Free Republic

In this debt-ceiling fight, I'm having horrible flashbacks to the Republican debacle over health care. Then as now, what could have been a negotiated deal turned into all-out political war. Then as now, Republicans rejected all concessions by the president as pathetically inadequate. Then as now, Republicans refused any concessions of their own, instead demanding that the president yield totally to their way of thinking. Then as now, Republicans convinced themselves that they had the clout to force the president to yield. With health care, Republicans calculated spectacularly wrong. They pursued an all or nothing strategy and got -- nothing....

Perhaps anticipating that the media would begin ripping Sarah Palin’s interview with Sean Hannity earlier tonight underestimated the speed of the news cycle. Less than an hour later and a network away, Palin’s fellow conservative David Frum responded to her comments with a good-natured plea for her to just “stop talking now.” On MSNBC’s The Last Word, Lawrence O’Donnell noted that he would have wanted to hear Palin explain the difficulty of finding an appropriate timing to respond to the attacks on her, introducing the review of her performance on Hannity without deeply analyzing any particular part of it. Frum...

A journalist yesterday asked me a thought-provoking question: Why does Sarah Palin command so much media attention? By most measures, she currently stands about equal in the Republican field alongside Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and only a little ahead of Newt Gingrich. Yet the cable shows do not erupt when Mitt Romney makes a speech. Newt Gingrich is on Twitter almost every day, but his messages don’t make news. So why Palin? Five guesses. 1) She polarizes. Modern media culture favors contrast and conflict. Sarah Palin serves both up by the bucketful. Most presidential candidates present themselves as gracious and...

I’m not going to go on at length about David Frum. We all know who he is; we all know what he is and what he represents. He’s a “conservative” who gets his jollies and press gigs railing at actual conservatives, along the lines of Kathleen Parker and, during the 2008 campaign, Peggy Noonan. Parker has gone on to CNN infamy alongside Eliot Spitzer, while Noonan has tried to rehab herself by claiming that the Tea Party saved the GOP. She’s right about that, but only from a rearview mirror perspective. It’s easy to get stuff right after it’s already...

Republican political strategist Mark McKinnon – veteran of McCain and Bush presidential campaigns – acknowledged in an interview with David Frum that a third-party presidential effort for 2012 was not far off, and hinted at his involvement in one. In the podcast interview, McKinnon, who was discussing his recent Daily Beast column “A Centrist Manifesto”, lamented that “there’s nobody that gets rewarded for bipartisan behavior, [and] in fact they get punished.” To that end, he said, “there is a very real possibility for a legitimate third party effort for 2012 … American voters are so hungry for more voice, and...

David Frum’s blog post connects his dismissal from AEI with Brink Lindsey’s and Will Wilkinson’s departures from Cato. In the post, Frum makes some important and well-articulated points about the GOP’s lack of direction and what a Republican majority could yield: We are likely soon to have a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, maybe the U.S. Senate too. And what will that majority do? The answer seems to be: They have not a clue. Unlike the Republican House and Senate majorities of 1994, unlike the Republican Senate majority of 1980, these new majorities will arrive with only slogans...

David Frum has finally jumped the shark. Some conservative/right-of-center folks may have been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt before but playing the race card is something that is universally despised by conservative and moderates. Frum pulls the race card from the bottom of the deck against Governor Palin's new ad: Here’s Sarah Palin’s new ad. Lots of images of the former governor speaking to adoring crowds, meeting admirers, encountering women and children.... Republicans normally work hard to ensure that their ads feature non-white faces, to present an image of welcome and inclusion. In Palin’s ad --...

It's called "Left, Right and Center," which claims to be a "civilized yet provocative antidote to the screaming talking heads that dominate political debate." But there's not a whole lot of truth in advertising for KCRW Santa Monica's radio program, which is also podcasted on the Internet. The show normally features Robert Scheer, editor of the left-wing investigative Web site Truthdig.com and a former Los Angeles Times columnist, representing the left. Matt Miller, a former Clintonista and senior fellow at the left-wing Center for American Progress represents the so-called center. And former Washington Times editorial page editor and visiting senior...

Seated on the same side of an antique table before a large audience, Presidents Barack Obama and Dimitri Medvedev smile at one another as they exchange documents encased in red and black leather folders. The new START treaty has been signed, completing a journey Obama began when he visited the Czech Republic a year ago and announced his intention to begin ridding the world of nuclear weapons. He has reset relations between Russia and the United States and fulfilled a dream of another American President: Ronald Reagan. The cold war is over. Back in America, the former half-term governor of...

At this point David Frum is just making a fool out of himself, he bashes Rush and then takes a shot at the talk radio audience numbers, this from CNN's Reliable Sources (Video)

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum says it’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the GOP disaster. And he blames this “most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s” on conservatives and Republicans: At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994. Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with...

t’s page 258 – and suddenly we are back in Campaign Mode. The transition is very abrupt. On pages 256, Romney is describing an interesting program he advocated in Massachusetts: “a Parental Preparation Program for every underperforming school district. In order for parents in these districts to enroll their children in public school, the parents would have been required to attend classes themselves, where they would learn about the value of education as well as ways in which they could support their children’s educational experience.” On p. 257, a funny story about Romney’s business career, about his unsuccessful attempt to...

I have to say I got a big chuckle out of Romney’s healthcare chapter. Two years ago, I published a book on conservative reform that urged conservatives to pay more attention to the social costs of obesity. Those lines prompted National Review’s book reviewer to ceremonially drum me out of the conservative movement. Two years later, the candidate endorsed by National Review in 2008 has this to say: “One of the biggest behavioral contributors to sickness and death is our big waistlines, and the cascading negative health impact of that excess weight.” (191) Romney then proceeds through a very well-informed...

Mitt Romney’s new book, No Apology, makes a very striking contrast with the most recent book entry by a potential Republican presidential candidate, Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue. Palin’s subject is Palin: her wrongs and grievances. Unlike Palin, Romney cares about the external world. His book is an action plan, not a memoir. It is crammed with factual claims and policy recommendations, with only the lightest sprinkling of self-references. You may have already heard my theory of the two Romneys, Good Romney and Bad Romney. No Apologies is mostly written by Good Romney, but Bad Romney does make himself heard at...

"Go ahead — hit me.” That’s what the Iranian regime is saying to the United States. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims his scientists have enriched a batch of uranium to 20% radioactivity, well past the level needed for electricity production, but closer to the 90% level required for warheads. He boasted that his country should now be considered a “nuclear state.” Nations bent on nuclear breakout do not usually issue progress reports. They move stealthily, until they are ready to detonate a finished weapon. That’s what India did in the 1970s, ... By contrast, the Iran nuclear program issues press releases...

David Frum responds to Jennifer Rubin's article in Commentary titled "Why Jews Hate Palin." First off, Frum is right that the poll that Rubin cites doesn't really prove her case because 37% approval from Jews is actually very good . . . Frum then goes on to assert: Palin excites intense support among a core group of conservative Republicans....She polls poorly...among independents. I'll give Frum credit for changing what he considers Palin's core group of support from "social conservatives" to the broader group of "conservative Republicans." After all, with some recent polling showing Palin to hold a robust 79% favorable...

[Chuckles @ LGF] Johnson’s comment seems to me radically unfair. Pawlenty is a model of sensible modern conservatism. His answers to Newsweek’s barbed questions indicate an instinct for practical compromise, even as he eschews any personal support for creationism. That said, the interview – and Johnson’s reaction – bespeak a religious problem for Pawlenty that will require much tact on his part and that of his campaign team. Pawlenty now attends an evangelical church, but he was born and raised a Roman Catholic. He changed denominations at marriage, accepting his wife’s evangelical faith. Without pretending any insight into the souls...

Having urged the president to honor his commitment to the Afghan war, we Republicans must honor our commitment to support him as he fights it. Given the public unenthusiasm for the conflict, there will be political temptations to “go rogue” on the president, if not now, then in the summer of 2010. That will be our test, for us to pass as the president has passed his. I know many Republicans and conservatives will say: “Hey – the Democrats did not give President Bush support when he most needed it.” Correct. They didn’t. And the country suffered for it. The...

David Frum nails it today. A favorite target of conservatives (including myself at one point), Mr. Frum gets it right on his blog post about how our tip-toeing around the issue of racial pro-filing resulted in the Fort Hood disaster. Here are two excerpts.

Writing on his website, which used to be called “New Majority” until he got tired of people laughing at him, David Frum published an essay called “The Palin Fantasy” over the weekend. Even as the House of Representatives was preparing to pass the most blatantly unconstitutional assault on America’s freedom in Congressional history, Frum found something really outrageous to write about: Matthew Continetti’s admiring essay on Sarah Palin’s populist appeal. It’s a good thing Frum has his priorities in order. We wouldn’t want Palin to get into office and drop a few trillion dollars of unsustainable debt on us. Frum...