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The Tea Party Is A Turn-Off For US Moderates America's angriest political force could learn from David Cameron, argues David Frum. By David Frum 20 Jun 2010 The bill for the Republicans' Tea Party is about to arrive. Through 2009 and the first half of 2010, the media have buzzed with delighted horror over the supposedly unstoppable Tea Party movement in the United States. Now it's reality time. Compare two sets of Senate races. The first is made up of contests in New Hampshire, Ohio and Illinois. The first two of these seats had been held by Republicans who did...

It's called "Left, Right and Center," which claims to be a "civilized yet provocative antidote to the screaming talking heads that dominate political debate." But there's not a whole lot of truth in advertising for KCRW Santa Monica's radio program, which is also podcasted on the Internet. The show normally features Robert Scheer, editor of the left-wing investigative Web site Truthdig.com and a former Los Angeles Times columnist, representing the left. Matt Miller, a former Clintonista and senior fellow at the left-wing Center for American Progress represents the so-called center. And former Washington Times editorial page editor and visiting senior...

Seated on the same side of an antique table before a large audience, Presidents Barack Obama and Dimitri Medvedev smile at one another as they exchange documents encased in red and black leather folders. The new START treaty has been signed, completing a journey Obama began when he visited the Czech Republic a year ago and announced his intention to begin ridding the world of nuclear weapons. He has reset relations between Russia and the United States and fulfilled a dream of another American President: Ronald Reagan. The cold war is over. Back in America, the former half-term governor of...

Well, that didn't take long. After Democratic supermajorities rammed through their health care bill, Republicans were full of sound and fury about how this injustice will not stand. Even John McCain was on board, telling a television interviewer, "Outside the Beltway the American people are very angry and they don't like it and we are going to try to repeal this." But in the GOP, cooler heads always prevail. What these Republican heads want to cool down is the campaign to repeal the health care takeover. Reports the Associated Press: "Top Republicans are increasingly worried that GOP candidates this fall...

Odious Conservatives By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. WASHINGTON -- A major proposition that I advance in a book that will be published later this month, After the Hangover: The Conservatives' Road to Recovery, is that there exists an odious subgroup of conservatives who since the beginning of the conservative movement have made their way to prominence in the mainstream media by a cheap act. They disparage with great melodrama other conservatives. Liberals love it -- and for a while love the disparagers. In the late 1990s Arianna Huffington exploited this instrument of self-promotion brazenly. For several years David Frum has...

WASHINGTON -- A major proposition that I advance in a book that will be published later this month, After the Hangover: The Conservatives' Road to Recovery, is that there exists an odious subgroup of conservatives who since the beginning of the conservative movement have made their way to prominence in the mainstream media by a cheap act.

I had to wince when I saw poor old John McCain last week, standing on stage with a constipated smile as his former running mate Sarah Palin threw him a bone. It was a cringe-worthy sight. McCain is a true servant of his country, a former POW and presidential candidate. He is one of those people who has to qualify for the title of Great American. And yet there he was, with that frozen rictus of a grin, silently begging to keep his job, as the woman he once plucked from obscurity magnanimously asked the crowd of Arizona Republicans to...

By now, many Chronicles readers have no doubt heard that David Frum was fired from his cushy job at the American Enterprise Institute, following an online column claiming that the passage of Obamacare was the GOP’s “Waterloo,” which could have been avoided if the GOP had been more willing to negotiate with Obama. Frum is now charging that AEI tossed him because it was responding to pressure from its donors, a charge eminent AEI scholar Charles Murray has denounced at National Review Online as “despicable,” since it is unsupported by evidence and is calculated to appeal to the leftist media....

March 27, 2010 Republican Elite In Disarray After David Frum Is Sacked By Think-Tank America’s conservatives were in open disarray yesterday after the abrupt sacking of a leading Republican for daring to blame his party for “the most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s”. David Frum, who coined the phrase “Axis of Evil” when he was a speechwriter for President Bush, was fired by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) after posting a column on his website that called healthcare reform a disaster for Republicans and blamed it squarely on their own refusal to compromise with the Obama Administration. The prominent...

With Mike Allen’s account of his exchange with David Frum, we apparently have David’s version of his departure from AEI: Donor pressure forced AEI president Arthur Brooks to fire him. “But the elite isn’t leading anymore,” David is quoted as saying. “It’s trapped. Partly because of the desperate economic situation in the country, what were once the leading institutions of conservatism are constrained. I think Arthur took no pleasure in this. I think he was embarrassed. I think he would have avoided it if he possibly could, but he couldn’t.” I have known and liked David and Danielle Frum for...

If Republicans succeed ... Rush's listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds."

The Right’s response to David Frum’s perceived heresies has inflicted serious intellectual and political damage on the conservative movement. I’m a full-spectrum conservative of conviction. But even if I leaned to the left, I still would find it laudatory that, in recent decades, political conservatives in America have been the most steadfast defenders of freedom of speech and the most vigorous champions of free and open intellectual inquiry. Indeed, no graduate of an American college or university in the past quarter century cannot help but notice that the biggest threat to free speech today comes not from the political Right,...

The working assumption is that they canned him for his “Waterloo” piece about ObamaCare and the GOP. Did they? Hmmm: Frum made clear in a letter to AEI President Arthur Brooks that his departure after seven years at the conservative think tank was not voluntary. “I have had many fruitful years at the American Enterprise Institute,” he wrote, “and I do regret this abrupt and unexpected conclusion of our relationship.” AEI did not comment immediately. In a brief interview, Frum said “there was no suggestion by AEI” that his sharp criticism of the GOP’s health-care strategy was the reason for...

The paid services of former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum are apparently no longer required at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Frum made headlines earlier in the week with his criticism of Republican leaders who he said had brought their party its

Three days after calling health-care reform a debacle for the Republicans, David Frum was forced out of his job at the American Enterprise Institute on Wednesday. The ouster also came one day after a harsh Wall Street Journal editorial about the former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, which said that he "now makes his living as the media's go-to basher of fellow Republicans" and accused him of "peddling bad revisionist history." Frum made clear in a letter to AEI President Arthur Brooks that his departure after seven years at the conservative think tank was not voluntary. "I have had...

Being reported by Huffington What took the think tank so long?

Dear Arthur, This will memorialize our conversation at lunch today. Effective immediately, my position as a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute is terminated. I appreciate the consideration that delays my emptying of my office until after my return from travel next week. Premises will be vacated no later than April 9. I have had many fruitful years at the American Enterprise Institute, and I do regret this abrupt and unexpected conclusion of our relationship. Very truly yours, David Frum

David Frum made headlines by branding Obamacare the Republicans’ Waterloo. Tunku Varadarajan on the rise of the ‘polite-company conservative’—and how Frum gets it all wrong.. Yesterday, I got an email from a prominent conservative academic; it was, I think, a touch harsh on the object of its attention. Here’s what it said: “Frum's pathetic, desperate whining reeks of self-loathing. At least that shows good judgment: I loathe him, too.” The Frum in question is David Frum, former speechwriter for George W. Bush, and the “whining” that so goaded my correspondent was a blog by David, written on the day the...

Bill O’Reilly had on his regular media analyst Bernie Goldberg last night to run down the media’s reaction (on both left and right) to the passing of the Health Care bill on Sunday, and echoed some of the same thoughts voiced by David Frum, the former speechwriter for George W. Bush, who made quite a stir yesterday in calling health care reform the GOP’s “Waterloo,” but a big win for the “conservative entertainment” business. Is this the beginning a more measured tone on right-of-center opinion media? Not likely. First some background: amidst the gnashing of teeth and roaring of terrible...

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum says it’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the GOP disaster. And he blames this “most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s” on conservatives and Republicans: At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994. Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with...