David Frum, "How the 1% Rules":
The U.S. Senate has become the greatest legislative concentration of private wealth since Benjamin Disraeli described the British House of Lords as a "Venetian oligarchy."
Frum's political maturation seems to be a direct result of ideological suppression. I should think working with idiots in the Bush administration pushed him along, and his sacking by AEI was a probable contribution. Of course, there's nearly always an element of simply mellowing with age, too.
Whatever the causes, they're welcome. I suspect Frum anticipates a renewed position of leadership in conservatives' inexorably forthcoming de-tox; I wish him and the drunkards the best. Frum is responsive to logic and history and empirical concreteness and Reason--all of which have become heresy in the pseudoconservative world, and require a massive re-infusion by lots and lots of David Frums.
Sure, Frum is saner than your average "conservative" bear, and I'm glad he pipes up about how crazy they're getting.
He's still a festering boil on this country's body politic, however. Whenever I read his recent writings (I do confess I'm not a habitual reader), it seems that for every criticism of his former team, he considers it his duty to make a scurrilous and/or demonstrably false criticism of liberals/Democrats as well. In that respect, he still thinks it's 1972 and still gets night terrors of those dirty leftists and hippies taking over. Even though, as has become so blindingly obvious in the past decade, the dirty fucking hippies were right about damn near everything all along. But he can't even begin to admit this. No no.
Posted by: Turgidson | July 13, 2012 at 11:29 AM