David Frum: When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?

[bobalot]

Not a lot of sympathy for Republicans who are suddenly waking up to find their party hijacked. It was all well and good when they were in power and riding the tide of the tea party to victory. Now suddenly after a decade of people on the other side and in the middle pointing out the hyteria and hypocrisy of the right they woke up on their own and see a party they don't agree with? I call bullshit on that. If you really cared about the message and mission of your party all the warning signs were loud and clear starting with the Bush presidency and you should have done something then but why act if the party seems successful even if you no longer agree with its actions, right?

I think Mike Wong put it best when he described a similar realisation by Frank Schaeffer.

His profound revelation is a bit like a guy crawling out of a car wreck, looking at the corpses of his victims, and saying "I'll never drink and drive again!"
Fuck him and the horse he rode in on.

You may despise him personally, but he's probably forgotten more about the internal dynamics of the Republican Party than you'll ever learn. So it's advisable to at least take note of the words coming out of his mouth, as they're of historical interest.

Which is the same I'd say of Albert Speer, so don't think I'm giving him much of a break.

Really? And what new information has he provided to us that hasn't been posted on this board before? Shit, I don't live in America and even I know most of the crap he wrote in that article. What makes this article interesting is not what has been written but who wrote it. A prominent conservative braking rank with his party is what is news here.

[Simon_Jester]

Really? And what new information has he provided to us that hasn't been posted on this board before? Shit, I don't live in America and even I know most of the crap he wrote in that article. What makes this article interesting is not what has been written but who wrote it. A prominent conservative braking rank with his party is what is news here.

If you like not living in a little reality-warping bubble all your own, it's good to have someone who's been there and done that and genuinely thinks differently about the world than you in a lot of ways, but who has come to the same basic conclusion as you. Especially when the opinion is about politics and he, realistically, knows a hell of a lot more about the details of how politics works than you do because he did it for a living for so long.

If he, for whom all these people on the right are living personalities and not just assholes on TV, comes to the same conclusion you do, he is doing you something of a service. Because he is acting as living, breathing support for your views that (unlike your own 'fuck him and the horse he rode in on!') might actually convince other people to stop, take a breath, and stop shitting on the country.

Also, you're ignoring the fact that by mainstream media standards, what Frum is saying is news. You may have been privately convinced of it for years, but the Republicans would never admit to it and the Democrats haven't made much of a point out of it. For Frum to stand up and point out, bluntly, that the emperor has no clothes and indeed seems to have declared war on the very concept of clothing itself, is a step in the right direction.

Even if you personally hold him responsible for all the things he was involved in in the Bush years, it's stupid to get bogged down in litanies of hatred against the man. That's just tribal politics.

[Sriad]

I think that's a bit too harsh and unforgiving an attitude, and counter-productive.

Everyone makes mistakes. If someone realizes they were wrong and does differently in the future, insisting on condemning them and hating them forevermore comes off as hateful and bitter. Also, how many Rightwingers who might otherwise be willing to admit they were wrong will be willing to do so in the face of such unremitting hostility?

I was going to post pretty much exactly this, so I'll just reiterate:

When someone comes around to your way of thinking on a particular issue (in this case the broad issue "The Republican Party has gone bug-fuck insane") telling them to go fuck themselves is stupid and counterproductive.

Think about what you'd do in real life. If your homophobic conservative uncle told you "I'm still conservative but have come around to support gay rights and accept your/your friend's identity" would you honestly tell him to take a long walk off a short pier?

People can be my guests to tell other people to fuck themselves when they disagree, but telling them to fuck themselves when they DO just makes those people look like petty little shitheads.

[bobalot]

If you like not living in a little reality-warping bubble all your own, it's good to have someone who's been there and done that and genuinely thinks differently about the world than you in a lot of ways, but who has come to the same basic conclusion as you. Especially when the opinion is about politics and he, realistically, knows a hell of a lot more about the details of how politics works than you do because he did it for a living for so long.

So without all the waffle, you are saying it's good to have somebody across the political spectrum agree with you that his former party has gone insane. Where exactly have I argued against that? I'm just saying he is also a wanker. He and "intellectuals" like him bear a lot of the responsibility for that insanity. The results of harnessing the looney right and the religious right* were very predictable, but this douche actively pursued this strategy regardless. A fact that he curiously doesn't dwell upon much.

* The same religious right who have build complete and separate intuitions separate from normal society (their own universities, "research" institutions, etc) so they can perpetuate their own world-view with their own "facts".

If he, for whom all these people on the right are living personalities and not just assholes on TV, comes to the same conclusion you do, he is doing you something of a service. Because he is acting as living, breathing support for your views that (unlike your own 'fuck him and the horse he rode in on!') might actually convince other people to stop, take a breath, and stop shitting on the country.

Point taken.

Also, you're ignoring the fact that by mainstream media standards, what Frum is saying is news. You may have been privately convinced of it for years, but the Republicans would never admit to it and the Democrats haven't made much of a point out of it. For Frum to stand up and point out, bluntly, that the emperor has no clothes and indeed seems to have declared war on the very concept of clothing itself, is a step in the right direction.

Which I specifically said in my previous post (with waffle added).

....What makes this article interesting is not what has been written but who wrote it. A prominent conservative braking rank with his party is what is news here.

Even if you personally hold him responsible for all the things he was involved in in the Bush years, it's stupid to get bogged down in litanies of hatred against the man. That's just tribal politics.

I don't hate the man, I just think he's a douche because he willingly helped create the problem and barely acknowledges that. But I guess it's "tribal politics" to judge someone by their actions.

[Eframepilot]

Anyone who listens to David Frum needs their fucking heads examined. He's a goddamn NeoCon asshole and doesn't know what in the fuck he is talking about to boot. Fuck him and fuck the NeoCons as they're the goddamn interlopers. I'm sick of hearing shitheels like Frum drone on about how they love 'free markets' and other drek they spew. Newsflash, our Fascistic system is NOT a Free Market, Frummie-pooh.

Frum is among the bat-shit crazy that took over the party and its time people wake up and realize that.

Frum has changed a lot, especially since he split with the Republican mainstream in 2009. He actually wrote recently that, if he knew in 2002 everything that he knows now, he would not have gone to war in Iraq. It doesn't change all of his crazy neocon-ish behavior in the past, but it does show an enormous willingness to reflect upon his decisions and reevaluate them in the light of new facts, something that current conservatism is incapable of doing (except in moving even further to the right).

Frum is still on the right side of the political spectrum and I disagree with him on many if not most issues, but U.S. politics would be a lot more healthy if conservatives were like him.

[BrooklynRedLeg]

Thanks for derailing the thread with unrelated bullshit to the topic, douchenozzle.

Its not unrelated. Its all bullshit that Frum spews against Dr. Ron Paul, the only Conservative running for President at the moment. Frum is an ass-stain and I have every goddamn right to want him OUT of the Republican Party and to shut his lying goddamn piehole. He is a NeoCon and an interloper and those like him are the reason I left the Republican Party after Bush won his 2nd Term. Anyone who thinks for half a minute he has changed his tune needs help.

[BrooklynRedLeg]

Frum has changed a lot, especially since he split with the Republican mainstream in 2009.

That's the thing, the Republican Mainstream. Frum doesn't get it and probably never will: the NeoCons are out of the Mainstream now. They ran our nation into the ground and their time is over.

He actually wrote recently that, if he knew in 2002 everything that he knows now, he would not have gone to war in Iraq. It doesn't change all of his crazy neocon-ish behavior in the past, but it does show an enormous willingness to reflect upon his decisions and reevaluate them in the light of new facts, something that current conservatism is incapable of doing (except in moving even further to the right).

Yea, I don't see it especially his supposed contrition.

Frum is still on the right side of the political spectrum and I disagree with him on many if not most issues, but U.S. politics would be a lot more healthy if conservatives were like him.

Funny, but its my considered opinion that if Conservatives were more like Ron Paul then US politics would be more healthy.

[Simon_Jester]

Frum has changed a lot, especially since he split with the Republican mainstream in 2009.

That's the thing, the Republican Mainstream. Frum doesn't get it and probably never will: the NeoCons are out of the Mainstream now. They ran our nation into the ground and their time is over.

Frum's point, RedLeg, is that while he and his ran the country into the ground (which it sounds like he's actually starting to get)... the new party leadership is doing the same thing. Only harder, and more gleefully.

Michelle Bachmann is not an acceptable substitute for George Bush; putting her in the White House would be more of an unmitigated disaster, not less. And what finally caused Frum to get a clue is that this is the case- that the Republican Party is dominated by people who are just so indifferent to facts, and so willing to embrace corruption and folly and let policy issues hang, that their ability to govern the country at all is in question.

Funny, but its my considered opinion that if Conservatives were more like Ron Paul then US politics would be more healthy.

Probably yes, because Ron Paul's at least intellectually honest and willing to say things that displease the stereotypical Republican primary voter.

What makes the rest of the American right into such a clusterfuck is that they've been cultivating those Republican primary voters, and pandering to them, for years. The result is that we've now got a block of about 20-30% of the country that will believe any insane bullshit ("Obama is a KENYAN MUSLIM COMMUNIST"), promote any mean-spirited and dumb policy ("2000-mile fence on the border! DAMN THE LOGISTICS, FULL STEAM AHEAD!"), and reflexively oppose anything government does with a fervor even some anarchists would be hard pressed to match ("ABOLISH THE... I FORGET WHICH!").

Replacing the entire Republican party leadership with an army of Ron Paul clones would be such a fucking relief at this point.

[SpaceMarine93]

When contemplating the ruthless brilliance of this system, it’s tempting to fall back on the theory that the GOP is masterminded by a cadre of sinister billionaires, deftly manipulating the political process for their own benefit. The billionaires do exist, and some do indeed attempt to influence the political process. The bizarre fiasco of campaign-finance reform has perversely empowered them to give unlimited funds anonymously to special entities that can spend limitlessly. (Thanks, Senator ­McCain! Nice job, Senator Feingold!) Yet, for the most part, these Republican billionaires are not acting cynically. They watch Fox News too, and they’re gripped by the same apocalyptic fears as the Republican base. In funding the tea-party movement, they are ­actually acting against their own longer-term interests, for it is the richest who have the most interest in political stability, which depends upon broad societal agreement that the existing distribution of rewards is fair and reasonable. If the social order comes to seem unjust to large numbers of people, what happens next will make Occupy Wall Street look like a street fair.

I always thought the Republicans are only in it for the cash, but this is ridiculous. I mean, come on, a coven of ruthless billionaires who secretly control the system from behind? Sounds like one of those NWO conspiracies if you ask me, only on a smaller scale. What evidence does he have that there is a concerted effort by billionaires of America to keep this country in the rotting pit it is in now? What are their names? What businesses do they run, what organizations do they control and where could we find them?

[Simon_Jester]

[groans]

Could you please go away and come back when you've learned critical thinking skills?

You're missing the point.

There are a bunch of Republicans, no not all billionaires, running through the entire range of incomes from billionaires down to petty-cash donors, who genuinely think that funding all the things the Republicans now do is the best way to run the country.

And somehow you come away thinking it's this weird NWO-style conspiracy, after 'reading' a Frum quote which says the exact opposite.

[SpaceMarine93]

Sorry. It was late when I read this and I wasn't thinking straight.