Free Republic

As my colleague Janet Daley notes, ConservativeHome USA has declared war on Sarah Palin, rounding up US conservatives who think she’d be a disaster as the next Republican presidential candidate. What I find strange, however, is the way it’s gone about it. In a piece signed by “The Editors”, ConHomeUSA has awarded anti-Palin Republicans the melodramatic title of “Truth Tellers”. And, rather bizarrely, it is recruiting for more: If you are a Truth Teller, or want to recommend a commentator who is, email us here. Don’t get me wrong. I think Sarah Palin is basically nuts, as I suggested when...

David Frum takes Sarah Palin to task for not being more public in her reaction to the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords, not being sufficiently empathetic, and not grasping the scope (no pun intended) of the accusations against her, What Palin Needed To Say After Giffords' Shooting: "Palin failed to appreciate the question being posed to her. That question was not: “Are you culpable for the shooting?” The question was: “Having put this unfortunate image on the record, can you respond to the shooting in a way that demonstrates your larger humanity? And possibly also your potential to serve as leader...

Stanley Kurtz on David Frum’s new effort to police political speech: Last week, the distinguished liberal thinker and activist William Galston, along with an equally distinguished conservative counterpart, David Frum, announced in the Washington Post the forthcoming founding of a new organization called “No Labels.” The stated aim of No Labels is to combat the “hyper-polarization” of American political debate by “calling out” politicians, media personalities, and opinion leaders who “recklessly demonize” opponents. Unfortunately, their announcement gives us reason to fear that No Labels will only increase the level of political acrimony by attempting to constrain debate, thereby exacerbating the...

With Kathleen Parker getting her own CNN show, David Frum is undoubtedly worried that he will be totally eclipsed among so-called conservatives with Palin Derangement Syndrome. So, in a little 59 word post portentously entitled, “Bigger Problems with Sarah Palin’s new book,” David Frum finds racism—yes, racism—in the following statement: PALIN FROM “AMERICA BY HEART”: “But from what I’ve read, family life at the time of the founding was a lot like family life for Americans today: full of challenges, sure, but also full of simple pleasures.” I’ll give you boilerplate, banality, throwaway, heartfelt cornpone… but racism? Really? Give up...

“A nightstick the size of a telephone pole and the muscle to wield it effortlessly.” Mike Huckabee, who knows a thing or two about insurgent campaigns, sees the power of the Palin candidacy. Taegan Goddard links this morning to the Des Moines Register: Mike Huckabee told the Des Moines Register that Sarah Palin would be a strong contender for president should she decide to run. Said Huckabee: “No question, she will be a very, very strong presence and force, if she gets in. You know, she may run away with it. And that’s one of those things everyone needs...

Admittedly, that David Frum is obsessed with Governor Palin isn't exactly a news bulletin, but Frum's Palin Derangement Syndrome (PDS) has reached a level of hysteria hitherto unseen. Frum, of course, is the faux armchair conservative who believes the path to Republican ascendancy is for us all to become Democrats. The thorough drubbing Democrats took at the hands of Republicans three weeks ago, most of whom ran on solidly conservative platforms, demonstrates just how wrong Frum is. But I digress. In the past three days, Frum has written no less than six posts on Governor Palin. Can you say obsession?...

One of the Times’ favorite putative conservatives, former Bush speechwriter and book author David Frum, has gotten a lot of play in the paper by criticizing conservatives for rejecting Obama-care and listening to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Now Frum has become the paper’s idea of a conservative idea man. Just like the paper’s occasionally-right-of-center David Brooks, he’s a “conservative” that Obama and the Times can tolerate -- the kind who is constantly criticizing his alleged fellow conservatives. The latest Times Sunday Magazine features an “Idea Lab” article by Frum, “Post-Tea-Party Nation,” illustrated with a drawing of a sleeping elephant....

I’m not going to go on at length about David Frum. We all know who he is; we all know what he is and what he represents. He’s a “conservative” who gets his jollies and press gigs railing at actual conservatives, along the lines of Kathleen Parker and, during the 2008 campaign, Peggy Noonan. Parker has gone on to CNN infamy alongside Eliot Spitzer, while Noonan has tried to rehab herself by claiming that the Tea Party saved the GOP. She’s right about that, but only from a rearview mirror perspective. It’s easy to get stuff right after it’s already...

Republican political strategist Mark McKinnon – veteran of McCain and Bush presidential campaigns – acknowledged in an interview with David Frum that a third-party presidential effort for 2012 was not far off, and hinted at his involvement in one. In the podcast interview, McKinnon, who was discussing his recent Daily Beast column “A Centrist Manifesto”, lamented that “there’s nobody that gets rewarded for bipartisan behavior, [and] in fact they get punished.” To that end, he said, “there is a very real possibility for a legitimate third party effort for 2012 … American voters are so hungry for more voice, and...

Conservatives need to understand what is at stake and get their act together. The misunderstandings revolving around Sarah Palin and the Tea Party appear to be ubiquitous. Canada, where I live and write, is no exception to this tarnished rule. Sarah Palin is generally regarded as a hyper-emotional hussy whose message is purely reactive rather than proactive, while the Tea Party is supposedly vitiated by a lowest common denominator of right-wing vehemence, unbecoming religiosity, and a simplistic attitude toward political reality. This is strangely the case among many conservative intellectuals as well. The acclaimed commentator and beltway insider David Frum,...

In 1958, an English sociologist and Labor Party politician named Michael Young imagined a future in which the British establishment dissolved itself, abolished all forms of hereditary power and created instead a meritocracy (a word Young invented) based on IQ. In Young’s fable, the academically talented from the working class happily join the elite. But the less-talented resent them even more than they did the old dukes and duchesses. By 2034, this resentment leads to a violent populist revolution that sweeps the meritocracy away. To some, this story has always seemed like a warning to America. In 1972, the American...

The Great Recession has done wonders for the Republican Party. Two years after being tossed out of power at every level, it's about to waltz right back in, kicking aside the corpses of Democrats foolish enough to go along with the designs of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. This is good news for most conservatives. It's slightly worse news for a smaller group of conservatives—namely, the ones who spent the end of the '00s explaining why a Republican comeback like this was not really possible. Take, for example, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, whose 2005 Weekly Standard cover story, "The...

As the public media focuses on the upcoming November elections for House and Senate, a brewing battle within the Republican caucus in the Senate has been largely overlooked. Many ways exist to describe the two sides of this internal civil war—“true” conservatives vs. “RINO” Republicans; extremists vs. pragmatists; new generation vs. dinosaurs. But, as is usual in politics, the battle may be embodied in two senators—Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. DeMint has successfully endorsed candidates, Tea Party and otherwise, opposed by “establishment” Republicans. In Kentucky, DeMint’s choice, Rand Paul, defeated the candidate endorsed by McConnell...

What’s Behind David Frum’s Attack on Dinesh d’Souza and Mr. Newt? Posted By Jeff Dunetz On September 16, 2010 Newt Gingrich stirred up a big of a controversy Friday night just by commenting on an article in Forbes Magazine by Dinesh D’Souza. The premise of the article is many of Obama’s positions were influenced by his dad. What then is Obama’s dream? We don’t have to speculate because the President tells us himself in his autobiography, Dreams from My Father. According to Obama, his dream is his father’s dream. Notice that his title is not Dreams of My Father but...

David Frum’s blog post connects his dismissal from AEI with Brink Lindsey’s and Will Wilkinson’s departures from Cato. In the post, Frum makes some important and well-articulated points about the GOP’s lack of direction and what a Republican majority could yield: We are likely soon to have a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, maybe the U.S. Senate too. And what will that majority do? The answer seems to be: They have not a clue. Unlike the Republican House and Senate majorities of 1994, unlike the Republican Senate majority of 1980, these new majorities will arrive with only slogans...

Soho Properties has paid some $5 million in cash to buy the Burlington Coat Factory building, a building that yields no income. They are paying rent to hold rights to the Con Ed building, which also yields no income. All of this in the midst of the worst commercial property slump in memory, in an area of New York with a very uncertain economic future. And these are not super-rich guys: Sharif el-Gamal lives in an Upper West Side apartment purchased in 2007 for $1 million. Click here to read what $1 million bought in Manhattan before the crash. You...

Since August 29, 2008, when Sarah Palin was first introduced as John McCain’s Vice Presidential choice of a running mate, reactions to Palin were and continue to be extreme. The extremity of Palin hatred started within hours of the announcement, as did the hideous rumors (about her son Trig for instance) that were passed from one leftist website to the next without one shred of evidence to back them up. The goal, simply put, was to destroy Sarah Palin by any means possible. Being as passionate as they always are, progressive bloggers, media pundits, leftist groups and even comedians started...

When Andrew Breitbart unveils a selectively edited tape to defame a federal employee, conservatives blame Barack Obama. You want to see media bias in action? Okay — look at the conservative media reaction to the firing of Shirley Sherrod. Sherrod is the former U.S. Department of Agriculture employee fired for supposed anti-white racism. On July 19, Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com website posted a short video clip from a speech Sherrod had delivered to an NAACP gathering in March. In the clip, Sherrod confessed to having deliberately declined on racial grounds to help a white farmer faced with a foreclosure on his...

David Frum has finally jumped the shark. Some conservative/right-of-center folks may have been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt before but playing the race card is something that is universally despised by conservative and moderates. Frum pulls the race card from the bottom of the deck against Governor Palin's new ad: Here’s Sarah Palin’s new ad. Lots of images of the former governor speaking to adoring crowds, meeting admirers, encountering women and children.... Republicans normally work hard to ensure that their ads feature non-white faces, to present an image of welcome and inclusion. In Palin’s ad --...

Frum frames the Tea Party activists as radical and angry people, which makes me believe that he most likely has never attended these events and never met the people who come to show their support for America. There is also a major disconnect in Frum’s reality of the liberal media and this movement. Contrary to Frum’s belief, the Tea Party has never been portrayed by the media as an unstoppable force. Actually, if anything, these gatherings that take place all over the country have been downplayed in every possible way.