The Daily Beast’s David Frum has long been required-reading for centrists, moderates and independent voters. The former Bush speechwriter has angered some in his party’s conservative wing because he has taken on some of the more polarizing actions and rhetoric of his party — and dared to criticize that conservative icon, Rush Limbaugh. But now Frum has had some family tragedies says he’s going to walk away from his FrumBlog on the Daily Beast. And he has some parting advice for “conservative reformers” — conservatives who want to see a more inclusive party, one that offers affirmative ideas rather than stays constantly on the attack and attempts to put a bouncer at the front of the Republican tent.
Here’s what he thinks conservative reformers — Republicans who could fashion a conservationism that like Ronald Reagan appealed to many Democrats who aren’t progressives and to right-but-not-Twilight Zone-leaning-right conservatives:
1) There remain too many taboos and shibboleths even among the conservative reformers. If the only policy tool you allow yourself to use is tax credits, your reform agenda will sputter into ineffectuality. Conservative reformers need to do a better job of starting with the problem and working forward, not starting with the answer and working backward.
2) Conservative reformers are understandably allergic to arguments about income inequality. The conservative project at its best has worked to raise the floor beneath the American middle class, not to lower the ceiling upon the middle class. But one of the lessons I think conservatives should take from the 2012 Romney defeat is that the increasing concentration of wealth in America has dangerous political and intellectual consequences. I’m not so worried that the oligarchs will pay for apologetics on their behalf. That’s politics as usual. I’m more concerned that so many people will identify themselves with the interests of oligarchy without being paid, without even being conscious that this is what they are doing. The whole immigration debate, for example, is premised on the assumption that the only interests that matter are the interests of the employers of labor.3) Conservative reformers must not absent themselves from the environmental debate. Humanity’s impact on the climate – and how to address that impact – is our world’s largest long-term challenge. If conservatives refuse to acknowledge that challenge, they only guarantee that the challenge will be addressed in ways that ignore conservative insights and values.
4) Conservative reformers should make their peace with universal health coverage. It’s the law, and it won’t be repealed. Other countries have managed to control costs while covering everyone, and the US can too. A message of “protect Medicare, scrap Obamacare” reinforces the image of conservatism as nothing more than the class interest of the elderly.
5) I appreciate that conservative reformers must pay lip-service to shibboleths about Barack Obama being the worst president of all time, who won’t rest until he has snuffed out the remains of constitutional liberty, etc. etc. Dissent too much from party orthodoxy, and you find yourself outside the party altogether. Still … conservative reformers should admit, if only to themselves, the harm that has been done by the politics of total war over the past five years. Now Republicans are working themselves into a frenzy that will paralyze Congress for the next 18 months at least, and could well lead to an impeachment crisis. As it becomes clear that the IRS story is an agency scandal, not a White House scandal, conservative reformers need to be ready to do their part to apply the brakes and turn the steering wheel. There will be a Republican president again someday, and that president will need American political institutions to work. Republicans also lose as those institutions degenerate.
Will his advice be taken and will see see a conservative course correction? In these days marked by the ascent of Senator Ted Cruz and name calling by Rep. Darrell Issa, I think before that happens we’ll see this:
Some other reaction:
If you read those five prescriptions, I’m sure you’d agree that today’s Republicans are very, very far from accepting any of them. A positive governing philosophy? A focus on economic inequality? An environmental agenda? Acceptance of Obamacare? Acceptance of Obama and of his administration?
Just to take #4, a conservative movement whose current stronghold is a House GOP caucus that has voted 37 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act is just not going to “make [its] peace” with Obamacare, no matter how many times people like Frum point out that conservatives everywhere else on the planet are living with far more “socialistic” health care systems.
Right now the main debate within the conservative movement and the GOP is whether they need to do much of anything—other than what they’ve done before, more loudly and consistently—to return to power. I argued last week that Ross Douthat’s much more modest “conservative reform” agenda collides fatally with the Right’s exceptional self-identification with “job creators,” and with a core ideological commitment to a rigid “constitutional” governing philosophy. Frum’s intelligently wrought suggestions are, unfortunately, doomed to be rejected and ignored, and a GOP which actually considered them would soon be—in Erick Erickson’s words—“disrupted” by its own shock troops.
You see some conservative reform types grappling with these questions with various degrees of directness and depth. But ask yourself this: How many Republican elected officials are even beginning to address them, in any way, shape or form?
…..As for Frum’s final recommendation — that Republicans admit the destructive aspects of “total war” and pivot towards a more reality-based acknowledgment of just how “scandalous” the various ongoing scandals really are — if anything, Republicans are moving in the opposite direction. Republicans are clearly putting all their chips on a base-motivating strategy for 2014 that’s centered on creating a sinister narrative of Obama/Dem Big Government Overreach, one that rests on turning over every rock in sight in hopes of finding some way, any way, to tie the the ongoing scandals to Obama. And, of course, on tying the scandals to Obamacare, which Republicans are openly rooting for to fail, while offering no meaningful replacement.
…..I don’t feel qualified to address the more detailed reform agendas that some of the conservative wonky writers have put forth. But when it comes to GOP elected officials, with the possible exception of immigration, is this really an exaggeration? It seems to me we’re essentially stuck in a stalemate that will last until at least 2014 or even 2016.
—Jonathan Bernstein looks at Kilgore’s and Sergant’s analysis and adds this:
However, at some point in the future, there may be an excellent chance for the Republican Party to heal itself. That could come from a Republican president who wants to have a substantive agenda rather than an symbolic one; it could come from Republican politicians and Republican campaign and governing professionals who get desperate to win office; it could come from Republican-aligned interest groups who believe that their substantive interests are not being served by a party increasingly unwilling and unable to do policy.
And if and when that happens, it sure would be useful for them to have some idea of what a healthy Republican Party would look like, and what it would have to say — and even more importantly, to do — about the major issues of the day.
So, yes, the conservative reformers as a group aren’t really doing anything very important yet, and yes, they can’t really bully a party reacting to very different incentives to accept what they want. But it’s part of getting healthy. Those of us who believe that one of the biggest things wrong with the American political system today is the broken Republican Party should be urging the conservative reformers on, even if it’s unlikely they can accomplish much by themselves.
On that last point may I use the (dreaded) word?
Ditto…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.