We’ve All Gone Crazy

Posted on | November 21, 2011 | 61 Comments

Folie à deux — shared psychosis; a psychiatric syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief are transmitted from one individual to another.

Who’s nuts: David Frum or the Republicans who hate him?

It’s a very strange experience to have your friends think you’ve gone crazy. Some will tell you so. Others will indulgently humor you. Still others will avoid you. More than a few will demand that the authorities do something to get you off the streets. . . .
It’s possible that my friends are right. I don’t think so — but then, crazy people never do. . . .
When I entered Republican politics, during an earlier period of malaise, in the late seventies and early eighties, the movement got most of the big questions — crime, inflation, the Cold War — right. This time, the party is getting the big questions disastrously wrong.

You can read the whole thing, but I think the basic problem can be traced back to the Bush administration, when we were told that profoundly un-conservative things — “No Child Left Behind,” the USA-PATRIOT Act, Medicare Part D — were in fact fundamental to the conservative agenda. And when those things failed (either as policy or politics), the “brand damage” to the Republican Party was blamed on conservatives who had advocated those things.

Cronyism in federal appointments (“Heckuva job, Brownie“) is no part the conservative agenda, and yet when FEMA screwed up, conservatism got the blame. Micro-managing public school curricula from D.C. isn’t conservative, but when No Child Left Behind forced schools to “teach to the test,” enraged teachers didn’t blame liberals, did they? And you can’t find anything reading Burke, Kirk or Buckley that would support a policy of encouraging lenders to give poorly documented mortages to unqualified buyers, yet this is what the Bush administration did — and called it “conservative”!

We are dealing with the results of a confusion, one which previously developed during the administrations of Eisenhower and Nixon, and which recurred under Bush. This confusion is between:

The policies pursued by Republicans; and
The policies advocated by conservatives.

Frum is a wonk very much concerned with the question of what legislative and policy initiatives can be feasibly enacted (and politically defended) by Republican elected officials. That’s a very different thing than declaring, broadly, what the ultimate objectives of the conservative movement should be.

For example, were it in my power to accomplish one thing in Washington, D.C., the federal Department of Education would be abolished and its employees summarily dismissed from public service. Except for funding necessary research and providing educational benefits for military veterans, we would get the federal government entirely out of the education business.

This is not how wonks talk or think, however, because nobody in Wonk World has that kind of profound loathing for federal bureaucracy. When you suggest a genuinely bold proposal like zeroing out the Department of Education, a Republican wonk immediately imagines the hue and outcry from the Democrats, the teachers unions, and the New York Times. They can’t imagine Republicans withstanding such angry criticism and, they’ll point out, Reagan never followed through on his promise to abolish the Department of Education.

So your bold proposal is immediately dismissed as “unserious,” impractical as either politics or policy, and you’re back to arguing about how the Department of Education can be reformed, as if there is some conservative way to reform a bureaucracy that — by conservative principles — shouldn’t exist to begin with.

Also, abolishing whole departments of the federal government would deprive the next Republican president of the opportunity to appoint their cronies to top jobs in those departments. Maybe you have no desire to be an assistant deputy undersecretary in the Department of Education, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t well-connected Republicans who covet such posts. So you’re messing with the “jobs for the boys” factor of partisan loyalty, which doesn’t matter to you — the rank-and-file voter — but matters a great deal to young GOP operatives who see an administration position as a stepping stone to a lucrative career as a K Street lobbyist.

What can be done? I think the important thing is to be honest about motives, and to clarify the difference between long-term objectives and near-term legislative proposals. Keep in mind that Hubert Humphrey and other liberals were advocating for nationalizing health care as early as 1948. it took them until 1965 to get Medicare and Medicaid, and until 2010 to get ObamaCare.

Democrats are willing to push relentlessly for their policy preferences, and to suffer political unpopularity to achieve their goals.

Republicans, by contrast, have developed a habit in the past 30 years of looking around for a chance to support something that seems popular — Bomb Saddam! — then lashing the hell out of anyone who criticizes them — Un-American! — and thereby confusing people about first principles. (The democratization of Mesopatamia might be a good thing generally, but is it really so central to the conservative agenda that it must be implemented at all hazards?) While I don’t want to turn this into a schismatic dispute among paleocons and neocons or between any other of the various cliques inside the Big Tent, can’t we agree that the “brand damage” legacy of Bush-era Republicanism had something to do with the ascendance of certain people and certain ideas to positions of dominance in the GOP coalition over the past 10 or 15 years?

When we see GOP primary voters embrace the populism of Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain, or the libertarianism of Ron Paul, we have to recognize this as a reaction to what went wrong with the GOP between 1995 and 2006. Populism involves a rejection of the elite, and who can deny that the Republican elite has made a botch of things in the past 15 years? Libertarianism involves a hostility to statism, and who can deny that the GOP didn’t become entirely too statist during the Bush years?

Over the weekend, I exchanged e-mails with Brad Thompson, author of Neoconservatism: Obituary for an Idea. Critics of neoconservatism have had something of a field day since the 2006 mid-term elections brought the collapse of what we might call the “Bush bubble.” Whether Dr. Thompson’s criticisms are fair or unfair, I can’t say, as I haven’t read his book. But I would suggest that what we’ve seen in the past three years suggests that, if neoconservatism is implicated in the “brand damage” issue, is it because of whatever there is of elitism and statism in the neoconservative worldview.

Unlike David Brooks — I walk out of room the minute he starts talking — David Frum is someone I consider a friend, which causes me to get a lot of heat from some of my conservative friends, including those friends whom Frum has attacked by name.

Frum stubbornly believes he’s right (and also, Right), and any attempt to argue him out of his position is doomed to failure, simply because it’s his position and he feels honor-bound to defend it. Being rather mule-headed myself, I can relate to that, even when I know Frum is wrong, wrong, wrong (as is anyone who disagrees with me). However, I believe the point of arguments among conservatives is always to find the best way to stomp liberalism into smithereens. And I wish Frum would stop carping so much about conservatives, and start stomping some liberals.

By the way — have you shopped our Amazon Associates “Black Friday Deals Week” specials? I’ve been flogging this all day, and I’ll keep on flogging it as long as necessary: You get low prices, I get a small commission, and we all have a Merry Christmas. That’s the kind of agenda I think all True Conservatives can support.

Category: Conservatism 101

Comments

61 Responses to “We’ve All Gone Crazy”

Finrod Felagund
November 21st, 2011 @ 1:43 pm

I can’t help but think that David Frum would have been one of those back in 1980 who was calling Reaganomics ‘voodoo economics’.
Joe
November 21st, 2011 @ 2:05 pm

It is not “compasionate” to drive your car off a cliff because you are being compasionate to an imaginary squirrel in the road. What David does not get is we have to fundamentally change things. This is not some minor the Democrats have it a little wrong, both the Republicans and Democrats have so screwed up things we need fundamental fiscal change.
Anonymous
November 21st, 2011 @ 2:06 pm

Reminds me of those car dealers who’d jump up and down on the roof of a junker they are selling for $300, and telling us how crazy they are.

It was the 60’s. You could buy a beater for $25, and gas was 32cents/gal.
Anonymous
November 21st, 2011 @ 2:10 pm

Frum would insist that he has stayed firm and true to his own principles. He’s always been a Republican and will always be a Republican, but . .

Well, you can put a lot of stuff on the other side of that “but,” and I’m not here to defend Frum, but rather to say that the criticism goes both ways.
Anonymous
November 21st, 2011 @ 2:21 pm

Not that I ever been a friend to Frum but put me in the group that wants the authorities to get him of the streets and newspapers and the TV and the radio and the interwebs….. oh yeah best keep him off the telephone too. For that matter it would be best to keep him away from flags that might be used for semaphore and while we’re thinking about it keep him away from open fires outside lest he use a blanket or a coat to make smoke signals.
Anonymous
November 21st, 2011 @ 2:26 pm

I’m tempted to ask bloggers like Frum and Daniel Larison: What does it say to them when 90+ percent of the regular commenters on their respective sites are leftists?
Tennwriter
November 21st, 2011 @ 2:46 pm

Mr. Frum,

I’m glad the Right is making its own alternative information delivery system. Sometimes it goes overboard, true.

You claim we were for massive cuts. Was that cuts-cuts, or just a reduction in the rate of increase. If you expected a 2% increase in salary at the NYT at your annual salary review, and only got 1%, would that be a cut of 50% or 1% or Not A Cut At All?

Sir, Calvin Coolidge did very well with a cut taxes, and leave things alone to recover on their own. If only we could have done that.

Some of what you say sounds good, but I think the problem is you’re basing your conclusions on ‘imaginary squirrels’, on facts that don’t actually exist, like the ‘cuts’.

In any case, I do not think we are on the same side. I am a conservative. You are..?
Joe
November 21st, 2011 @ 3:00 pm

Jonah Goldberg did a very good Corner post once on how while he can respect some of the things Frum says, he finds it odd how Frum is always directing his venom and attacks to the right and not to those on the left.

And that is becasue whatever attention/money/influence Frum gets is being a “conservative” who attacks the right. And this is a niche market populated by David Brooks, Andrew Sullivan, Jen Rubin, Kathleen Parker, etc.
richard mcenroe
November 21st, 2011 @ 3:04 pm

And NO CRAYONS!
Anonymous
November 21st, 2011 @ 3:04 pm

I tried to read it, honestly I did, but just like a seminar caller to right-side talk radio: he starts in with the “been a Republican all my life” business, followed immediately by a big, fat ugly accusation that Republicans just want to “score points” in the budget debate, and are guilty of “shrug[ging] off the concerns of the unemployed.”

He’s decided Republicans are evil or something, and then goes on to somehow justify it by attributing evil thoughts and intents to them. Mind reading is not an advanced science, so maybe he’s an outlier, but excuse my doubts.

That’s in the fourth paragraph. The only possible reason for reading further would be to try and understand his problem. But it’s clearly his problem, and he needs to deal with it.

If he were younger and less experienced, his essay wouldn’t mean much. To see this level of contempt swaddled in the kind of reasoning that garners rotten grades in freshman logic is bad enough. To see it embodied in someone who worked closely with the former administration, …well, let’s just say that Dr. Larry Arnn has his work cut out for him at Hillsdale College.

Why? Because we need people who can reason without relying so heavily on moral equivalence and appeals to mind-reading. We need thinkers who do not fail to see the ethical superiority of the founder’s intent for this nation, versus claims of compassion enforced through government edict. We need men who understand that compassion cannot be coerced, nor foisted off on some entity answerable to no one.

David Frum should be booed at NASCAR.
Anonymous
November 21st, 2011 @ 3:11 pm

Nor chalk or charcoal.
Anonymous
November 21st, 2011 @ 3:16 pm

And yes, Stacy is correct in attributing much to the Bush era. Eras, actually. But the clash between Paleos and Neos is far less about opposing ideas, and more about weighting certain factors.

More overlap occurs between the two than some (currently, that would be the Ron Paul fans) seem to believe.

The Paleos have some blinders on about what you do after you defeat an enemy. The Neos still have too much baggage from being leftists, which causes them to take the wrong approach to remedy that particular lacking in the Paleos. The reality of what to do after defeating an enemy is somewhere between the two extremes.
Adjoran
November 21st, 2011 @ 3:27 pm

Frum was one of the leaders of the Republican opposition to the nomination of Harriet Miers, but it was due to some personal stuff when they were both in the White House. Apparently Miers didn’t think a Deputy Assistant Testicle Scratcher to the Assistant Speechwriter merited inclusion on important meetings. Frum took it personally.

But it seemed he expected some sort of medal for playing his personal grudge even though the resistance to Miers was only half based in our sympathy for Frum’s bruised feelings, so he began lashing out at conservatives with regularity at that point.

It’s not really his fault. He’s Canadian, and they had already allocated all their national brain power to Mark Steyn. But he’s not the worst of the “CINOs” by a good bit.

Sullivan never was a conservative nor did he pretend to be. He always was some form of libertarian, only he had a temporary epiphany on national security after 9/11 and somehow the short pants brigade at NRO thought that made him something other that a sick and twisted pervert.

Brooks and Parker are definite turncoats who hardly ever had a nice thing to say about conservatives after they turned. Brooks began his voyage left the day he was hired to replace Safire (as if!) at NYT, and never looked back. Parker was a country club Repub who was so incensed at McCain’s pick of Palin she left for the left. How dare he pick some woman who doesn’t mind being photographed in plaid flannel and mom jeans!

Frum is to the right of them, to the left of Rubin – who I haven’t had a problem with, besides her being in the tank for Romney and using her blog to campaign for him. But that happens all over.
Adjoran
November 21st, 2011 @ 3:28 pm

Easy one – it says, “Cha-ching!”
Joe
November 21st, 2011 @ 3:29 pm

I also linked this article as “Stupid on Steriods” on the Krugman thread. They seemed to go together–sort of like “shit on a shingle”
JeffS
November 21st, 2011 @ 3:29 pm

You have to ask if David Frum is nuts?
dad29
November 21st, 2011 @ 3:31 pm

Steve Hayward (http://www.aei.org/article/politics-and-public-opinion/elections/modernizing-conservatism/) makes the case that Ron Reagan’s “starve the beast” wasn’t all that conservative, either. Worse, he thinks that the situation is irremediable–or at best, only slightly modify-able.
Adjoran
November 21st, 2011 @ 3:32 pm

I disapprove of booing those invited to be Grand Marshalls, especially if they are accompanied by the children of active duty servicemen. I don’t think there is much danger of Frum getting such an invitation, though.

He’s more or less like Joe Scarborough. He would have liked to make a living as a conservative pundit, but he just couldn’t build the following for that, so he sold his soul to whoever had the most nickels in their pocket.
Anonymous
November 21st, 2011 @ 3:46 pm

What if the invitees invited themselves?

I disapprove of booing kids at sporting events (e.g., college football players), but heartily endorse the booing of referees. In this case, the referees wrapped themselves with the children of active duty servicemen.
Anonymous
November 21st, 2011 @ 3:49 pm

Well, actually, I wouldn’t boo an invitee. (I said it was wrong to boo the FLOTUS in the same situation.) It just sounded funny to say in my head. Like if I’d wrote “Frum should be punished with a baby.”
Anonymous
November 21st, 2011 @ 4:06 pm

But should the baby be punished with a Frum?
Joe
November 21st, 2011 @ 4:12 pm

Since you have combined crazy and deals on Amazon let me suggest reviewing this story and then reviewing this.
Joe
November 21st, 2011 @ 4:16 pm

Sullivan never was a conservative nor did he pretend to be.

You are half right, but he did pretend to be one: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/652741/book_review_the_conservative_soul_andrew.html
Joe
November 21st, 2011 @ 4:17 pm

Selling out is not exactly nuts. More craven than nuts.
Joe
November 21st, 2011 @ 4:34 pm

I can help you get through the holidays.

And you benefit Stacy by everything you purchase when you click to Amazon through this site.
Anonymous
November 21st, 2011 @ 4:34 pm

It must have been the plaid flannel even Barack wears mom jeans.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=3&oq=Barack+Obama+mom+jeans&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS403US403&q=barack+obama+mom+jeans+photo
Anonymous
November 21st, 2011 @ 4:41 pm

“The Paleos have some blinders on about what you do after you defeat an enemy. ”

ooh ooh, I know what you do after defeating an enemy, make pyramids of their skulls.
Joe
November 21st, 2011 @ 5:08 pm

Okay, I think the mentality that would allow a person to harm a pet warrants strict punishment (there is a difference between killing a pig for food and killing a pig that is someone’s pet). But 50 years? How many years is Jon Corzine facing for losing over a billion bucks of investor money?

Anyway, Amazon can deliver a Smithfield Ham to your home for Thanksgiving (you better express it), or Christmas/New Years. Enjoy!
Adjoran
November 21st, 2011 @ 5:15 pm

But when you are wearing a teh gehe bike helmet, no one notices.

Besides, he keeps his mom jeans so nicely creased!
Adjoran
November 21st, 2011 @ 5:17 pm

I stand corrected. Change my statement to “…nor did he pretend to be – until he stood to make a buck off it.”

Better?
Adjoran
November 21st, 2011 @ 5:20 pm

Gotta ask: So, what happened to the head?
Adjoran
November 21st, 2011 @ 5:22 pm

But Dennis Hopper’s dead – who will write your story as an epic poem?
Anonymous
November 21st, 2011 @ 5:34 pm

If he’d had a conservative congress to actually starve the beast that might have worked. Oh, and speaking of Congress, you have to ask yourself how much of Reagan and Bush was what they wanted to do, was their idea, or a necessary payoff to the Copperheads in order to be allowed to defend the country? We know for a fact that DHS and TSA were exactly that (wasn’t Bush who came up with “to professionalize you must Federalize”).

Both Reagan and Bush thought they were dealing with a Loyal Opposition. Wrong.
Adjoran
November 21st, 2011 @ 5:38 pm

I don’t think it was Reagan who said that, but rather some conservatives who hoped the tax cuts would have that effect. Reagan and Laffer understood the stimulative effect on the economy would make up for the “lost” revenues.

Hayward’s right as far as concerns Social Security and Medicare. While reforms are required very soon, even self-described conservatives can’t muster a majority to get rid of them. But we can do something about other transfer payments – SSI and food stamps are the latest scam, and they don’t enjoy the public support.
The Afternoon Flap: November 21, 2011 | Flap's Blog - FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog
November 21st, 2011 @ 5:44 pm

[…] We’ve All Gone Crazy – Unlike David Brooks — I walk out of room the minute he starts talking — David Frum is someone I consider a friend, which causes me to get a lot of heat from some of my conservative friends, including those friends whom Frum has attacked by name.Frum stubbornly believes he’s right (and also, Right), and any attempt to argue him out of his position is doomed to failure, simply because it’s his position and he feels honor-bound to defend it. Being rather mule-headed myself, I can relate to that, even when I know Frum is wrong, wrong, wrong (as is anyone who disagrees with me). However, I believe the point of arguments among conservatives is always to find the best way to stomp liberalism into smithereens. And I wish Frum would stop carping so much about conservatives, and start stomping some liberals.Read it all […]
Anonymous
November 21st, 2011 @ 5:52 pm

Doing the right thing is it’s own reward.
fondatori
November 21st, 2011 @ 6:00 pm

Actually I thought Frum made some good points. Some features of conservative/republican thinking are unlikely to happen in the actual world we live in (getting rid of various federal government departments for instance). Getting excited about them isn’t worthwhile and is actually counterproductive.

On the other hand, usual for Frum, he mixes some legitimate criticism and thoughtful insights with strawman arguments and scorn. His personal nastiness shines through. I feel like I need to shower after I read anything written by that guy.
Joe
November 21st, 2011 @ 6:29 pm

Very good. That sums it up well.
Anonymous
November 21st, 2011 @ 6:36 pm

Those features Frum thinks are unlikely to happen such as getting rid of various federal departments are what must happen, if we can’t do that we shall never recover our Liberty or free our economy.
richard mcenroe
November 21st, 2011 @ 8:09 pm

“Doin’ right ain’t got no end” — Red Legs Terrell.

crazy old woman laughs.
dad29
November 21st, 2011 @ 9:34 pm

That might be interesting. I think that GWBush was, in fact, a very left-ish (R).

The difficulty for Conservatives is that we tend to take people’s word. Has to do with how we wuz brung up. Didn’t do law-school to learn how to screw with the language, ya’ know.
Joseph Fein
November 21st, 2011 @ 11:11 pm

Frum is as solid a Conservative as Andrew Sullivan, Friederdork and Romney. They consider themsleves “Establishment,” without dealing with us “Local Yokels,”

The era of Establishmenterians is over! People like RS should be writing for Newsweek and Time, but those same folk behind those magazines refuse to even talk to us.

Frum is as useful as a Eunnich in a Cat House.
Anonymous
November 22nd, 2011 @ 12:21 am

Triangular base or square?
Anonymous
November 22nd, 2011 @ 12:25 am

It’s a Frum baby boogaloo!
Anonymous
November 22nd, 2011 @ 12:37 am

Square.
Quartermaster
November 22nd, 2011 @ 7:54 am

The little Frummer Boy (as Taki acidly calls him) was never a conservative. He may say he has been a Republican all his adult life, but that isn’t saying much.
Bob Belvedere
November 22nd, 2011 @ 8:09 am

What Frum and those who share his sentiments do not understand is that the nice gentleman’s club he joined in the early 1980’s was a bust out operation devised
by the Left to divert the non-Left’s attention from what was going on in the back room. This wonderful, collegiate world he entered and enjoyed was a lie – the Left was using sleight-of-hand to divert our eyes from the destruction they were waging. Frum doesn’t get it yet. He refuses to see that the world he aspires to live in does not exist – it’s a scam.
Bob Belvedere
November 22nd, 2011 @ 8:11 am

Only soft toys so he won’t hurt himself.
Bob Belvedere
November 22nd, 2011 @ 8:13 am

Only David Brooks knows for sure!
Bob Belvedere
November 22nd, 2011 @ 8:14 am

It’s now a Congressional staffer.