attend for example the 2009 World Forum, and was fiercely scolded by Lynne Cheney for my criticisms of Rush Limbaugh. This year I was not invited at all, despite having obtained for the conference some of its most distinguished international guests.

Charles acknowledges that he himself spends almost zero on the AEI premises. If that’s a firing offense, I’ll see him at the soup kitchen.

Very circumspect, but it seems that donors put quite a bit of political pressure on the "independent think-tank" and his firing is a product of that pressure.

[Darth Wong]

Is anyone seriously stupid enough to believe those "independent non-partisan think-tanks" when they describe themselves as such?

Obviously, that's a rhetorical question: of course I realize there are millions of people who are easily that stupid.

[mr friendly guy]

Given some of the crap I have read from think tanks (from Australian and also what is posted here), what do they do that isn't done by some journalist from a major newspaper anyway. Certainly Frum appears to have written lots of articles and can present speeches on behest of the state department in foreign countries, but besides the latter with my limited knowledge on such organisations I can't see anything else.

[SAMAS]

Is anyone seriously stupid enough to believe those "independent non-partisan think-tanks" when they describe themselves as such?

Obviously, that's a rhetorical question: of course I realize there are millions of people who are easily that stupid.

Like all the countries who put two or three words like "Democratic", "People's", and "Republic" in their names?

[Crown]

Is it wrong that upon hearing about this all I can think of is;

http://www.habitationofjustice.com/wp-c ... n_haha.jpg