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

[babylonsister]

When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?
Some of my Republican friends ask if I’ve gone crazy. I say: Look in the mirror.

* 88 Comments Add Yours

* By David Frum
* Published Nov 20, 2011



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. During one unpleasant moment after I was fired from the think tank where I’d worked for the previous seven years, I tried to reassure my wife with an old cliché: “The great thing about an experience like this is that you learn who your friends really are.” She answered, “I was happier when I didn’t know.”

It’s possible that my friends are right. I don’t think so—but then, crazy people never do. So let me put the case to you.

I’ve been a Republican all my adult life. I have worked on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, at Forbes magazine, at the Manhattan and American Enterprise Institutes, as a speechwriter in the George W. Bush administration. I believe in free markets, low taxes, reasonable regulation, and limited government. I voted for John ­McCain in 2008, and I have strongly criticized the major policy decisions of the Obama administration. But as I contemplate my party and my movement in 2011, I see things I simply cannot support.

America desperately needs a responsible and compassionate alternative to the Obama administration’s path of bigger government at higher cost. And yet: This past summer, the GOP nearly forced America to the verge of default just to score a point in a budget debate. In the throes of the worst economic crisis since the Depression, Republican politicians demand massive budget cuts and shrug off the concerns of the unemployed. In the face of evidence of dwindling upward mobility and long-stagnating middle-class wages, my party’s economic ideas sometimes seem to have shrunk to just one: more tax cuts for the very highest earners. 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.

more...

http://nymag.com/news/politics/conservatives-david-frum-2011-11/

[rfranklin]

1. Obviously a RINO...

Republicans have been very open lately in demeaning everyone who isn't rich and sneering at anyone who is weak enough to feel empathy.

[SomeGuyInEagan]

2. Ummm ... at least 30 years ago. n/t

[polichick]

3. I would argue that Republicans never did get the big questions right...

...but it's good that he's putting this out there.

[wordpix]

21. +1

[Jennicut]

4. Frum nails the tea party on picking unintelligent candidates to get behind.

"But Cain’s gaffe on Libya or Perry’s brain freeze on the Department of Energy are not only indicators of bad leadership. They are indicators of a crisis of followership. The tea party never demanded knowledge or concern for governance, and so of course it never got them." So, so true. Mitt Romney may not be someone I would want to vote for but he is hardly stupid. Not at the level of Cain or Perry.

[slay]

5. While I may disagree with Frum and his overall world view - he nails this

and he's not stupid - not like the current batch of GOP loons.

[unblock]

6. it's like the naturally insane calling out the super insane for cheating with steroids.

[StatGirl]

7. In 1980, when they got behind "supply side" economics

. . . and they are *still* spouting the lie that reducing tax rates increases total revenues. Maybe it's true when tax rates are at 90% (although not necessarily), but it's definitely not true at today's rates.

[izquierdista]

8. "I’ve been a Republican all my adult life."

Well, there's your problem right there. Poor education leading to a lack of critical thinking skills. Still, it is a hopeful sign that you want to buy a clue.

[apnu]

18. Actually his wikipeida page shows he went to Harvard.

Was on the editorial board for the WSJ and Forbes magazine. And he's a native of Toronto, and possesses a dual Canadian-American citizenship. He doesn't have a poor education. I think he's wrong on may policy ideas, but he's 100% right in his criticisms of the GOP.

[rhett o rick]

9. Here's my 2cents and it's worth every penny. The republicons have always had it wrong.

But they managed to get by because they were at least moderate. But when Reagan accelerated the class war, the republicons enlisted the help of the kook-a-burros. But their monster got away from them and now dominates the party. While the crazies run the republicon party, the conservatives have quietly slipped into the Democratic tent and are busy trying to co-opt the Democratic Party. Jeff Immelt isnt a Democrat.

[apnu]

19. Good point, its like the pole shift during Reconstruction.

When Democrats quietly became Republicans. History's repeating.

[Demeter]

10. I was going to say McCarthy, but then, there's FDR

"That Man" they called him, and plotted a coup...which collapsed when the Marine squealed on them, but nobody got punished, so that was all good for them...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

http://american_almanac.tripod.com/smedley.htm

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/02/27/95580/-The-Real-Plot-to-Overthrow-FDRs-America

And Who Could Forget Hoover? Now there was a winner.....my personal knowledge doesn't go back much more than that.

[Umbral]

11. Lets see, when was Theodore Roosevelt in office? nt

[high density]

12. Sometime shortly after Ronald Reagan raised taxes during a recession

It's just a party that has been watered down to enjoying cruelty and greed. The corporate media machine and talk radio allows them to do whatever they want, and Obama is the perfect person to blame everything on:

Imagine yourself a rank-and-file Republican in 2009: If you have not lost your job or your home, your savings have been sliced and your children cannot find work. Your retirement prospects have dimmed. Most of all, your neighbors blame you for all that has gone wrong in the country. There’s one thing you know for sure: None of this is your fault! And when the new president fails to deliver rapid recovery, he can be designated the target for everyone’s accumulated disappointment and rage. In the midst of economic wreckage, what relief to thrust all blame upon Barack Obama as the wrecker-in-chief.
...
We used to say “You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.” Now we are all entitled to our own facts, and conservative media use this right to immerse their audience in a total environment of pseudo-facts and pretend information.

[CJCRANE]

13. RWers believe "perception is reality".

So they spend most of their time trying to create the perception they want, through Fox News and RW radio, RW bloggers and RW chain emails. They just repeat their talking points ad nauseum.

[Douglas Carpenter]

14. "We don’t pay you to think, we pay you to repeat. " a very well written and absolutely fascinating

article


http://nymag.com/news/politics/conservatives-david-frum-2011-11/

[Juche]

15. If this leads to a kind of reverse southern strategy, then great I guess

If the GOP becomes out of touch with reality enough that they alienate enough voters maybe they won't win as many elections. But maybe not, most people barely pay attention enough to understand what is happening with them.

[Odin2005]

16. In the late 70s when they started courting the Religious Right.

[apnu]

17. This is a fascinating read.

I've gotten used to the crazy, self-destructing, Republican -- so this article shocks and fascinates me. I'm floored that "Axis of Evil" David Frum is taking the GOP to task. Floored.

[Loudmxr]

20. I like DF. He was a jerk to Rachel awhile ago but I like the way he thinks.

You don't have to agree with someone to like the way they think.

My conservative friend Richard MacMillan once said in reply to the question "How are you?"

"The constitution is the supreme law of the land!"

I was frankly hoping for "the wife and kids are alright and the doggies are good too."

But that quote will stay with me forever.. because he is right. Perhaps differently right from me but still right.

And with that... some fun

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y

"The Argument Clinic" One of the three Monty Python sketches ever.

It taught me what an argument was. I still use some of those things I learned in arguing with someone.

"What was it that I said that made you think I meant what I didn't mean?? Because I would like to improve my communication skills."

I have never had a satisfactory answer... except prejudice.

[wordpix]

22. Wow, Frum comes clean - his conscience is bothering him

However, most of BushCo will go to their graves defending their wonderful records, Cheney especially.

[hadrons]

23. It's started when most GOP voters stopped caring about reality ....

as long as they keep winning elections with their nonsense then the nonsense won't stop.

[No Elephants]

24. Voters have lost touch with reality.

[wiggs]

25. Because the RW moved way right, where they can't even see the

correct positions on issues, they HAD to adopt low tactics to stay in the game. They used hate, fear, polarization, smearing, misinformation, deceipt, media consolidation, denial of science, gerrymandering, caging, voter ID laws, changes to electoral processes, vote supression, under-equipping polling stations...etc...etc to keep voters in line.

And when you use those tactics, who comes to the top of the party but liars, cheaters, fear-mongerers, political evangelists, cult leaders, and skeevy slimeballs. You get the Bachmanns, Gingriches, Palins, ODonells, Angles, etc. They are the natural outcome of a lost party who has used propaganda to win votes.

[Major Hogwash]

26. 1980.

When they started referring to it as a "revolution".

The Republicans NEVER had the answers to inflation right.
Frum doesn't know what he's talking about.
He must have forgotten about Nixon's "wage & price freeze" plan.
We didn't.