David Frum is NOT 'Polite'

Calling Mr. Frum elitist from the pages of Tina Brown’s Daily Beast is like calling members of the Harvard Club “elitist” from the Yale Club.

I am following the command of Anne Applebaum whose writings on the communists had me at, “hello.”  That, surrounded by journalistic squishes, she has married Radek Sikorski, who if bleary memory serves used to drink at Childe Harolds with other anti-communists back in the 80’s and is now a comer in Polish politics, does not hurt.  She commented on Tunko Vardajarians’ article at the Daily Beast wherein he claims Mr. Frum wants to be a “polite society” conservative. I admire Mr. Vardajarian and his opinion on the “Waterloo” piece substantively mirrored mine, but calling Mr. Frum elitist and a seeker after hip, establishment favor from the pages of Tina Brown’s Daily Beast is like calling members of the Harvard Club “elitist” from the Yale Club.

I believe I hold down the unreconstructed right-wing of FrumForum.  I am a full spectrum conservative and do not hold with Obamacare, abortion on demand, appeasement abroad or same sex marriage at home.  I approve of the Constitution and all the amendments except XVI-XVIII, and, during the Presidency of William Jefferson Clinton entertained grave doubts on the XIX.  I liked Sarah Palin as Veep Nominee.  I have all of Mark Levin’s books except the one about the dog.

I state these bona fides to say that David Frum is not fit for Polite Society.  He has not left the Republican Party but works to expand its reach.  Unlike some held up as models of conservatism he has not abandoned democratic allies abroad, be they Israel, Taiwan, Honduras or South Korea.  Mr. Frum has never appeared in a major motion picture.  He does not trash George W. Bush but critiques policy failures of the administration.

Crucially, David Frum was the first conservative I know who sounded the alarm bells on Harriet Miers.  On this he was right and I was wrong.  Had he not sounded the claxon early and often we might not have both Roberts and Alito.  That opposition was decried as elitist and ill-judged early on but it was perspicacious.  On that single judgment he has done more to preserve America as conservative than any other current political commentator except Rush Limbaugh.

David Frum has come to believe that American has irreversibly changed, particularly on social issues, but also on attitudes on social spending.  The Republican Party in 2006-2008 was obliterated.  That is the sole reason we now have Obamacare.  Asking why is not apostasy.  The raw, populist, book larn’n shy mass of American popular opinion is unhelpful in Mr. Frum’s view to both governance and a Republican majority.  I believe differently, but this is not a view foreign to the historic Republican Party or to conservatism.  Decrying it as status seeking and elitist while munching down on a Tina Brown supplied canapé, however, is just bad form.