David Frum

With the recent defection of Arlen Specter and the entry of Charlie Crist into the Florida Senate race, much has been recently made of an alleged split between moderate and conservative Republicans.  While I think there's some truth to this argument, I also think it misses the point.  The problem is that "Republican Moderate" is such a broad category that it doesn't mean anything.

With that in mind, I want to differentiate between two types of Republican Moderates.  For the sake of clarity, I'm going to define them as the "Rudy Giuliani Moderates" and the "Arlen Specter Moderates."

Who are they?!?

Rudy Giuliani -- These are the Republicans who are Conservative on most issues and have a few issues where they legtimately disagree with the Republican base.  In Rudy's case, he's GREAT on National Security, the Economy, Health Care, Education, Crime, and a whole host of other issues.  At the same time, there are a few issues where Rudy differs from the GOP mainstream: Life, Gun Control, and Cross Dressing.

Moderates like Rudy are our friends.  When people talk about a big tent, that's fine.  We need to be inclusive of people who are with us on most of the issues even when they differ on a few.  Reagan said it best when he said: "My 80% friend is not my 20% enemy."

Recruiting candidates who fall into the Rudy Giuliani mold who are well suited to a particular district or state is a essential.  We can't be excessively doctriaire in who we recruit.

(Author's Note: John McCain, Lindsay Grahmnesty, Mark Kirk, and Sheriff Dave Reichart all fit into this category.)

That said, there's another type of "moderate" candidate we need to avoid like the plague.

Arlen Specter -- These are "Republicans" who find it politically expedient to run for office with an R after their name and are nothing more than gloified prostitutes seeking power and personal aggandizement.  While Specter was a respectable Judiciary commitee chairman and backed most of Reagan's defense buildup in the 1980's that's the only useful thing he's ever done in the United States Senate.  Otherwise, he's been a thorn in the side of Conservative reform for the past three decades.  Beyond his vote for Porkulus, Specter led the Smear Campaign against Judge Robert Bork, and he sold his soul to the trial lawyer lobby over the asbestos bailout.  Unlike the Giuliani style moderates, who actually care about Public Affairs, people like Arlen Specter are in Politics to increase their personal power and will do or say whatever it takes to make that happen.

Arlen Specter style prostitutes shred our credibility and dilute our message.

(Author's Note: George Pataki, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Colin Powell all fit into this category.)

As I said several months ago: Apostates are O.K.; Grandstanding RINO's are not.

Thoughts/Suggestions?!?

Cahnman out.

On Tuesday, David Frum wrote a column at NewMajority.com criticizing Pat Toomey and the Club for Growth for pushing Sen. Arlen Specter out of the Republican party. This was my response.

Mr. Frum,

With respect, I think you're wrong.

You are operating on the assumption that positioning on the ideological spectrum is the dominant factor in electoral sucess. If that were true then nominating a moderate conservative against a more extreme liberal would be an easy win for the GOP.

Yet Barack Obama is President.

Certainly, there are political extremes that are unacceptable to the vast majority of the electorate. Thankfully, neither David Duke nor William Ayres is electable. However, between those extremes I believe there is more ideological flexibility among voters than you realize.

Yes, there are hard core ideologues in both parties, but that does not describe the bulk of the electorate. For most voters ideology matters, but only to a limited degree. Voters also value a candidate (and a party) that rejects corruption, can competently govern, follows in office what was promised in campaigns, knows the principles it stands for and does not tolerate hypocrisy.

To demonstrate the relative importance of non-ideological factors in electoral success, as a thought experiment consider the following alternate history:

August 2003 - President Bush recognizes that his Iraq strategy is failing, fires Secretary Rumsfeld and embraces Gen. Patraeus' counter insurgency strategy.

January 2004 - Congressional Republicans appoint a panel of retired Federal Judges to investigate allegations of corruption within the GOP and mercilessly reject any found guilty.

September 2004 - Republicans adopt a unilateral ban on earmarks.

January 2005 - Congressional Republicans are unified and use reconciliation to pass a voluntary alternative flat tax and free market health care reform.

September 2006 - Republicans cut wasteful spending and set the country on a path to a balanced budget.

If this, however unlikely, had been the history of the last 8 years, would the GOP be in total collapse today? I think the only fair answer is no. Yet none of these actions would have been ideological shifts.

Within a broad ideological range, voters will support candidates, and a party, that are seen as standing for honesty, integrity, competence and vision. Primary challenges may move the party to the right, but on a deeper level they are an attempt to force the party to be true to its core beliefs.

A left wing President and Congress were elected not because of their ideology, but because they were trusted. If Republicans ever hope to regain that trust, putting principles above politics is a necessary first step.

I've stayed away from the Rush Limbaugh discussion since it seems the ultimate in Seinfeldian debates about nothing.

My overall sense is that the Frums and the Douthats of the world would be well served by staying away from this argument. As Ross himself has written, the grassroots needs elites -- and the elites need the grassroots. By trying to isolate Rush, the elites break down this elegant separation and veer into micromanaging the grassroots -- a losing proposition, particularly against a brand as sticky as Rush. By staging a power play against Rush, they also play into the Democrats' far-fetched notion that Rush is the GOP's leader -- an 11% proposition -- rather than letting him be as an entertainer and provocateur and popularizer of conservative ideas.

I missed Rush's CPAC address and watching it later on YouTube but was left wondering "What's the big f'ing deal here?" In content, the speech was no different than what Rush has been saying for the last 20 years. Why are we all reacting as if any of this is new? If Rush was going to damage the GOP, he would have done it by now. (In fact, the last time we had Rush in a situation like this, things didn't turn out so bad.)

It's one thing to reject spokespeople with neither egghead credentials nor talent, like Joe the Plumber, or those who are positively cringe-worthy, like Coulter. Rush belongs in neither of these categories. There is value in having provocative voices who know how to string two sentences together with arguments rooted in conservative ideas, not cultural pastiche. And though provocative and sometimes impolitic, Rush's arguments are usually calibrated and thought-out in their own way. Wanting Obama to fail from wrecking a country we all hope succeeds is not something a GOP politician should necessarily say, but is something Rush should be able to say from his perch outside the party. CPAC featured speakers who were still peddling the Obama-is-not-a-citizen nonsense to applause from the crowd. Let's distance ourselves those bumbling ignoramuses, not successful, well-honed voices like Rush.

There are few on the right who have thought more about where conservatism is and where it should be going than David Frum. Frum is a former Bush speechwriter, National Review writer, author and columnist. He just started a new blog called The New Majority which features a wide range of conservative opinion mixed with some nuts and bolts politics.

Along with Ross Douthat, Marc Ambinder, David Brooks, and a precious few other conservatives, Frum is looking deeply and seriously at conservatism's flaws, strengths, and perhaps most importantly and relevantly, how to translate conservative principles into actionable political ideas that can win elections and establish a sound basis for governance.

In short, Frum and his new blog will almost certainly be one of the focal points in the conservative movement for the foreseeable future - or at least, it should be. The New Majority is where ideology and practical politics will merge as various strains of conservatism wrestle with ways to become relevant in the Age of Obama.

That Age is well underway, having begun even before Obama was elected. There was nothing subtle about the media's clear preference in the November election, the consequences of which have yet to play out. The only thing certain is that to a degree not seen since the early 1960's, conservatism as an ideology is being dismissed by the political class as irrelevant. When politicians start running away from basic conservative principles and embrace the milquetoast center or center- left, including bailout mania and other manifestations of creeping statism, you know it's time to roll up your sleeves and get to work rebuilding a shattered conservative polity.

As I see it, there are several tracks to a conservative revival, all working toward the same goal but in strikingly different ways. You have the generalists like Frum and his cohorts who are seeking to infuse conservatism with new ideas and a new frame of reference for the old ones. Then there are the web gurus like Patrick Ruffini and his stalwart band at The Next Right who are trying to drag the Republican party and conservative movement into the 21st century by creating an army of connected, online activists. The libertarian conservatives have entered the fray with a new blog called The Secular Right which features a group of excellent writers and thinkers like Heather McDonald, Andrew Stuttaford, Walter Olsen, and National Review's John Derbyshire. Reason Magazine is a little more independent but still has some solid conservatives contributing.

We complain about the superficial, biased coverage of the MSM. We are justified in doing so. Thus, we must not succumb to the same trite discussion of why McCain is losing and where the GOP went wrong.

The answer, my friends, is not found in one person, wing of the Party, policy approach or tactic.  The reasons the "circular firing squad" now points to – inconsistent message, poor fundraising, inferior integration of new technology, even the President's low approval rating -- are symptoms of the disease, not the cause of it. 

The disease is complacency with the status quo and arrogance.  The same disease that caused Republicans to lose the majority in both houses in 2006.   Americans demand change. Duh.   

David Frum summarizes this well in The Week as reported by Politico:

In The Week, former Bush speechwriter David Frum wrote of McCain's travails in a way that seemed to take defeat for granted and warned the GOP faces a long road back. "That's not a failure of campaign tactics. It's not even a failure of strategy. It's a failure of the Republican Party and conservative movement to adapt to the times."

The Republican Party must heed this quote in the coming months: If you don't change, you won't change.  

If the Republican Party doesn't re-establish a core set of principles that address the issues the majority of Americans care about, we will continue to lose support.  If we don't understand that raising money is not the most important function of a campaign or political organization, we will continue to raise less than our leftist counterparts.  If we don't stop holding ourselves hostage to an entrenched consultant class, we only have ourselves to blame.  If we don't set specific goals and make investments in new media and political technology training, we will continue to cede grassroots dominance to our political opponents.  And if we don't start listening to the American people, and addressing their concerns, rather than pursuing our own agenda, we will continue to be unpopular.

Election Day is one week away.  No matter the specific Republican vote count for President or seat count in the House and Senate, it will be time to finally admit that the status quo is not working; it will be time to democratize the Republican Party, to rewrite the playbook; it will be time rebuild.

It will be time to stop throwing blame around, and for every Republican official, candidate, staffer and consultant to open their eyes and ears to a new approach.

As someone who has advocated a new approach to the Republican Party for the last four years, I look forward to a more open, inclusive discussion about the way forward.  Meanwhile, I look forward to your input here.

In tomorrow's WaPo, (10/26/08) conservative David Frum, resident fellow at the  American Enterprise Institute, argues that funding should be pulled from the disastrous McCain/Palin campaign and redirected to try to salvage Senate and House seats. First, the failed Hate Talk Express:

So in August, McCain tried a bold new gambit: He would reach out to independents and women with an exciting and unexpected vice presidential choice.

That didn't work out so well either. Gov. Sarah Palin connected with neither independents nor women. She did, however, ignite the Republican base, which has come to support her passionately. And so, in this last month, the McCain campaign hasPalinized itself to make the most of its last asset. To fire up the Republican base, the McCain team has hit at Barack Obama as an alien, a radical and a socialist.

Frum's suggestions:

What should Republicans be doing differently? Two things:

1. Every available dollar that can be shifted to a senatorial campaign must be shifted to a senatorial campaign. Right now, we are investing heavily in Pennsylvania in hopes of corralling those fabled "Hillary Democrats" for McCain. But McCain's hopes in Pennsylvania are delusive: The state went for Kerry in 2004, Gore in 2000 and Clinton in 1992 and 1996, and McCain lags Obama by a dozen points in recent polls. But even if we were somehow to take the state, that victory would not compensate for the likely loss of Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and other states tipped to the Democrats by demographic changes and the mortgage crisis. The "win Pennsylvania and win the nation" strategy may have looked plausible in August and September, when McCain trailed Obama by just a few digits. Now it looks far-fetched.

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2. We need a message change that frankly acknowledges that the Democrats are probably going to win the White House -- and that warns of the dangers of one-party, left-wing government.

Right. Because David Frum has been screaming about the dangers of one-party government for.... never.

Read the whole thing when you get a moment.