I can't believe they still let David Frum be a conservative

By Richard K. Barry

I don't know David Frum. I know people who know him (or used to know him). I even spent a number of my early years in Canada watching and listening to David's mother, Barbara Frum, a respected Canadian television and radio journalist, who died far too young. If you follow the Canadian scene at all, you would know that the Frums are considered to be serious people.

Some time ago David decided to take his career to the U.S. and even worked as a speechwriter for George W. Bush for a while. At some point it seems that he, while holding onto his conservative political beliefs, decided that he was having a hard time with the radicalism coming from so much of the right-wing. Not to speak for him, but it appeared to me that he was having difficulty with the lack of cogent argument coming from so many on the right, especially the Tea Party right.

They weren't arguing the facts, they were simply mouthing platitudes that they believed to be supported by an understanding of what it means to be an American. For conservatives like Frum, who lives to argue the facts, that was crazy making.

I don't support Frum's brand of politics, his conservatism. He says that he's all about free markets, low taxes, reasonable regulation and limited government. Sounds okay in a sense but we all know that the devil is in the details so, no, he and I wouldn't agree about much once we started to get into the details.

But when he speaks, I believe that he is working hard to make a good case and that he would be open to other ideas if presented intelligently. As I said, I don't know the man, but that's the feeling I get. I think we also know that this kind of reasonableness on Frum's part has not always made him popular on the right and that strikes me, from my perspective, as a good thing.

I came across a piece that Frum wrote recently for CNN on the debt ceiling talks and I would like to recommend it to you. Not only does it makes sense, but it reminds me of the way I used to debate with conservatives about politics and economics. It used to be about positions and facts and arguments and maybe a good faith attempt to see things differently.

In the current context, here are three things that David Frum wants us to think about.

1. Unemployment is a more urgent problem than the debt.

2. The deficit is a symptom of America's economic problems not the cause.

3. The time to cut is after the economy recovers.

I don't intend to have this discussion here, only to say that America would be a better place if our political leaders, on both sides of the aisle, were able to have discussions on statements like these based on facts and not blind ideology.

Good on Mr. Frum for suggesting it.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Whither Birtherism?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Conservative renegade David Frum may describe Birtherism as a "disgrace" and a "phony controversy," as an issue that effectively ended with yesterday's release of President Obama's long-form birth certificate, and I credit Frum for asking how "this poisonous and not very subtly racist allegation [got] such a grip on our conservative movement and our Republican party" (that would be, his movement and his party) and for denouncing "these racialized attacks on Obama" (not just the Birther allegation but the new allegation, via Donald Trump, that Obama is basically a product of affirmative action, undeserving of his Ivy League education), but actually Birtherism and its various offshoots, however convincingly refuted, aren't going anywhere.

James Fallows explains why: "[Tuesday], about half of all Republicans thought Obama was foreign born, and therefore an illegal occupant of the White House. How many Republicans will think the same thing one week from now? My guess is: about half. We've reached that stage on just about everything. It's probably been true of human beings throughout time, but is more obviously significant in politics now, that generally people don't act like scientific investigators, or judges in moot-court competitions, when parsing the logic and evidence behind competing arguments to come up with political views. They go on loyalty, and tradition, and hope, and fear, and self-interest, and generosity, and all the rest."

Quite true, but I think Fallows is too generous, and too universal in applying his theory. While I acknowledge that ignorance, willful or otherwise, has been a facet of the human condition forever, or almost forever, this isn't so much about "human beings throughout time" as it is about the current state of one of America's two dominant political parties, a party that to a great extent has rejected science in favour of a far-right ideology, mixed with a similarly far-right theology, that wants nothing to do with "logic and evidence" and everything to do with trickle-down economics and "Intelligent Design." Yes, much of this has to do with loyalty, tradition, fear, self-interest, etc., but a lot of it has to do with sheer madness -- and, as I have remarked a number of times, what I find to be one of the defining aspects of our time, politically speaking, is the Republican Party's descent into madness, or rather its ongoing descent into ever deeper levels of madness.

Many Republicans, needless to say, still aren't convinced. Some of them are crazies like Leo Berman, but the issue, in one form or another, will be kept alive by more mainstream Republicans like Trump, Newt Gingrich, and everyone else who, sincerely or not, is trying to appeal to the grassroots base of the party. And of course it will be kept alive on Fox News, on talk radio, and throughout Frum's "conservative movement."

It's ignorance, it's racism, it's madness. And the facts don't matter one bit.