RSS Feed MenuI tweeted my passing thoughts as I watched the interview, but here’s the bottom line observation:
Republicans used to be the daddy party – the party of responsibility, of rules, of the hard truths of life. Yet these two pre-eminently visible spokespersons for conservatism and Republicanism talked for a full hour about their … feelings. They talked about trust and betrayal, they talked about wounds and hurt, they talked about spirituality and even relationships. But they pronounced scarcely a word about any external reality: war, recession, the long-term prospects for the country. It was like a scene from a Marin County fern bar in 1977.
DFL // Jan 14, 2010 at 4:15 pm
You remember the movie “Serial” as well I suppose, Mr. Frum. Martin Mull at his best and the Marin county lifestyle satarized to great effect.
anniemargret // Jan 14, 2010 at 4:28 pm
Mr. Frum: It’s not your Daddy’s Republicanism anymore. Neither is it mine . I grew up in a Republican household. I remember how productive and positive thinking it was – the brains behind it, the thinkers, the doers. The great names in its history.
I left when it morphed into something dark and brooding. I remember when their leaders said something, you paid attention. Now you just wince.
Can’t imagine what Bill Buckley would be thinking about it these days.
Beck and Palin. Palin and Beck.
Andrew Sullivan is correct. The FNC is now the RNC. Sound bites mixed with hate-mongering and fear-mongering, and histrionics, all backed up with unending culture war within the states.
They can keep it.
PS: Why don’t YOU run? You appear to the sole member of that party left with any guts and intelligence.
mickster99 // Jan 14, 2010 at 4:38 pm
David Frum is 17 years old and has run away from home in Toronto, Canada with some fake id, and the family Oldsmobile.
He goes immediately to Marin County and hangs out in a fern bar with very wealthy left wing radicals who are very hip and very touchy feeling.
Fast forward 33 years.
As he watches fox news now that he is a grown-up he takes a jaunt down memory lane and remembers those 3+ decades old memories and thinks to himself as he watches Beck and Palin and wonders “these people remind me of something in my past? What could it be?”
Then it hits him. Right in the middle of a tweet and a chug off his LaBatts Blue.
The fern bar in marin when I was 17. What a revelation.
Wow.
TAZ // Jan 14, 2010 at 5:12 pm
Each day is one day closer to my Republican party getting its brains back, and reestablishing control of the party back from the crazies.
One day closer to when is what I would like to know.
When will a Republican leader stand up and put an end to all this?
CentristNYer // Jan 14, 2010 at 5:18 pm
2008. Sarah Palin on what journals she reads to stay current: “All of them.”
2010: Sarah Palin on her favorite founding father: “All of them.”
2012: Number of states the GOP will lose if she’s the party’s nominee: All of them.
Willems // Jan 14, 2010 at 7:09 pm
Republicans are pathetic. One way to get out of it is to simply ignore Beck and Palin and let them wither away. Just IGNORE. Every blog about them just gives them more life and legitimacy and makes republicans look … divided and angry.
Devote every word you have to something productive. Mr. Frum, resist writing and speaking about Palin even though she irritates the hell out of you. I like when you write about economics and substantive things but I’m tired of you Palin criticism.
RalfW // Jan 14, 2010 at 7:16 pm
That’s because these two people are entertainers, not politicians, on, certainly, people who think about policy or governance or how to advance actual causes of conservatism. They are, with there extreme in-touch-ness with their feelings (and particularly their victimhood) EXACTLY what has exasperated real conservatives.
They just mouth right-wing platitudes from time to time, but really they are Marin fern bar people out on the TeeVee stage for all to see. And we’re subjected to their fest of self-absorption, and each of their pathetic defects of character in full, glorious, living color (as one of the networks used to call it).
VACon // Jan 14, 2010 at 7:34 pm
Heh. No, Andrew Sullivan is about as correct as Sarah Palin is qualified. He thinks any politician that even so much as implies his or her Christianity is unfit for public office. If it is otherwise, you wouldn’t know it from reading him the past year or two. His now-admitted fear of Palin a function of his outright resentment toward any variant of fundamentalism and, by extension, social conservatives in general. He claims this is not so, that he does not hate Palin, but that stresses disbelief when he goes out of his way to brand nearly every ideological opponent a “proto-facist” or “Christianist”, if not both at once. If the GOP took on his attitude, it would never win an election again.
But on the topic at hand, it certainly isn’t 1994 right now. Republicans at least knew what they were running for with Newt Gingrich leading the way. Palin offers feelings and generalities. She may well run, but she’ll simply split the vote with some other social Conservative–if not Huckabee, then someone else. Then some non-celebrity candidate gets nominated, and that’s where the real trick comes: keeping enough of the base while persuading the massive percentage of independents that voted for Obama in 2008 and are thinking twice right now.
It’s definitely true what they say. Voters are open to an alternative, but the GOP does need to run on something. Palin and her brand are no way to bring back 1994 or anything like it.
NattyB // Jan 14, 2010 at 8:19 pm
“But they pronounced scarcely a word about any external reality”
External Reality? What’s that? Like, the external reality that saw an “Axis of Evil” between countries, that were, maybe Evil, though, I would think, they just act in their own self-interest, which may be adverse to our interest, and them being adversaries, hardly causes them to be an axis, or aligned with each other.
Oh, I kid David Frum. You make a lot of sense now, especially given that half the GOP has gone bat shit crazy. That said, keep preaching the sanity man. The Dem’s need credible, serious opposition. Not, this crazy paranoid, John Birch Society crazy shit, which, just happens to get the best ratings on Cable TV.
Just think if the GOP wasn’t in full on obstructionist mode. They could’ve actually influenced this god awful Healthcare Reform that’s going to get passed anyway.
I will plead ignorance on the 1977 Marin Fern Bar reference? I presume that’s where people just talk about themselves and get hung up on their issues, in a pretentious, self-pitying, woe is me manner, and that this was more prominent among the Libs in the late 70’s?
Koso // Jan 14, 2010 at 8:52 pm
I don’t really care what Beck and Palin do or say. This is no more a political party or care a party that care one iota about the welfare of the American people. I have said it before and l say it again. The republican party/conservative movement is now a “business model”. What is happening to this party is parallel to what happens in developing countries. Everyone is out to make as much as money possible, knowing that if this party rights itself, there will have no future in it.
We can all pretend that we don’t know what is going on, or how bad things are for what used to be a party. Now it is run by Fox. Does anyone stop to think what will happen when the company passes to Mr. Ms children. I wager they will distance themselves from this party in ways that will be like a thuderious slap. Mark my words.
prm79 // Jan 14, 2010 at 9:50 pm
I found Sarah Palin came up short. That said, Beck isn’t a Republican. Palin is heading the Tea party movement (effectively). You whiny little RINO’s can have your stupid Republican party. Regular Americans will build our own, better party. I’m perfectly happy with you jerks moving to the left and stealing Democrat votes. In fact, I ENCOURAGE IT! Thank you.
mbilinsky // Jan 14, 2010 at 10:28 pm
Andrew Sullivan’s fear of Palin is born out of his resentment of fundamentalism. Are you trying to level a criticism with that charge? Fundamentalism prides itself on ideology at the expense of competence, so yes, it deserves resentment and Sarah Palin is the all-too-willing lightning rod for that resentment.
If social conservatives wanted Sullivan’s (or my) respect, then they shouldn’t have made it so obvious over the past 20 years that they will gladly vote for an ignoramus who cheerleads for their “causes” over a competent politician who doesn’t express a childish worship of their values.
Sullivan actually came up with the most insightful description of Palin: a “culture war hood ornament.” Nothing more, nothing less.
JeninCT // Jan 14, 2010 at 10:44 pm
Why blame Beck and Palin for the problems of the Republican party? Neither one is a party insider. Beck’s a radio guy who hates both parties, and according you most people here, Palin is enjoying 15 minutes of fame.
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, but last I checked Beck didn’t annouce their hour long meeting as a summit on world issues.
acjames // Jan 14, 2010 at 11:02 pm
Our country desperately needs a functional Republican party which pushes a set of well thought through ideas based on careful consideration, not on robotic application of ideology. Although as a rather liberal person, I tend to disagree with Mr. Frum on some fiscal matters, and perhaps some social ones as well. I very much appreciate him as a vanguard of what the right may one day return to. A worthy position based around good ideas, not about cults of personality or slavish devotion to ideology.
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BoolaBoola // Jan 15, 2010 at 2:25 am
I will bet a thousand dollars that Sarah Palin’s medical history, which she never revealed, includes an involuntary psychiatric hospitalization.
mickster99 // Jan 15, 2010 at 3:38 am
The new conservative is deaf, dumb blind. John Birch and his team have taken over hand and glove.Lots of God, simple Reagan slogan recycling. Authoritarianism at its most willfullness. Frum’s delusional dream of a new conservativism is right but the new conservative will not include him unless he wants to kiss palin-becks behinds. And genuflect to the new pope Roger Ailes.
communists-basher // Jan 15, 2010 at 5:29 am
Please. .. Frum is NOT a conservative he claims to be. Any common sense conservative is FOR Sarah Palin, also a common sense conservative. This Forum is nothing more that a platform for HATE for Palin. Look who’s linking to Frum’s posts – Andrew Sullivan from Atlanitc.com, a true Progressive Liberal Fascist. And Frum links back to Sullivan.
Frum is a Troyan Horse to Conservatives and Republicans. And don’t forget, he is also an ‘elite’ Jew who, as many Liberal Jews, believes that Palin is a Pentacostal Evangelical Zionist which is not a popular thing with Liberal Jews who rather see the destruction of Israel (like Ralm Emanel, David Axelrod).
Frum also despises Palin because she did’t received an ‘elite’ education. His message of ‘modernizing’ the Republican Party means that literally. He wants the Republicans to be pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-illegal and progressive. He is a McCain type centrist. To bad, people are not stupid.
VACon // Jan 15, 2010 at 9:20 am
mbilinsky, I think Sullivan long ago failed to make any distinction between Christian Conservatives of good conscience and the Glenn Becks of the universe. They are all the same to him these days, to the point that he considers most of middle America a society-destroying mob waiting to be unleashed by Fox News. He literally said this just the other day. He thinks there are millions of Americans that, given the right motivation, will take violence to the streets thanks to being whipped up by “fear of ‘the other’”.
He’s just one man, so I don’t really care. But he wishes the Republican Party would follow his lead and throw Conservative Christians out of the party. This would be insane for anyone who actually wants to broaden the Republican coalition. I know Frum wants to do that. Sullivan? He wants to throw people out. He wages war against a massive subet of people that he literally thinks will destroy America. He is little better than Beck himself in terms of rhetoric.
CentristNYer // Jan 15, 2010 at 11:11 am
communists-basher // Jan 15, 2010 at 5:29 am
“Any common sense conservative is FOR Sarah Palin, also a common sense conservative.”
I trust this is parody, right?
sparty // Jan 15, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Communists-basher:
“Frum also despises Palin because she did’t received an ‘elite’ education…he is also an ‘elite’ Jew”
Those Jooos and their fancy education! Someone should do something about them and put them in their place, don’t you think?
Palin – Cheney 2012: Because you’re uneducated, ill-informed, scared to death, and MAD!
grayscot // Jan 15, 2010 at 7:25 pm
She has a broadcast journalism degree that is why she is good in front of the camera but so is Megan Fox but I wouldn’t want her to be President. This women is far too under educated to hold higher office it took her 7 years and 5 schools to get a “rocks for jocks” degree. The sooner you figure out that she is a lazy student and doesn’t want to do the hard work and move on the sooner you can start to rebuild your party. You know as much as you all like to give the President a hard time for “giving a good speech” you all seem to forget that unlike Mrs. Palin he can actually write the speech. You also seem to brush off the fact that she DID NOT WRITE her own book while he has writen two and if you ever read them with an open mind you would see that unlike Mrs. Palin this guy is the smartest guy in the room most of the time. I don’t need another C+ student running our country Democrat or Repubican.
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[...] Want Spock to Be My Senator 2010 January 18 by Noot Frum embarrasses me and everybody else who ever agreed with anything that Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin ever said. On [...]