David Frum is urging "real" conservatives to urge Mitt Romney to declare what the former are sure to declare--after the election--was the "winning" ultraconservative message that the losing Mitt Romney would have otherwise won with:
YES I will cut taxes for the rich, YES I will cut Medicaid, YES I will reinvent Medicare as a voucher system, YES I will favor a human life amendment to ban abortion in all cases, YES I believe it's a major priority to reverse same-sex marriage, YES i was right to say let the auto industry go bankrupt, NO I don't believe in global warming, NO I don't think it's important we cover the uninsured, NO I think we have enough immigrants already, NO I won't withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, NO I don't think we should provide the existing level of food stamps and income support to the unemployed, etc. etc. etc.
Frum is correct. Contemporary "conservatives" aren't merely gutless. They're a fraud. Braying that their message is the message of real America, conservatives bang their radical drums and toot their extremist horns right up until election time, at which point they slam on the moderate brakes. Afterward, assuming their candidate loses--and Romney will--they once again strike up the radical band and blast that tired old chestnut: Our guy lost only because he wasn't conservative enough.
Well, boys and girls, as Frum says, Here is your message and now is your chance.
Do I have permission to smack across the face, any republican who says Romney lost, because he was not conservative enough? They had plenty of chances to nominate a candidate who believed all of those things and they could have run any one of them and taken their chances. Do they forget the primaries? Do they forget that it was up to them to pick the nominee and Mitt was the one they picked? They have no one to blame but themselves for picking someone they thought was too moderate and then losing. But there is no amount of reality that right wingers would admit to, so why should this be any exception?
Posted by: AnneJ | November 02, 2012 at 11:04 AM
It looks like Frum really has gone sane since he was kicked out of the American Enterprise Institute for criticizing the GOP for their total stonewalling of Obamacare.
I think it is only the sporting thing to do to tip off chronic victims of Poe's Law that Frum is being snarcastic.
Posted by: priscianus jr | November 02, 2012 at 11:13 AM
This is the biggest missed lesson of the campaign. Republicans no longer have the courage of their convictions because they know they cannot be elected when candidly stating their true beliefs and agenda.
Posted by: Robert Lipscomb | November 02, 2012 at 11:18 AM
Seeing as the far right do not have the courage of their convictions I think this leaves a very open door to any aspiring Republican who does have the courage to lead the Republicans back to some semblance of sanity. The way this election is shaping up the Republicans are going to have to break Grover's heart and vote for some tax increases. The negotiations to deal with the rather arbitrarily constructed fiscal cliff will require it. The business community is going to demand a resolution to this problem since their bottom lines depend on it and fund raising for 2012 starts on Wednesday of next week.
Posted by: Peter G | November 02, 2012 at 11:42 AM
Sorry that should have been 2014.
Posted by: Peter G | November 02, 2012 at 11:43 AM
Well this is embarrassing. In my comment above I said it looks like David Frum has gone sane. I need to look at that again. He WAS being sarcastic in that particular comment, but I didn't understand the point of his sarcasm, mainly because it's a stupid point. Most important of all, I didn't realize that Frum had seriously endorsed Romney a couple of days ago.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/01/why-i-ll-vote-for-romney.html
Frum's point is that despite Obama's undeniable accomplishment, Romney would be a better president, and all this Tea Party trash talk and pathological lying that he's engaged in throughout the campaign -- well, that was just to get elected, it says nothing about what he would actually do in office. In reality, he'd govern just like Obama, only better. (Perhaps because he's white, though DF would of course never s say a thing like that.)
Frum's making fun of the "real conservatives" because he's so sure Romney would not do any of the things he told those yokels he'd do.
So I need to revise my earlier comment. Frum is perfectly sane, his problem is that he's just too Canadian. He hasn't got brain one about where the GOP's head really is these days (far up its you know what), even though this is exactly what cost him his prestigious job 2 1/2 years ago. In other words, looking straight into the face of fascism, Frum shows himself to be breathtakingly naive. And when a "public intellectual" like Frum is that naive, he is a danger to himself and others.
Posted by: priscianus jr | November 02, 2012 at 12:41 PM
Peter G. (and PMC)
When you consider that Frum was being sarcastic in that post, his point dwindles down to a speck of nonsense. Conservatives do have the courage of their convictions, and Romney stuck it out as long as possible. Only when it became glaringly obvious that that portion of the American voting public with an IQ above room temperature would not vote for him, did "Moderate Mitt" re-emerge. Frum knows Romney's a liar -- he's perfectly OK with that -- but he's 180 degrees wrong about which part of Romney's shtick was the lie and which part was the truth.
Posted by: priscianus jr | November 02, 2012 at 12:49 PM
@priscianus jr: Conservatives do not have the courage of their convictions. They nominated Romney knowing he really did not buy their beliefs. Then, they allowed him to go "Moderate Mitt" because they knew he could not sell their agenda.
Posted by: Robert Lipscomb | November 02, 2012 at 01:32 PM
I took Frum's post to be nothing but sarcasm. Maybe it is because I too am Canadian. He basically challenged the "real" conservatives to put their money where their collective mouths are. My understanding of a quoted real is to imply ironically that such people are not actually conservatives. If that is his intention, and that is what I took him to mean, then it implies that the majority of people in his chosen party are not in fact conservatives. Just as firebaggers who will brook no compromise and therefore allow no progress are not real progressives. And incidentally, as of Sept 11,2007 he's all yours. I like to think we Canadians have a no return policy but after Conrad Black I'm not sure.
Posted by: Peter G | November 02, 2012 at 02:23 PM
David Frum and David Brooks have proven themselves to be intellectually dishonest and inconsistent (translation: douchebags).
Andrew Sullivan pulled his punches because they are friends. But the reality is that Brooks and Frum need to continue to cash in on their conservative meal-ticket (see "Pundit Industrial Complex" in Wikipedia). They know Romney's going to lose. But by endorsing him, they won't be excommunicated.
Where have you gone, Bruce Bartlett?
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
Posted by: MinneapolisPipe | November 03, 2012 at 03:17 AM