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Whether or not you agree with him, he's not an intellectual lightweight.

Having an ivy league affiliation or a law degree doesn't make one an intellectualy astute individual. Neither does writing for a magazine or newspaper. If you doubt me, just look at all the leftist buffoons who lined up to write defenses of Clinton during impeachment. They were a virtual Harvard/Yale/Princeton law school faculty list, yet their arguments were among the most intellectually dishonest propaganda tripe to appear on the pages of American newspapers in decades.

If Frum desires the credential of intellectual depth, he must demonstrate it in his writings. Penning a soundbyte and launching a guilt-by-association smear on conservatives he disagrees with demonstrates the exact opposite.

And the girly boy slur is just that

To the contrary. It's an accurate description of an individual's childish and whiny behavior carried out in the form of that article. If an individual lies, it is not a slur to call him a liar. If an individual whines when people criticize him, it is not a slur to call him a whiner. If an individual behaves like an adolescent in his editorials, it is not a slur to call him an adolescent. And if he does all of these things, as Frum has indisputably done, it is not a slur, but rather an accurate characterization, to call him a "girly boy."

Fine, if you want to argue the points of the article, it was literally stuffed with quotes from the paleocons. And the quotes were not even particularly extreme by paleocon standards. The usual definition of "intellectual lightweight" is one who can't back up his statements with facts, and Frum took care to do just that. As for whether Novak is a paleocon, the original dispute--obviously his roots are not as a paleocon, but as a mainstream, even liberal Republican. However, in the last decade or so, he has become consistently anti-Israel to the point of opposing any government action, warlike or peaceful, that might help Israel in any way. So, even if he may not be a paleocon in some ways, his attitude on the Middle East is that of a paleocon--and he shares their worst traits.

"If Frum desires the credential of intellectual depth, he must demonstrate it in his writings."

I tried reading two of his books, "Dead Right" and "How We Got Here", and couldn't finish them. "How We Got Here" especially read like a cut-and-paste job.

All in all, Frum strikes me as an opportunist a la David Brock who senses that his moment has arrived and now's the time to make a big "splash".