Apparently not even thinkers are wanted in conservative think tanks anymore. David Frum gets booted from the American Enterprise Institute for refusing to follow the script and, instead, calling it like it is.
So David Frum went and flipped the script. Instead of calling the historic health care reform bill "Obama's Waterloo" as instructed in some random RNC memo, he instead called it, rightfully, the GOP's Waterloo. It's odd and telling because David Frum, of all people, should know the importance of staying on message. He was, after all, the one who, after 9-11, coined the phrase "Axis of Evil". Who cares that the three parties to the so-called "Axis of Evil" were not seriously aligned at the time and two of them, Iran and Iraq, actually hated one another. Or that no case has been made that any or all three had any specific insights into what happened on 9-11 but it sure did sound good. Almost good enough to wrap two wars and some vague notion of a unified conservative foreign policy strategy around. But, alas, Frum could no longer play the neo-conservative actor he so finely scripted Bush, for a time, to play. With this health care legislation, Frum intuitively knows it's historic significance and, moreover, the significance it holds for the Republican Party.
What people need to realize, and what David Frum is all too aware of, is that there are two types of Republicans. There are the "traditional conservatives" who are primarily made up of old money corporatists who were united politically because of their rejection of the New Deal. And then, 20 years later, came the neo-conservatives who were formed, in large part, due to the reactionary fall out to the Great Society. The traditional conservatives, although they still control the majority of the agenda of the GOP, were not very successful in implementing that agenda for a long time. This was due, in large part, because there really are not that many corporatists numerically to elect a President. And thus, the GOP went 36 years with only one elected Republican leader as President- a leader, it can be argued, who was not much of a partisan Republican and who, in the end due to warnings about the "military industrial complex", turned out not to be a good corporatists.
But still the GOP learned a lot from Dwight Eisenenhower. They learned that their chosen leader should not actually think that they themselves are in charge of policy making and they learned the power of the "folksy charmer" to recruit voters. The neo-conservatives, in which David Frum could be counted among, tended to be former Leftist who either claimed that the Democratic leaders were too soft on Communism (although I do not how more hardcore you can be on Communists than the Vietnam War) or, as is more likely, just found themselves in an era were they could ride a conservative gravy train to power and influence. The neo-conservatives were formed under an era where there were a great deal of embittered progressives (due to the Democratic-devised Vietnam War) and, most importantly for the GOP's future purposes, frustrated white working and middle class Americans who did not like what they took as the "social engineering" policies of the Great Society. Of the two groups, the neo-conservatives knew that they could demonize the former and recruit the latter to a new GOP that desperately needed to rebuild some semblance of a populace base if it were going to survive.
So, under the neo-conservative's guise, the GOP set out to rebuild itself as the anti-Hippy party for the everyman (ie. every white man who hated affirmative action, school busing policies, free choice legislation, and gay rights laws). They were able to sell many of the disaffected white voters on the theory of FINITE power, the sense by some that to share power and rights with others is to somehow diminish one's own power and rights. So for example, if women, African Americans, Latinos, immigrants and gays and lesbians somehow were given the exact same rights and opportunities as white working and middle class men, then that would make being a white male not so special anymore. The neo-conservatives were able to tap into this fabricated feeling of powerlessness and create a new base for the Republican Party. This did not change the fact the GOP was still then, as it still is, primarily a corporatist party whose policies most strictly benefit the corporate needs in America and not, particularly, the needs of working and middle class Americans no matter what race, gender, or sexual orientation they are. It just meant that, through the use of some fancy rhetoric (of which Frum is one of the masters) and, most importantly, the aforementioned "folksy charmer" the GOP can train millions of mostly white middle class Americans to vote against their economic interest for a party led by politicians whose primary appeal for their primary voter is that they can conceivably go to a mooseburger barbeque and drink beers with said politician and he/she is not some elitist egghead who talks about complicated issues like health care using big words and broad concepts. This open appeal to the everyman is why the neo-conservative recruited the "folksy charming" likes of Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and now, Sarah Palin--a tactic that has helped them gain supporters and, at times, win elections
Still what, ultimately, the neo-conservative movement did (when they weren't busy inventing talking points for their folksy charmer to spew to an eager audience of confused and frustrated Americans), was to create an intellectual wing to a party that was, up until then, simply pro-business with little ideological rationale beyond that. As former Leftists, many of these neo-conservatives had learn the importance of wrapping up an ideology in a lot of lofty sounding notions and academic-inspired rhetoric. The Leftists, and their many movements heretofore, had succeeded, in large part, because they had been able to redefine language. From Marx onward, the Left had been very skilled at intellectualizing the class struggle, race issues, and gender inequality. The neo-conservatives, with the use of think tanks (like the Cato Institute and Frum's own American Enterprise Institute) and magazines like the National Review (also a former employer of Mr. Frum) and William F. Buckley's American Spectator, were prepared to do the same for the conservative movement in America. They set about devising policies with enticing sounding names like "supply side economics" and "ownership society", claiming that only small government (the kind that even their own leaders were never quit able to achieve) can set the individual free. Of course, what supply side economics did was primarily support the wealthiest Americans and led to an economic plateu effect within the Middle Class. But have no fear Middle Class American, this mass stagnation of Middle Class wages was meant to be compensated by an increase in access to credit which would lead to "the ownership society" that would enrich the individual and embolden his/her sense of freedom. However, the financial collapse caused by another one of the neo-conservatives pet policies, deregulation, and the ensuing foreclosures had the complete opposite effect. Now not only was the average working Middle class American a slave to his/her lowered and, by now, flattened income but also a slave to his/her ever accruing massive personal debt (the highest debt ratio in the entire world). So much for tax cuts setting us free.
And so now here we are, the neo-conservatives have hit an impasse. Thanks to GW Bush, the Republicans were able to destroy in six years what it took the GOP and it's many policy specialists sixty years to cultivate. Every major GOP policy of the last several decades, from the three aforementioned economic policies to the foreign policy failures of the "Bush Doctrine" (which David Frum and fellow neo-conservatives in Project for a New American Century helped devise) have collapsed in on themselves. And millions of Americans who formerly called themselves Republicans are pretending to be "Libertarians". And the once Grand Old Party, instead of regrouping some of the moderate intellectuals and asking how can they contend with the sweeping new swing to the Left, are tapping into populace rage of the Tea Party (the new Religious Right, if you will) with no road map of what to do with that anger.
At least when the GOP used the Religious Right as a front to recruit angry whites to vote for them, they still had the neo-conservatives guiding the policy ship. The anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, anti-affirmative bones thrown to the Christian Right to appease them and used as a means to encourage their sense of irrational fear and willful ignorance while they ignored the corporatist wizard behind the curtain were tempered by seemingly prudent decision making at the top of the GOP ranks. At no point were the GOP ever going to engage in the hard political battles that would ensue to revoke affirmative action, repeal Roe v. Wade or stop gay marriage. It was all lip service, pure and simple, and were only social concerns that were never seriously at the top of the GOP's primarily fiscal-inspired agenda. That fact became more evident when the GOP finally gained complete control of the Presidency and the legislature during the first six years under Bush. At no time, other than the "Defense of Marriage" amendment proposal used as a wedge issue during the 2004 election (and quickly forgotten the day right after that election), did Bush even come close to addressing the concerns of the bulk of the socially conservative Republican base.
It could be argued that, because of 9-11 and the ensuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that he simply did not have time. But still, he had time for Medicare "reform" and tax cuts for the rich. No, it is not that he did not have time, he did not have the political will. Because George W. Bush, like Reagan, knew his role. He knew that he was to pay lip service to that base while paying political homage to the corporatist core. Bush's family and own personal history made him the perfect mix of "traditional conservative" sprinkled with some neo-conservativism for flavor. As the legacy of a billionaire corporatist grandfather with a father who was a Washington insider setting the tone for his destiny, it was his "personal story" (or, at least the one played up) which was pure Christian Right fodder and made him the Chosen One as far as the GOP top brass were concerned. The fallen drunk who found Jesus, you couldn't have scripted a more appealing "folksy charmer". Until, it would seem, one Sarah Palin comes along. She's would seem even more perfect except not for the neo-conservatives like David Frum who actually help manufacture policy for the Republicans. At least with Ronald Reagan, the dutiful actor, and George W. Bush, who knew his destined role for decades, Sarah Palin seems to actually think that the GOP really want her for her ideas and not her folksy charm. And this lack of self-awareness on her part frightens the likes of David Frum. In fact, it probably frightens the likes of David Gergen and David Brooks, as well. And you know what they say in conservative circles, once you lose the support of the Davids, then your done for good.
So, instead of playing the role once again as the dutiful braniac who makes excuses for the failings and faux pas of the trained chimp who is "leading the party", David Frum cannot in good conscience stand by and let an ego-maniacal beauty queen take over the party he loves so dear, especially if that beauty queen is fond of using talking points that he himself created. He's no longer comfortable recruiting angry and frustrated Americans just because they are angry and frustrated and, more frightenly, armed. He won't let the GOP go on indoctrinating Americans with his own talking points that allow their followers, as either a member of the Christian Right, to hide behind a Bible they've never read or as a "Tea Party" member, hide behind a Constitution they've also never read. He knows how important the use of feelings over logic are for the GOP or, at least, their base. But not their leaders. Their leaders are supposed to be the sensible ones, only using the heated rhetoric when facts are not on your side or to shield the average American from the GOP's real corporatist agenda. But, privately, the "think tanks" and the top brass aren't supposed to believe that rhetoric. They need to always be thinking about their next step, not repealing and repeating their last failed one.
David Frum understands precisely what this health care bill means. It means that the GOP are back to square one. This bill is the modern-day equivalent of Social Security and Medicare. Whether it has been the traditional conservatives who rejected the New Deal or the neo-conservatives who rejected the Great Society, the Republicans have been trying to roll back popular Liberal policies without offering up anything remotely similar or successful of their own. Frum knows a new wing or tactic of the party needs to be devised. McCarthyist and Christian Right rage will no longer work if it isn't channeled into anything constructive. It simply undermines the party's ability to recruit intelligent people, the ones who will be responsible for producing the eventual failed policies of the future conservatives. But right now, Frum is done.