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Frum is frightened for the GOP
Harrison spoke about the descent of intellectual conservatism. Here’s another example of it in David Frum’s resignation from National Review. Like some other conservative intellectuals, Frum criticized the Palin pick this election. After seeing fellow National Reviewers Kathleen Parker eviscerated for the same offense, Frum followed Chris Buckley’s lead and resigned from National Review writing.
In a New York Times interview, he said a little distance will help people keep their heads:
I am really and truly frightened by the collapse of support for the Republican Party by the young and the educated … The answers to the Republican dilemma are not obvious and we need a vibrant discussion. I think a little more distance can help everybody do a better job of keeping their temper.
I think intolerance for dissent—exactly the kind that Parker, Frum and Buckley experienced—may be perpetuating the dilemma. It’s impossible to have a “vibrant discussion” when someone who offers a dissenting view is told they should have been aborted, like Parker was. This intolerance especially repulses the young (not known for cherishing orthodoxy) and the educated (who presumably like “vibrant discussion”).
back to top30 Comments to “Frum is frightened for the GOP”
I think what you are seeing is a rigidization against the Anti-Palin orgy – compliments of our Obama worshiping media. I know I’m guilty of anger towards the media for their unfair practices. They savaged Palin relentlessly, while all the time ignoring a lot of things Biden did, and quite a few things about Obama that should have received a heck of a lot more attention. Why would I keep listening to their drek when it’s an obvious hatchet job on Palin?
If these folks want to criticize something, why don’t they criticize the media’s unbalanced reporting? If they want to criticize something, then go out and investigate those poorly researched things about Obama. They should get off their hind ends and research Obama and Biden as relentlessly as they researched Palin. If they want intellectualism to make a comeback, then maybe they should display a little…
Then maybe I’ll listen to their critique of Palin….
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Who’s guilty of “intolerance for dissent”? Some nobodies with computers? I can’t muster up a whole lot of pity for a nationally syndicated columnist who gets some angry emails in response to her political writing–sorry. If Parker is so thin-skinned, maybe she should start writing about gardening or something.
How do you tell the difference between “vibrant discussion” and “intolerance for dissent”? I submit that anyone who bows out of a conversation, takes his ball and goes home, is more guilty of stifling discussion than the ones who criticize his opinions.
Intolerance for dissent would be manifested by, for example, the National Review firing everyone who criticized the Palin pick. This didn’t happen. Everyone was given space for thier views. It was, apparently, a group of readers who criticized most vocally.
This is an uncomfortable conversation for me to watch. I don’t give 2 cents for the Republican Party, but I will vote for them as long as they offer a conservative alternative to the Democrats. If, as many people have been suggesting, the Republicans start discarding their social conservative commitments, I won’t vote for them any longer. If they want to alienate religious conservatives, they will lose a huge percentage of votes and remain out of power for decades. If that happens, should I care?
A blog like this should be able to make it clear that the problem with this nation’s political landscape is not simply that the Democrats are attracting all the voters. It’s that churches and pastors have, on a huge scale, failed their congregations by leaving behind Biblical truth in favor of being hip, cool and popular. Worldly churches will not produce godly citizens.
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I think the young folks can see the party’s inconsistencies. Palin and McCain ran around shouting “Oh heavens no! Socialism!” yet as George Will pointed out the R party in congress approved the largest medicare expansion since LBJ in the 60s.
If the party bigwigs wanna trot out the socialism/Big Governmt boogeyman they need to make sure their congressional colleagues in the party havent been voting FOR IT all along.
Republicans all too easily assume inside-the-beltway citizenship and then become the Jr Partners to Liberalism Inc. That or caretaker’s between liberalism’s spurts of expansion.
Can you blame it when voters say “Phooey!” on such hypocrites?
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Here’s a quotation from Parker herself:
“These b*****ds like Clark and Kerry and that incipient a*s, Dean, and Gephardt and Kucinich and that absolute mental midget Sharpton, race baiter, should all be lined up and slapped.”
“slapped” is a last-minute revision before publication, of course; the original version involved guns, as Parker herself admits.
Does anyone remember the story of the sorceror’s apprentice? You have to watch your back when you’re in the business of calling up monsters to accomplish your ends. Parker and Frum are learning this the hard way.
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Post #4 used an offensive name and made worthless comments, also inconfirmed and implausible.
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As a Democrat, watching the circular firing squad that the GOP has become is quite entertaining.
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“It’s impossible to have a “vibrant discussion” when someone who offers a dissenting view is told they should have been aborted, like Parker was.”
If David Frum had risen so gallantly in defense of Sarah Palin when “Abort Sarah Palin” posters, complete with coat hanger emblems, greeted her and her family at every campaign stop, his appeal for civility might carry some weight. Neither his or Kathrine Parker’s objections to Sarah Palin related to her substance, but to her style, which they found too low-class for their refined palates. I still enjoy their writings and take seriously much of their reflection. I just wish they could be more genteel and less boorish in their criticism.
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Those insiders who have crippled the GOP are flailing away and Sarah Palin is just their scapegoat. They show their true colors by turning now to attack Palin rather than the corrupt media as Make it Man suggests as a better course (a more deserving target) for genuine conservatives who care about honesty.
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Joel Mark at #5,
I quoted (and appropriately censored) a published statement by one of the subjects of this post. It seems to me perfectly fair to point out the similarity between the “Parker should have been aborted” statement and her own rhetoric.
I certainly wasn’t calling conservatives in general “monsters” (although I certainly think both the Parker quotation and the abortion statement are monstrous). I would have said the same thing if the political polarity of the people involved were reversed.
What exactly was “inconfirmed [sic] and implausible” in my comment?
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Frum has never offered a coherent rationale for his disdain for Palin. He has merely spoken in generalities: e.g., Frum on CBS stated that Palin “obviously has never thought about any of the issues that are going to be important to the next administration and whose knowledge is so shallow.”
Frum in the interview gives no examples to support his insults; he merely asserts them.
How is one supposed to have a “vibrant” argument with Mr. Frum, who confuses throwing around insults with making an argument?
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WIG,
Dittos.
I quote myself:
“If they want intellectualism to make a comeback, then maybe they should display a little…”
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What? The pro-militarist intellectuals are worried about the GOP’s future because of the possible influence of pro-militarist religious populists?!
One can only hope! Good riddance, GOP!
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#9, your very name is intentionally offensive. Nothing you say is worth consideration. Nothing.
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Frum sounds like a lefty to me and was part of the problem with the once conservative left. Fewer RINOS will be better for the Republicans.
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Joel,
Pecksniff, Pecksniff, Pecksniff.
It’s the name of a family of characters in Charles Dickens’ novel Martin Chuzzlewit and it is not offensive.
Get your mind out of the gutter.
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Come on, Joel Mark, you’re better than this. There’s no need to get personal. I was simply pointing out that Parker has made comments just as despicable as those she’s now decrying. I’m sure we could find liberal commentators who have done exactly the same thing.
(Also, since we’re already off topic, what on earth could possibly be offensive about the name Pecksniff?)
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It seemed tasteless, but it could be harmless and I don’t know your intent so I withdraw the point about your moniker.
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The GOP’s best hope for retrieving this lost generation of younger voters is through generational warfare, centered on Social Security.
The argument is that their SS contributions, which are very likely to go up, will be supporting “past” generations of fuddy-duddies who have outlived their usefulness to society.
But most of the kids I know are a whole lot greener (environmentally, that is), idealistic and even generous than that.
And, the pathetic blatherings about biased media are worthless when it comes to these kids. Most of ‘em have hardly ever read an actual newspaper and are only dimly aware of nightly network news broadcasts.
In reality, all three legs of the Republican Platform have been whittled or frittered away over the last 20 years:
1) Tax cuts and “free market” economics covered up by excessive public and unregulated private borrowing have brought us to the brink of a depression.
2) Hyper-patriotism and military superiority are mired in the slums of Iraq and mountains of Pakistan, and
3) Emphasis on fundamentalist evangelical faith has put the party into the hands of zidiots like Hagee, Fallwell and Robertson and greed merchants like Osteen.
I really don’t know where in this rubble one might find nuggets to appeal to youth.
It seems pretty certain that the other Republican standby of shrinking government isn’t going to work for the next few years.
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It seemed tasteless, but it could be harmless and I don’t know your intent so I withdraw the point about your moniker.
Pecksniff’s name always sounded vaguely obscene to me.
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This is sad. While I don’t always agree with David Frum, I think he’s at least a thoughtful and interesting writer, and I wish he had been listened to a little more carefully at the National Review. He’ll still be worth reading, wherever he ends up.
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Pecksnoffian – unctuously hypocritical. Joel is on to something :-
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The problem is the lunatic religious fringe does not have the DNA that offers compromise or moderation. It’s my way or the highway with them on all their issues. I will give them this however…they are brilliant at the art of transference…that is the ability to pretend that their own faults really define the opposition. I listen to Rush, for example, and I wonder if Palin actually won the election and Obama lost; if Obama is a socialist when the beggers for corporate welfare are the banks and auto companies; when the biggest wasteful spending in history was under Bush, but we’re made to believe Obama will spend more, and on and on. But the worst is Palin…the most repulsive, ignorant reactionary ever seeking high office… trying to make us believe that Obama is dangerous when she all but fired up the KKK and has begun a new era of hate crimes and intolerance. She prances around the country as the victor. Didn’t she lose?
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Good riddance to Frum, that lying sack. Too bad he didn’t take Goldberg with him.
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Interesting article recently in the New Republic characterizing Sarah Palin as a spiritual sister (my words, but I think an accurate summary) of George Bush.
I think the country as a whole is thinking, “Been there, done that.” Democrates have a great talent for running into the wall, but if the base runs Sarah for President next time, they may keep the Democrats in power for a while, until their flaws accumulate enough to bring Republicans back again. It’s sort of like a suicidal pendulum.
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The Republican coalition of religious evangelicals and neo-conservative intellectuals and economists is falling apart. As both groups have decreased in size, only the true believers are left and they find they can’t tolerate each other. Frum is an urban Canadian intellectual who migrated south since his political views here had a narrow audience. He did this in opposition to his family’s traditional Liberal support. In contrast, Palin must have appeared as the ultimate in rural backwood America — something he was not comfortable with.
Frum was responsible for the “axis of evil” speech but the word evil was inserted at the last minute by a Bush adviser. Frum wasn’t impressed with the change to a more religious imagery.
Note: Focus on the Family is declining. After spending money chasing gays away from the altar/JP, it now has to lay off staff.
http://coloradoindependent.com/15287/after-pumping-money-into-prop-8-focus-on-the-family-announcing-layoffs
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You see the response of the Republican party to the 28 year attack on social conservatives and their ideals in the media. They are never presented in a positive light, only in negativity. Republicans, whether consciously or subconsciously, have responded to this pattern by consistently pushing aside social conservatives from the local level to the federal level.
The conservatives battle no longer seems to be at the election but one step earlier within their own party to win nominations to represent their party as the liberals try to ouster them before they can even run for a public office.
The only way this will change is when conservatives get re-involved in their local meetings and caucuses of their respective parties. As long as they continue to let the liberally minded have the biggest say in both parties decision making, our nation will continue to grow in it’s antichrist direction.
Which, on the good side, means Christ’s return is that much closer. But we should not go down without a fight.
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Chalzz,
I think your analysis is a little off. Contra the oft-repeated mantra that “This is a center-right” country, I think we are center if not center-left. I think it’s a combination of pragmatism – seeing that more liberal ideas will work better in the long run – combined with demographic trends toward a more urban and diverse society. {Or, that might just be wishful thinking
}
The recent election cycle proves, I think, that running to the right – positioning yourself as more conservative – is a losing strategy for the Republican party. The vast pragmatic center is going to take the best ideas of both right and left
And oh, by the way
Liberal ? antichrist
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OK, don’t use funky symbols in posts.
The ? was supposed to be the “does not equal” mathematical symbol. Since it doesn’t come out right (pun intended) I’ll try:
Liberal antichrist.
Math and computer geeks will get the symbol!
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Conservatives are whistling past the graveyard when they confess a failure to intellectualize their principles in a sufficiently compelling manner. The problem is, their main principle is wrong: prosperity, liberty, and happiness are not inversely related to the size of fedral guhmint.
On the other hand, if conservatives are confessing their addiction to race, theater, and rhetoric, they might have a chance to reform. But their habits are so deep that most of them will have to die off.
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