Free Republic

Frum disses Palin for sharing money with Alaska taxpayers when she comes out against government "handouts" He says Palin was popular in Alaska because she gave everyone 1200 bucks. Frum: Palin failed in interview after interview. Coulter: She has tremendous star power Frum: Palin a divisive force within the republican party And within the country. And will lead the party to political defeat and ineffectiveness in government. (LOL HUH? That's what the GOP did with McCain)Coulter: Reagan was divisive too, and they said he was just appealing to the base (It worked then) Coulter: Palin a lot closer to the...

In today's Washington Post, Bill Kristol asks tauntingly "[T]he mainstream media and the Republican establishment. … tend not only to dislike and disdain Palin, they also want to bury her chances now as a presidential possibility. What are they afraid of?" That's easy to answer: They -- we! -- are afraid that Palin's distinctive combination of sex appeal, self-pity, and cultural resentment has a following in today's GOP. We are afraid that it is not utterly inconceivable that she could win the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, and we are afraid that if she did so she would lead the...

David Frum has done conservatives a great favor, and we should be thankful. The favor is not that he has written another negative piece about Gov. Palin. No, that's nothing new for Frum, who has been bashing the governor since she stepped up onto the national stage. Frum's gift to conservatives is that in the article, he clearly demonstrates why Vichy Republicans cannot be trusted to act in the GOP's best interests. Referencing Todd Purdum's VF hit piece which has caused such a stir, Frum itemizes Purdum's anti-Palin talking points from the VF smear job, and then he makes this...

Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny has sat atop the bestseller lists for many weeks. Clearly, conservatives across the country are finding meaning and value in this book. But what? Unlike Ann Coulter’s books, Liberty and Tyranny is not an exciting read. To his credit, Levin on the page eschews the vituperative style of his radio program. In his serious mode, he expresses himself in the sonorous style of the conservatives of the 1950s and 1960s. The tone of L&T owes a lot to the elder Brent Bozell. But Bozell coined lapidary phrases as elegantly and abundantly as the Mint strikes...

The debate over the heart and soul of conservatism continues, and the latest skirmish is apparently between neoconservative David Frum and yours truly. Frum, it seems, was offended by my recent comments about conservatism on Bloggingheads, an online talk show where bloggers debate the issues of the day. My intent was to respond to an e-mailer, who had asked me my definition of what constitutes a conservative. Interestingly, I don't think I even mentioned Frum in this particular segment, though I have certainly mentioned him in the past. For those unfamiliar with Bloggingheads, it should be noted this is essentially...

By email, Dan alerted me to, on his Riehl World View, where Mark Levin added a second guest commentary, this time focusing on "conservative" David Frum. Here's an excerpt and the link over: My interactions with Frum have been minimal, despite his past suggestions that they were something more. As best I recall, I met him first on an Amtrak train. He was sitting near the restroom feverishly working his lap top's keyboard. We exchanged pleasantries, and that was about it. I believe the next time I met him was at the Ledeen's home. He seemed harmless enough. The next...

A second guest post from Mark Levin. Update: A disclaimer of my own for the hand wringing crowd. If you read Frum's post on ML, linked below - he got very personal and very nasty. In my opinion, Mark is responding in kind, though perhaps not as nastily, or bizarrely and based on facts, not suppositions. It is precisely how I handle such things. You slap me, I slap you. Kick me, I kick you. And if you come at me with a knife, I'll shoot your ***. So spare me the Mark is mean crap. Thank you. David Frum...

This past Thursday, Mark Levin talked about the speeches of Obama and Cheney and then took a call from a lib, Cindy in Westchester. That call has backbencher Rod Dreher in a tither. First, here is Mark unedited, in full context: Rod's friend Connor was miffed so Rod, being the world's foremost authority on Mark Levin, penned a post entitled 'The disgusting Mark Levin' within which he wrote, "Good grief. Having spent about 15 unpleasant minutes [emphasis added mine] listening to this creep, I cannot imagine why anybody pays attention to him." Then Rod's other buddy, another bastion of the...

First of all, I know this column isn't going to be popular with all the mouth breathing, troglodytic, primitive dittoheads out there. But, facts are facts: conservatives are NEVER, EVER, EVER going to get back into power again. The mainstream media says so, legendary conservative icons like David Frum, Meghan McCain, and David Brooks say so -- and, yes, Democrats in Congress who we should remember soundly beat us in November, say so. So, I think it's time to point out what even completely unbiased political luminaries like Chuck Schumer and Keith Olbermann have been saying since Barack Obama was...

. . . .Obama has been in office nearly three months.. . . Obama has not yet raised taxes. He has not yet introduced a healthcare plan. He has not yet detailed a climate-change policy. He has declined to rescue the automobile companies. SNIP Yet to listen to Fox News and other conservative media, you’d think we were living in Czechoslovakia in the final hours before the 1948 communist coup. Anchors end interviews by solemnly pledging to defend liberty and oppose tyranny. The network’s rising star Glenn Beck has mused about the coming turn to totalitarianism — and warned his...

It’s not just liberals who are scared to death by Glenn Beck. Prominent conservative pundits are speaking out, denouncing his hysterics before he sinks the entire movement.

Canadian conservative David Frum is probably one of the most lucid, most reasonable and most common-sensical conservatives in North America today. I was fascinated by his book, Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again. In it, he outlined a game plan for a new kind of conservatism appropriate for the 21st century. Being a fiscal hawk myself, it goes without saying that I particularly enjoyed his chapter on eliminating income tax and replacing it with consumption taxes. Frum also served as a speechwriter for ex-president George W. Bush. The slogan “axis of evil” was based on Frum’s “axis of hate”, but...

We hear a lot these days about the blunders and failings of Chairman Michael Steele. Many think that Chairman Steele has been making too many public mistakes and is simply not up to the job. In my humble opinion, they are totally and absolutely wrong. Dead wrong. Steele knows exactly what he’s doing. You see, Steele is obviously using a classic military tactic. A probing action to draw out the enemy (or in this case the opposition “us” – Movement Conservatives) for the purpose of judging their strengths/weaknesses. Steele is gutsy and bold. He aggressively thrusts forward with his “Extreme...

Conservatives who object to moderate Republican officeholders have over the years asked themselves how far they are prepared to go to rid themselves of their intraparty rivals. In the case of California’s senator Thomas Kuchel, the answer was: very far indeed. Kuchel (pronounced “kee-kul”) was among the last of the California progressives, politicians who had been decisively influenced by the middle-class, moral reform movement of the early twentieth century and leading progressive figures including Republican governors Hiram Johnson and Earl Warren. A key progressive reform, which was still in existence when Kuchel first was elected to the California State Assembly...

Do I want President Obama to fail? No. I want the country to succeed despite his agenda. That’s the same wish I had when Bill Clinton was President. I had nothing but raw contempt for his political vision, but I wanted the country to remain prosperous and free in spite of Clinton’s attempts to muck things up. Ultimately, we survived the Clinton era. Despite my general pessimism, there’s still a part of me that believes we can make it through the Obama years as well. I didn’t want Clinton to fail so much as I believed failure would inevitably consume...

Speechwriter David Frum says Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh is hurting the Republican Party. Rush is new (talking) head of the GOP His controversial quips come faster than a locomotive and he leaps over spineless Republicans in a single sound bite. He's Rush Limbaugh - and he's kryptonite for the GOP, says conservative pundit David Frum. Frum, an influential former Bush speechwriter, charges in this week's Newsweek that the bombastic radio talk show host is trashing the Republican Party by allowing the Democrats to anoint him de facto party leader. "Limbaugh is kryptonite, weakening the GOP nationally," writes Frum, who...

It wasn't a fight I went looking for. On March 3, the popular radio host Mark Levin opened his show with an outburst (he always opens his show with an outburst): "There are people who have somehow claimed the conservative mantle … You don't even know who they are … They're so irrelevant … It's time to name names …! The Canadian David Frum: where did this a-hole come from? … In the foxhole with other conservatives, you know what this jerk does? He keeps shooting us in the back … Hey, Frum: you're a putz." Now, of course, Mark...

On Tuesday evening, the radio host Mark Levin opened his show with an angry shouted 10-minute monologue in which he called me (among other choice terms) a “putz,” an “a-hole,”a “frat boy,” “irrelevant,” and - ouch! - “this Canadian.”

Is there a civil war starting in the Republican Party? Frum and his crew of moderates think they have a point... Rush, Levin, Hannity, and the talk radio crowd are too abrasive and "self-indulgent" for their tastes... but then I can't recall Wills, Frum, Brooks, or any of those guys ever inspiring me to do anything. Rush inspired me to go out and start a radio show. The bottom line is that Rush wants to lay out a plan for victory... and the moderates just want to figure out how to lose with grace.

If tugging on Superman’s cape and spitting into the wind are no-nos, then messing around with Rush Limbaugh – while donning the apocryphal moniker of conservative - is sheer blockheadedness. Time and time again, counterfeit conservatism is reconstituted in the columns and commentaries of convoluted right-leaning hyper-intellectuals - David Brooks, Ross Douthat and Chris Buckley come to mind - while attempting to reinvent the movement in order to set themselves apart from the pack.All the while, conservatives such as me are derided and repudiated as being too narrow-minded, out-of-touch and parochial.Reconstructing conservatism into a more media-friendly animal, i.e. making...