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A month after Gov. Sarah Palin joined Senator John McCain’s ticket to a burst of excitement and anticipation among Republicans, she heads into a critical debate facing challenges from conservatives about her credentials, signs that her popularity is slipping and evidence that Republicans are worried about how much help she will be for Mr. McCain in November.... "I think she has pretty thoroughly — and probably irretrievably — proven that she is not up to the job of being president of the United States," David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush who is now a conservative columnist, said in...

Are certain conservatives setting Sarah Palin up to fail? With the recent news that conservative commentator Kathleen Parker has joined the ranks of anti-Palin conservatives George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Frum and Ross Douthat (as well as moderate-conservative David Brooks), one has to wonder how these folks will respond if McCain and Palin lose to Barack Obama and Joseph Biden on November 4. It’s likely that Parker, Will, Krauthammer, Frum, Douthat and Brooks will attempt to blame Palin for a GOP loss, arguing that she was not ready for prime time and that her supposed lack of knowledge drove away...

By the way, a propos the post below, I would caution our pal David Frum to ease up on this kind of analysis: The Palin choice will intensify GOP support among downscale white voters - while adding to the GOP's difficulties among more educated white voters.You'd be surprised how crowded it is down at the "downscale" end.

<p>I am writing to you on behalf of Out of Office Films in London.</p> <p>Our request is for you to take part in a documentary commissioned by the Al-Jazeera Network, looking at means to resolve conflict in troubled areas of the world. The six-part series will explore the status and impact of the ‘War on Terror’ globally in the aftermath of 9/11. It will be contemporary but also historical, thoughtful and analytical. It will stand back from contemporary news events and offer prescriptions on conflict resolution from leaders the world over. The series will be presented by the British journalist Phil Rees (who won more than a dozen international awards during his career covering international affairs for the BBC), lasting for approximately twenty minutes.</p>

My new book White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement places conservatism within the big picture of modern American history. The book traces the origins of modern conservatism to the 1920s. It explains why conservativism triumphed in the late twentieth century and why it is has fallen into disarray under the leadership of President George W. Bush. The review of my book in the New York Times by former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum shows that at least some diehard defenders of the Bush administration do not wish to enter into in a serious conversation about...

In Saudi Arabia, the government refused to allow the question to be asked at all. Pro-American feeling does not necessarily translate into pro-American action. People across Western Europe mourned the 9/11 attack. But a Gallup poll conducted the week after 9/11 found that only 29% of the French, 21% of Italians, 18% of the British, 17% of Germans and 12% of Spaniards supported military action against countries that harboured terrorists. Iraq is not the reason that NATO has trouble persuading European governments to send troops to fight in Afghanistan. Anti-American feeling is often an artefact of propaganda. Anti-Americanism becomes stronger...

David Frum on Scott McClellan's new book: George Bush got the team he deserved Posted: May 30, 2008, 3:47 PM by Marni Soupcoff David Frum Except maybe for MSNBC’s wild-eyed commentator Keith Olbermann, nobody in politics or media seems to have a good word to say for Scott McClellan, the former George W. Bush press secretary turned ferocious Bush critic. The right complains of McClellan's disloyalty. The left complains that McClellan’s change of heart arrived too late. The old Washington hands shake their heads at a press secretary writing a book at all: FDR’s and Eisenhower’s men took their secrets...

Mystery solved. On Sept. 6 of last year, Israeli warplanes struck a facility in the deserts of eastern Syria. The Israelis refused to explain what they had hit or why. The Syrians immediately bulldozed the site to block all further investigation. The U.S. government acknowledged the attack but declined otherwise to comment. And the world was left to speculate. On Thursday, the Bush administration at last confirmed what had long been rumored: The Syrian facility was indeed a nuclear plant. The plant followed the same design as the Yongbyon plant in North Korea, and North Korean engineers and workers had...

What the hell is going on in Basra? According to the major media outlets in New York and London, the answer is: a major defeat for U.S. and British policy in Iraq. This is how the well-regarded Michael Gordon of The New York Times reported the story: "…Mr. Maliki overestimated his military's abilities and underestimated the scale of the resistance. The Iraqi prime minister also displayed an impulsive leadership style that did not give his forces or that of his most powerful allies, the American and British military, time to prepare. " 'He went in with a stick and he...

David Frum might not be every conservative's cup of tea. But un-fans of John McCain will find plenty to like in Frum's biting analysis of the Republican front-runner. The former Bush speechwriter and author of Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again, was a guest on this evening's Tucker. View video here.

If you listened only to talk radio, you might not realize that behind the conservative ascendancy were some powerful intellectual ideas, honed by political thinkers such as David Frum. They were the people who gave direction to the “Reagan Revolution,” but they had been disappointed by George H.W. Bush and had been stymied by the political skills of Bill Clinton. And they expected the world of George W. Bush. In George W. Bush, they felt they had a pure Republican, an untrammeled conservative – a man who would make America respected abroad and rich at home. As Newt Gingrich, the...

No Nukes, No War By David Frum December 12, 2007 America's new intelligence estimate on Iran changes nothing--and it changes everything. Last week, the Bush administration released large portions of its latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the Iranian nuclear program. The NIE concluded that Iran had shut down its nuclear weapons program in 2003. The NIE cautioned that there remained much to worry about. Iran could revive its weapons program at any time. And Iran continues to enrich uranium to levels that could serve as the fuel for a nuclear weapon. Still, the NIE went far to lift the...

Since the 1960s, conservatives have chafed and seethed against liberal elitism. Liberals have used their influence in the courts and government bureaucracies to win political victories they never could have won at the ballot box. Conservatives have reacted by turning to populism -- to a defence of the commonsense wisdom of ordinary voters against the pretensions of know-it-alls. Conservatives have drawn strength from populism. But you can overdo any good thing --and I am beginning to think that on this one, we've zoomed the car into the red zone. For me, the lights started flashing in 2005, during the battle...

Mr Frum is a former speechwriter of President Bush and currently adviser of presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani. I contacted author David Frum today and he wrote to me that he thought America won't attack Iran in 2008. He didn't elaborate much, because he was "pressed for time" but I thought if Frum thinks Bush won't do it, there is little chance Bush will do anyway. Bad news, folks... Bush has just become a dove and Israel is in danger.

The prevailing assumption is that the tapes were destroyed to conceal harsh CIA interrogation methods. Gerald Posner suggests another possible explanation: Re the breaking news that the CIA destroyed the videotapes of interrogations with 2 terror suspects, you might have seen that the tapes of the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah were destroyed. You might also recall that in my 2003 NYT bestseller (reached #2), Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11, my last chapter was titled, "The Interrogation." Based on two active US intelligence sources, I was the first to disclose Zubaydah's interrogation. To date, I am the only...

Just when we thought we'd seen the back of one axis of evil, up pops another one to give us all sleepless nights. The original axis of evil, as defined by President George W Bush in his State of the Union address in January 2002, consisted of Iraq, Iran and North Korea. In fact, this axis was always an unlikely amalgam, conjured from the imagination of David Frum, the President's chief speechwriter at the time, who was casting around for a suitably demonic phrase to capture the gravity of the threat America was said to face from its combined enemies...

As a political strategist, Karl Rove offered a brilliant answer to the wrong question. The question he answered so successfully was a political one: How could Republicans win elections after Bill Clinton steered the Democrats to the center? The question he unfortunately ignored was a policy question: What does the nation need — and how can conservatives achieve it? Mr. Rove answered his chosen question by courting carefully selected constituencies with poll-tested promises: tax cuts for traditional conservatives; the No Child Left Behind law for suburban moderates; prescription drugs for anxious seniors; open immigration for Hispanics; faith-based programs for evangelicals...

Imagine you are running Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. You start with some great advantages: a smart and knowledgeable candidate, twice elected by the voters of the nation's third-biggest state. She wears one of the most famous names in American politics: the most popular name among Democrats. She is a prodigious fundraiser, works hard and the very idea of her candidacy inspires large numbers of women voters. On the other hand, your candidate is also one of the most polarizing figures in American life. She is a dreadful speaker: boring, grating, often condescending. The left wing of her own party despises...

I also began to learn that you could hardly name a social problem without discovering that immigration was aggravating it to the point of unsolvability. Health insurance? Immigrants accounted for about one-quarter of the uninsured in the early 1990s, and about one-third of the increase in the uninsured population at that time. Social spending? The Urban Institute estimated in 1994 that educating the children of illegal aliens cost the State of California almost $1.5 billion per year. Wage pressure on the less-skilled? The wages of less-skilled Americans had come under ferocious pressure since 1970. How could you even begin to...

Editor's Note: On Friday, Vanity Fair issued a press release highlighting excerpts of a piece in their January issue on “neoconservative” supporters of the war in Iraq who today, unsurprisingly, have some negative things to say about how the war is going and how the Bush administration has been handling it. In the wake of the press release – which has gotten considerable play on the Internet – some of those “neoconservatives” highlighted in the article have responded to the excerpts and its misrepresentations, in some cases, of what they said. We collect some of those reactions — including from...

THE North Korean nuclear test — if that indeed is what it was — signals the catastrophic collapse of a dozen years of American policy. Over that period, two of the world’s most dangerous regimes, Pakistan and North Korea, have developed nuclear weapons and the missiles to launch them. Iran, arguably the most dangerous of them all, will surely follow, unless some dramatic action is soon taken. It is, alas, an iron law of modern diplomacy that the failure of any diplomatic process only proves the need for more of the process that has just failed. Thus those who have...

Sep. 29, 2006: A Deal With Iran? What follows is not reporting. It is not a leak. It is informed speculation - informed in part by stories like this one and this one . That acknowledged, let me venture a prediction:Sometime in the next 6 to 12 months, there will be laid on President Bush's desk a draft agreement between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. My guess: the agreement will contain terms more or less along the following lines: 1) Iran will indefinitely suspend its uranium enrichment program. Such a term will be easy for Iran...

This was a week of clever manoeuvres. First, George Bush announced that he would at last bring the captured 9/11 plotters to trial by military commission -- if Congress would give him the authority to do so. That puts Democrats in Congress in a very awkward spot. The voters will want justice executed; the Democrats' key constituencies and big donors are calling the commissions "kangaroo courts." Then, Senator John McCain (the presumptive front-runner for the Republican nomination) revealed his trick: He immediately produced his own version of the President's bill -- but one calculated to appeal more to Democrats and...

Has a Washington scandal ever ended with a more anti-climactic splat than the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson affair? This week it was at last fully and finally confirmed that it was former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage who had leaked the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Put like that, the story sounds pretty bare. So let me put it another way. Imagine that Ken Starr's investigation had concluded that Monica Lewinsky had made the whole thing up -- and that it was established beyond all possible doubt that at the very moment Monica claimed she was experiencing ecstasy in...

Michael Rubin The U.S. is losing in Iraq because American politicians and the general public have not decided they want or need to win. Many congressmen look at Iraq through the lens of the 2006 election: They care neither how their words embolden the enemy nor how their grandstanding impacts Iraq. Meanwhile, many commentators have cast accuracy aside to cater to, and cash in on, public ennui. Iraqis are now as pessimistic as they have ever been. Corruption and organized crime run rampant. True, some metrics are positive: Oil production is on the rebound, shops are opening, agricultural production is...

Counterfeit news: Scenes were enacted and re-enacted; dead bodies were carried from point to point and then back again; Hezbollah spokesmen chatted on cellphones until it was time to turn on the tears for camerasDavid Frum National Post Saturday, August 26, 2006 Perhaps you saw the images in your newspaper or on television: "A Lebanese man counts U.S dollar bills received from Hizbollah members in a school in Bourj el-Barajneh, a southern suburb of Beirut, August 19, 2006. Hizbollah handed out bundles of cash on Friday to people whose homes were wrecked by Israeli bombing, consolidating the Iranian-backed group's support...

Aug. 15, 2006: Lebanon Thoughts I  Thanks to Stanley Kurtz for directing me to this conversation between Paul Gigot and Martin Kramer on Fox. Key line: I think Iran had given a blanket approval for operations along Israel's border in order to keep that on a simmer. Now, the precise modus vivendi in any given situation, when to attack, when to strike, was pretty much left to Hezbollah. I think that actually, in this respect, it might have been an Iranian mistake to have not corrected their standing instructions to Hezbollah because they effectively provoked Israel into launching a...

Flying blind: Airport screeners treat everyone the same. They shouldn't David Frum National Post Saturday, August 12, 2006 So now we're to ban lipsticks and hand sanitizers from airplanes? The success of British security services in stopping a terrorist plot has unleashed all the most perverse and unavailing instincts of transportation safety authorities. They already banned nail scissors after 9/11. They require passengers to remove shoes in perpetual remembrance of Richard Reid's attempt to smuggle explosives on to a plane in his trainers. Now once again they will impose a massively costly new rule on all passengers in order...

Fifty years ago this past week, on July 26, 1956, the Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. Nasser's act would lead to an international crisis, a regional war and ultimately to the resignation of a British prime minister. "Suez" would become a lesson and a warning against Western meddling in the Middle East. But the lessons and warnings of Suez look very different after 9/11. In 1956, the Suez Canal was owned by the British government and a consortium of British and French private investors. Two-thirds of Europe's oil traveled through the canal, protected by British troops....

MPP calls Israel 'rogue' state Mohammed Adam and Lee Greenberg The Ottawa Citizen Thursday, July 20, 2006 Ottawa-Orleans MPP Phil McNeely yesterday called Israel a "rogue state," and said the federal government should apologize to Canadians for its support of the Jewish state's "collective punishment" of the people in Gaza and Lebanon. The Liberal MPP's comments drew immediate rebuke from Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, who expressed "serious dismay and disappointment" to his colleague, and distanced his government from them. Mr. McGuinty, who was in Charlottetown, phoned the Canadian Jewish Congress in Toronto to convey the same sentiments to officials...

"I respect and admire the French, who have been a far greater nation than we shall ever be, that is, if greatness means anything loftier than money and bombs." — THOMAS FLEMING, "HARD RIGHT," MARCH 13, 2003 From the very beginning of the War on Terror, there has been dissent, and as the war has proceeded to Iraq, the dissent has grown more radical and more vociferous. Perhaps that was to be expected. But here is what never could have been: Some of the leading figures in this antiwar movement call themselves "conservatives." These conservatives are relatively few in number,...

You probably know the old Hollywood joke: "Sincerity is everything. When you can fake that, you've got it made." Paul Martin's problem is that sincerity is the one thing he cannot quite fake. He displayed that failing most vividly Friday night, when he erupted into his choreographed and stage-managed outburst against Gilles Duceppe. He delivered his lines like some ham actor who's made up his mind: The audience has to see acting, and by God, they are going to see acting! One of CTV's debate commentators, Joy McPhail, a former NDP legislator from British Columbia, complained during a discussion afterward...

WASHINGTON - President Bush's bad week may yet prove the administration's great turning point. None of the reverses need be fatal; each of them contains an opportunity to move back on to a more successful path. Everything depends on the wisdom, self-discipline, and perspective of the President himself. Yesterday's indictments of Lewis Libby are one opportunity. For while Mr. Libby now stands in serious legal peril, the broader administration has been exonerated of intentional wrongdoing. From the start, there have been two competing theories of what happened in the CIA leak scandal. Call them the "big" theory and the "little"...

Blogging is not like editing a newspaper. There is a big world of important events out there--from the naming of a new Fed chairman to the passage of the Iraqi constitution, the formation of a new German government, and the fingering of the Assad family in the Hariri murder--beside the Miers nomination. But the Supreme Court is important too, a battle that must be won, and this is my place to do my part. This morning I was on The Laura Ingraham Show to unveil the new advertisements for Americans for Better Justice (betterjustice.com). They can now be seen on...

It seems that the pro-Miers forces really are bent on burning down the village in order to save it. White House and pro-Miers bloggers are trumpeting the revelation that Harriet Miers as a candidate for municipal office in Dallas checked the box on a questionnaire declaring herself in favor of a Human Life Amendment to the US Constitution. This news is supposed to reassure conservatives. But think for a minute about the wound the pro-Miers forces have just inflicted on conservatism. John Roberts at his hearing refused to answer questions about his personal views on abortion. He argued - as...

I don't know which hour this will be featured, but Medved will debate Frum on the Miers nomination. The show starts NOW (2:00 PM CST), and can be heard at KSKY, 660AM, or streamed through the link above.

David Frum said Tuesday the nomination was sinking. Opinion polls don't support the notion of a sinking nomination. A Gallup poll for CNN and USA Today released Wednesday showed 44 percent of respondents described the Miers pick as excellent or good, with 41 percent saying it was fair or poor, and 15 percent offering no opinion. Among self-described conservatives, 58 percent said the pick was excellent or good; 29 percent thought it fair or poor. In an Opinion Dynamics poll conducted for Fox News released Thursday, 37 percent of respondents (57 percent of Republicans) said they would vote for Miers,...

Frontline: In your book you describe events pre-9/11, and you say that there was serious doubt daily as to whether or not George W. Bush was the right man. Frum: George Bush began his presidency with both personal and party problems. He'd had a very narrow win. He came into office with a very weak mandate. He had a very ambitious program, but he didn't have the political clout to get the program executed, and that became clear very rapidly. Then there was this question mark over his head. He was not someone who was well-known when he came into...

In a just-completed CNN interview, former Bush speechwriter lambasted the Miers nomination. Among his most notable quotes: "other than those in the president's inner circle and others who are obliged to say so, there's not a conservative in Washington who thinks Miers is the best possible nominee." The host read him a quote in which Jay Sekulow said the President showed excellent judgement in choosing Miers. Frum pointed out that the quote praised Bush, not Miers. He added that we can and should do better, and essentially suggested that the nomination be withdrawn and she be replaced by an oustanding...

   SEP. 30, 2005: DELAY DEFENDED With due respect to the always cogent editors of NR, the pithiest defense of Tom DeLay comes - from of all unlikely people - Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne. Dionne this morning puts his finger on the central and hopeless flaw in the case against DeLay: "The corporations that forked over the cash to DeLay's PAC did so not because their hearts were filled with affection for those particular Texas legislative candidates but because they recognized DeLay's power over federal legislation." Texas law forbids corporations to give money to state candidates. The case against...

National Post  (Canada) Publication Date: September 3, 2005 Hurricane Katrina began as a natural disaster, unleashed a human tragedy, and is rapidly boiling into a political brawl.The worst natural disaster in American history has become an ideological storm, with accusations and counter-accusations flying even before the flooding can be plugged and the dead counted.On the left, Katrina has become an opportunity to re-amplify a half decade's worth of accusations against the Bush administration.The storm, it's alleged, is the President's fault for not signing Kyoto. (Never mind that hurricanes have become less frequent over the past 70 years.) The flood,...

I haven't posted much on the New Orleans disaster. There are so many people on the spot, adding so much to genuine understanding, that it seemed an absurd waste of your time for me to add my distant words. Tonight though I was invited by the BBC to talk about the political fall-out from Katrina with Sidney Blumenthal. To prepare, I spent some hours immersing myself in the catalogue of left-wing attacks on the Bush administration.Now let me declare at the onset: Katrina has obviously not been the finest hour of American emergency management. There may well be fault on...

David Frum has a tough piece out today in National Review Online arguing that George W. Bush has been ineffective in persuading Americans to stay the course in Iraq. This is a direct slap not only at the president, but also at his speechwriters, and from a former colleague who served in the speechwriting office in 2001 and 2002. Frum argues that Bush makes the same case over and over again, and does not flesh it out with arresting details and enlightening narrative."The president could have made news yesterday by itemizing the reasons to regard Iraq more positively than most...

By now it should be clear that President Bush's words on the subject of Iraq have ceased connecting with the American public. His speech yesterday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars is the latest - and one of the most serious to date - manifestations of the problem. The polls tell us that the American public is losing heart. A substantial majority (56%) now say that the war is going either "very badly" or "moderately badly." More than 50% now regard the war as a mistake. One-third want an immediate and total withdrawal. Maybe most fatefully: a plurality now say...

David Frum takes the Bush campaign to task on illegal immigration at NRO. http://frum.nationalreview.com/archives/08162005.asp#073241 For those who accuse critics of illegal immigration anti-immigrant tools of Pat Buchanan, how do you respond to Mr. Frum? He's a legal immigrant. Perhaps the fact that he did wait in line and had to go through the bureaucratic process is what makes him so opposed to rewarding lawbreakers (both illegals and their employers) with amnesty. It reminds me of an episode of King of the Hill I saw the other night. Hank and his friends are trapped in Mexico and attempting to get back...

Is the Able Danger story true? Notes of skepticism are being sounded, and probably the final verdict on the story will be less dramatic than the version that gripped Washington last week. That said: Isn't it odd how little zeal there seems to be to get to the bottom of this story? And no, I'm not complaining here about the Liberal Media. The Republicans in Congress are hardly roaring either. If true, Able Danger is a national security scandal, but not precisely a political scandal - that is, while it would certainly reflect very badly on the Clinton administration, it...

Toronto Sun July 10, 2005 The same sex story By DOUGLAS FISHER OTTAWA -- Two questions disturb me in my midsummer lull. First, how was the coup of legalized same-sex marriage achieved? Who shaped it, who co-ordinated it from a long-shot prospect a few years ago to a clinched deal last month? Second, how might Canada's "natural opposition party," the Conservatives, now led by Stephen Harper, respond to the fresh leadership contest shaping up within the federal Liberal party, now that we know of Michael Ignatieff's bold determination to win a seat in the next election -- on his way...

The president is going to talk about Iraq again. He's going to have to. The problem is not that his speech Tuesday night failed to quell his critics: No speech could have done that. The problem is that his speech failed to reassure his worried supporters. Those of us who support this president and this war do not need to be told how important it is to win. We get that. But that's precisely why we are worried — because every day brings terrible news that makes us fear that the war is being lost.

The problem is not that his speech Tuesday night failed to quell his critics: The problem is that his speech failed to reassure his worried supporters. Those of us who support this president and this war do not need to be told how important it is to win. That's precisely why we are worried — because every day brings terrible news that makes us fear that the war is being lost. He could have cited the capture of three of the top insurgent leaders over the last three months, including Abed Dawood Suleiman (Abu Musab Zarqawi's top military aide), Muhammad...

An editorial in Saturday's NYT denounces as "cynical" Karl Rove's observation that (in the NYT's paraphrase): "conservatives and liberals had different reactions to 9/11." It continues: "Let's be clear: Americans of every political stripe were united in their outrage and grief, united in their determination to punish those who plotted the mass murder and united behind the war in Afghanistan, which was an assault on terrorists." Oh if only that were true. But the NYT itself is daily crammed with evidence that Rove is right and that the NYT editorialists are wrong. Take for example this story, which appeared on...