David Frum against the Republican View

The Republican view of the world is not as uniform and united as Republicans would have us believe. Indeed, Bruce Bartlett, who was a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan, and was a Treasury official under George H. W. Bush, proves the point quite eloquently, simply with his track record. This is a man who has served his country well and intelligently, who clearly holds certain conservative ideas, but does not necessarily endorse the monolithic Republican view which is controlled by the party’s leaders. He disagreed with several of the policies of George W. Bush, and wrote a book, Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. The book criticizes Bush’s policies, and his faux-conservatism, which was really just a way to obtain more votes in an election. Bartlett, then, is a would-be Republican who has remained apart from the party, because he does not share the general Republican views on many issues. His falling out with the Republicans took place in 2006, when the book came out.

Now, there is someone else to join him as a thinking Republican who simply did not share the official Republican view of matters, and therefore was cast out. David Frum, a Canadian American conservative journalist and former employee of the American Enterprise Institute, was recently fired from there. Bartlett has commented that he believes the reason to be linked quite strongly to David Frum’s Waterloo post on his blog, www.frumforum.com. In his post, David Frum commented on the recent passing of the health care bill, and why it was such a huge blow to conservatives and Republicans. Specfically, Frum says, “A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.” Needless to say, this is a huge departure from the standard Republican view of the health care bill and its success. Most vocal Republicans have been commenting that the bill will do very little good, and will even come to doom America’s economy even further, both claims which can be borne out over time. The idea that Republicans themselves are to blame for the health care bill’s success is most certainly not a part of the Republican view. Frum goes on to blame the most vocal and racial members of the party for the passing of the bill, without any kind of alignment with conservative ideals that could have made the bill much more acceptable to Republicans.

Shortly after posting this article, Frum was fired from AEI. It’s unclear, even to him, if he was fired for writing the article, although the timeframe would seem to suggest it. Indeed, most of the facts seem to lend credence to the position that Frum was fired for having shirked the Republican view and expressed a differing opinion, one which the Republican Party leadership did not want their voters to hear. It is sad, not least because Frum clearly supports Republican and conservative ideals. The fact that even such a prominent Republican as he could be punished for having voiced any kind of disagreement with the Republican view of the world simply bodes more ill for the Republican party in general.