David Frum announced in November 2011 that Mitt Romney or John Huntsmann must be the nominee, or Frum might leave the GOP:
Any other nominee would gravely test my commitment to the political party I’ve supported since I entered the United States as a college student in the fall of 1978.
Frum got the nominee he wanted, but what he wanted now wasn’t good enough for Frum:
The Mitt Romney who began seeking the presidency in the early 2000s—the savior of the 2002 Olympics, the author of Romneycare, the man who’d redirected Boston’s “Big Dig”—was exactly the candidate the Republican Party needed by 2012: competent, managerial, pragmatic. Unfortunately, in the interval, Romney had been refashioned into something very different—to the point where nobody knew really what he was; to the point where even he may no longer have known.
That lack of core conviction, that not knowing who he was, sounds like the conservative criticism of Romney against which Frum rebelled during the primaries.
How convenient that Frum now blames Romney’s electoral problems on conservatives:
The problem with the Republican leaders is that they’re cowards, not that they’re fundamentally mistaken. The real locus of the problem is the Republican activist base and the Republican donor base. They went apocalyptic over the past four years, and that was exploited by a lot of people in the conservative world.
Many of you will say, “Who cares what David Frum says?” That misses the point.
Frum is a tool the mainstream media uses to attack Republicans, because to Frum Republicans always are wrong, and conservatives always are to blame.
Even when Frum gets what he wants from the Republican Party, Republicans still are wrong and conservatives still are to blame.
Frum is an insatiable troll who spins a narrative of Republicans being wrong to justify his media punditry business.
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Comments
“The problem with the Republican leaders is that they’re cowards”
This much I agree with completely, though I would add that they are also incredibly stupid.
So I guess this Frum person stumbles on the truth once in a while. Even so, if it wasn’t for conservatives complaining about him, he’d have no readership at all. Let it go.
Promises promises from David Frum. Time for you to come out your closet and be the Democrat you want to be.
We should stay away from advice from pundits like Frum…it’s a trap.
I’ll go with “Who cares what David Frum says?”
And, really, if media needs a “not really conservative, but pretends to be”, they tend to go with Andrew Sullivan anyway. And, if either of them was not around, someone else would do.
There seems to be no end to the frenemies lurking among less government advocates — although Frum seems to advocate for more government but at a less unsustainable pace. Prof. Jacobson, if we’re the party of ideas, why do we throw out the word troll when another person’s ideas don’t conform to the prevailing conservative orthodoxy? Discuss and challenge the ideas, suggest the hypocrisy, but leave the troll labels to the Brothers Grimm.
The label of ‘Troll’ is appropriate here because David Frum is calling himself that he is decidedly not: Conservative.
The closest thing that he holds to a Conservative viewpoint is the nominal claim that he is for less government interference. However he immediately belies that by demanding MORE government interference into our lives.
He is a troll because he is playing a game of “False Flag Conservatism” (which he may actually be deluded enough to believe, I don’t know). The point however is that the Main Stream Morons use him to say “look at those wacky Conservatives, they’re soooooo far out on the fringe, while we have a perfectly rational “Conservative” right here who agrees with our LIBERAL ideas.
I believe the term for a liberal posing as a conservative on-line is MOBY.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=moby
One is what one writes. Likely, Frum believes he is not a concern troll yet he is what he writes.
This is why any time I comment on a Frum commentary or any time I discuss Frum in any way I refer to him as “David Frum the Faux Conservative.”
We need to SHAME and RIDICULE him. Shame and ridicule are useful tools, and it’s time that we started making good use of them against the morons who keep trying to spoon-feed us Liberal positions when those of us who have more than half-a-brain know those positions WILL fail.
Also, notice that Frum never manages to end up on a news program with someone who could actually, you know, challenge is particular brand of “Convenience Conservatism?” I’m sure that’s by design.
I think it is interesting he says, “The real locus of the problem is the Republican activist base and the Republican donor base.”
Without the “activist base” and the “donor base” what would the party be?
It’s interesting to me how Dems seem to consider Repubs with much more antagonism than, say, Iran.
And, similarly, how RINOs seem to consider Tea Party activists and candidates with more antagonism than their Dem opponents.
Well, we’re in new territory now.
I lost all patience with Frumm when I read his book about working in the Bush White House. He’s one of those shameless self promoters who is impervious to feedback. The problem was never with the drafts he wrote. Bush was simply to stupid to see Frumm’s brilliance in speeches filled with typical political boilerplate about being happy to be back in whereeversville.
Frumm also impressed me as having a real problem with women. Every woman who was more influential than he was got there by undeserved means. That’s interesting because his mother was one of the most widely known journalist in Canada for a period. Frumm’s career is decidedly less stellar. But are you bitter, David? No, not at all.
* Polls said that independents were favoring Romney by a wide margin.
* Anecdotal evidence showed substantial numbers of lifelong Democrat voters who planned to vote for Romney.
* There was little enthusiasm on the ground to reelect Obama.
* A disturbing number of conservatives have proudly announced they didn’t vote for Romney because they’re waiting for “the GOP to give us a real conservative candidate.”
* Obama is the most radical president in a very long time, mentored by a card-carrying Communist, surrounding himself with similar ideologues, and pledging to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” He ran a very nasty, mendacious campaign, probably abetted by widespread fraud.
Frumm’s conclusion? Romney was too right-wing.
And Frumm is supposed to be really smart or something? He’s acting like a left-wing Democrat: always trying to push the ideological center point in a leftward direction, but pretending he’s doing so in the interest of conservatism.
Being “really smart” isn’t enough. A person has to have common sense too. Maybe his arrogance suppresses it.
more of a “Judas Goat” than a troll
more of a “weeper” than a troll
You say it far more eloquently that I have (at lease in my own mind). I see his byline, think “that jerk,” and slide right past.
As far as I am concerned, he is like Kathleen Parker: not a conservative, so much as a hostile observer of conservatives.
I’m no Conservative, either. I am just your friendly neighborhood Liberal who hates to see good people libeled.
Professor, I think it’s time somebody took on that Times v. Sullivan standard.
Frum is a tool and a bit player in the MSM narrative. Beneath that is the underlying reality that he is a very small man. Unfortunately, Frum and his ilk are the RINO class that the MSM trots out when they want to cast all conservatives in the poorest light possible.
Perhaps what conservativism needs is its own “Apostles’ Creed”? Keep it simple, but have a standard that we can all agree is true conservatism, and let the other issues fall where they may. It will be easier to keep score that way, so we can point out that they aren’t credentialed.
The Loathsome Davey Frum and the Despicable Davey Brooks are Lovers. Yep, Luv Muffins. This is well known. Not “just” that: They’re Brothers. So, not only are they Luv Muffins, but they’re in a carnal affair of homo-persuasion that’s Incestuous.
So, they need to change party affiliation and become(Duuhhh!!)Liberal DEMOCRATS.
That’s my read on this Ish-Shoe.
Frum is like David Brooks, Noonan, Kristol and others. They’ll say what they need to so long as they get invited to the A list dinner parties in Georgetown.
And I’m surprised to see more and more names being added to that august list as the days go on.
I heard Little Billy Kristol this a.m.(must have been from a weekend show)asking,”So, what’s WRONG with people who make more than $200,000 paying more taxes?”
Number 1, Bill: Your father, Irving the Great, Godfather of Us Evil Neocons is slapping the living snot outta you.
Number 2, Bill: If it weren’t for Barnes, Hayes & some others at The Standard, you’d have my subscription cancellation. DISGUSTING Beltway Kiss-up Drival.
I think the problem is that David Frum doesn’t read David Frum.
[…] The insatiable trolling of David Frum – William Jacobson, Legal Insurrection […]
I’m not exactly sure how you define troll. But I certainly agree that David Frum is in a strange and repulsive class by himself. He drove me away with effete, elite, condescending secular sermons and intellectual tests. He has a habit of writing in sort of an obstacle course style where if you succeed in getting past the first several tests, you might just get to a nugget worth knowing. But he’s so manipulative and so “look at me, I am so clever” that he wore me out. It is too bad. Frum is plenty conservative enough for me and I have heard him give excellent TV and radio interviews. We need people like him to talk the language of people like Brooks, Noonan, et al. But Frum so intensely dislikes podunk conservatives like me that I don’t know why he sticks around, except to annoy and belittle us.
By the way, I would not put Bill Kristol in a list with Frum, Brooks & Noonan.
Liberals like the word ‘troll’ when they use it and disapprove the word when it is used on them.
Typical
But the “T-WORD” is not going away.
Frum is the designated “Republican weeper”
Frum is irrelevant. F him.
Why doesn’t Frum just go the way of David Brock and be done with it.