These days, when I tune into the news and see clips online, I have been seeing this person David Frum all over the place. I have been listening to him advocate for moderation, inclusiveness and he sounds somewhat reasonable.
Now I have to confess, I was hit on the head back on January 2009 and only remember things since then. So I decided to do some research on this wonderful conservative or moderate Mr. Frum expecting to find a past of honor, class and inclusiveness. I mean why would I have any reason to think otherwise?
And, I was just shocked, shocked, shocked over what I found! I could not believe what I was reading. I found numerous instances of this fellow doing disgraceful things as speechwriter for George W. Bush.
What was most interesting was his attitude towards fellow Republicans with whom he disagreed with on war. He was not particularly tolerant or inclusive.
I thought the most interesting analysis comes from a conservative/libertarian website http://antiwar.com that has a column on Frum by Justin Raimondo.
The Reinvention of David Frum
Why do discredited neocon talking heads just keep talking – and why does anyone listen?
http://original.antiwar.com/...
Here is a key piece of this column
In an infamous article for National Review, entitled "Unpatriotic Conservatives," he attacked those conservatives and libertarians who counseled caution, smearing Robert Novak, Pat Buchanan, Llewellyn Rockwell, Samuel Francis, Thomas Fleming, Scott McConnell, Joe Sobran, Charley Reese, Jude Wanniski, Eric Margolis, Taki Theodoracopulos, and myself as, variously, "defeatist," "conspiracy theorists," and "anti-Semitic." Here is Frum, in March of 2003:
"They have made common cause with the left-wing and Islamist antiwar movements in this country and in Europe. They deny and excuse terror. They espouse a potentially self-fulfilling defeatism. They publicize wild conspiracy theories. And some of them explicitly yearn for the victory of their nation’s enemies."
Frum went on for at least three thousand words, attacking his enemies as traitors and terrorist-sympathizers. It was all lies, of course, and I answered them here. Yet now we see Frum has reinvented himself as a "moderate" Republican, and has carved out a new career for himself as the kind of conservative who gets invited on NPR and CNN to snark at his former comrades. In a recent interview with Politico, he was asked: "What do you know now that you wish someone had told you 10 years ago?" His answer:
"That the Iraq War would be a disaster. Come to think of it, they did tell me."
In the accompanying photo, Frum is sitting on a patio somewhere, smiling and petting his golden retriever. Who, me worry? Such a blithe spirit, that Frum, who is wearing white pants with no socks. Deaf to the bitter cries of the dead and the maimed, not to mention those he accused of treason, he puts his feet up in a pose of summary relaxation. The memory of his hysterical smears – "They began by hating the neoconservatives. They came to hate their party and this president. They have finished by hating their country" – seems to have dissipated into the stratosphere. He’s put it out of his mind.
You can obviously read the rest. I disagree with Raimondo on Bob Novak being a great guy, but you can't agree with folks on everything.
For those who are wondering why commentators who have been consistently wrong about practically everything can still market their alleged expertise, it’s instructive to go back and see what the Old Frum had to say about the particulars of my alleged treason:
"The week after the fall of Kabul, Raimondo acknowledged that though the Afghan war seemed to have succeeded, disaster lurked around the corner: ‘The real quagmire awaits us. . . . When the history books are written, Operation Enduring Freedom will be hailed as a great success – provided it doesn’t endure much more than a few weeks longer.’"
Today’s treason is tomorrow’s reality, it seems. Yet Frum has never acknowledged the utter wrongness of his smears, let alone apologized, and I just don’t mean to me personally.
If Frum wants to complain about an information bubble in 2012, he needs to come to terms with the one he was a key player in, the one leading up to the Iraq War. I think the NEW RULE (Sorry Bill Maher) should be for that if conservatives and republicans want to come on these shows and talk about how their party needs to change, they must first apologize for the crappy policies they have supported for decades. Just like at an AA meeting. "Hello my name is David Frum, and I contributed to an economic collapse, huge deficits, vast income inequality, death and destruction. I need help."
Raimondo also goes on in another column to talk about David Frum at the American Enterprise Institute through the words of another questionable chap Charles Murray:
Frum’s Karma
The purger is himself purged
http://original.antiwar.com/...
The Frum-ster was fired, not because he didn’t do a lick of work for AEI, refused to come into the office, and neglected to write for their blog – as Charles Murray pointed out – but due to the fact that he bravely dared to speak out against "lockstep Republican opposition to the health-care bill [that] sacrificed conservative policy goals at the altar of short-term electoral incentives." David Frum, martyr to high principle – the Republican "principle" of (partially) socialized healthcare – yeah, that‘s the ticket!
Isn’t it passing strange that none of these "liberals," these fighters against Republican/tea partier "extremism" and "dogmatism, deigned to mention that their hero has been on the other side of the docket in the conservative purge trials, most famously for his denunciation of anti-interventionist conservatives who opposed the invasion of Iraq? Perhaps they didn’t know about it, although that’s unlikely – but that’s what I’m here for, now isn’t it?
Here is Murray's take on Frum::
I do not have any certain information to convey about David’s departure, except what Arthur Brooks has already said publicly: David resigned. He could have stayed. But I will tell what is common knowledge around AEI: David got a handsome salary but, for the last few years, has been invisible as a member of the institute. Being a scholar at a think tank (or any institution) is not just a matter of acknowledging your affiliation in your books and op-eds. It’s also a matter of blogging at the institute’s blog, not just your own blog (David had a grand total of 3 posts on AEI’s blog in the year since it began), reviewing colleagues’ drafts, reacting to their ideas, contributing chapters to their books, organizing scholarly events, participating on the institute’s panels, attending the institute’s conferences, helping out with fundraising, serving on in-house committees, giving in-house seminars, and mentoring junior staff. Different scholars are engaged in these activities to different degrees. Full disclosure: I’m on the left-hand side of that bell curve (I make the trek from Burkittsville so seldom that I don’t even have an office at AEI). But David was at the left-hand tail. If I had to guess — and that’s what I’m doing, guessing — David’s departure arose from something as simple as this: Management thinks that an employee is not as productive a member of the organization as management thinks he should be. The employee disagrees. They part company.
I think that’s what happened. I also think that for David to have leveled the charge that Arthur Brooks caved in to donor pressure, knowing that the charge would be picked up and spread beyond recall, knowing that such a charge strikes at the core of the Institute’s integrity, and making such a sensational charge without a shred of evidence, is despicable.
In general I am not that interested in GOP squabbling because it has more to do with not winning rather than on what are the best policies for the country.
I also do not expect the "mainstream" outlets like the networks, CNN and even PBS to point out Frum's sins, but I expect when he goes on shows like Lawerence O'Donnell, Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow or Current TV that he is reminded of his shady past.
I have not seen every cable show, so I do not know if anyone on MSNBC has brought up Frum's past. I think it is important because it continues to emphasize that they want to package themselves differently but not change the contents. I think asking these guys to repent when they come on the air, particularly on what they had to say about those who disagreed with them on war, is much more powerful than having liberals and progressives say that they won't change.