Angry Politics Won't Save the GOP

Written by David Frum on Friday October 2, 2009

David Horowitz sees a national majority in Palin’s politics of cultural grievance and the paranoid alienation Glenn Beck offers his viewers. But the wild, extreme and sometimes racially tinged talk we hear from the most visible personalities on the right also keeps other voters that conservatives need away.
The final round of my debate with David Horowitz about Glenn Beck and the future of the Republican party appears on Frontpage.
Some excerpts:
FRUM: You think that conservatives lose when they are insufficiently vocal, insufficiently confrontational, insufficiently mobilized.  You see a national majority in Palin’s politics of cultural grievance, and the paranoid alienation Beck offers his Fox television audience. But the evidence is against you on all counts. Angry protest politics did not work for the Left in the 1960s. Angry protest politics will not work for the right in the 2000s. That’s not to deny the importance of this bloc of voters or the significance of their concerns. Rather, I’m saying that we have to join this bloc to the other blocs conservatives also need – married women, the educated, upwardly mobile immigrants. The wild, extreme and sometimes racially tinged talk we unfortunately hear from the most visible personalities on the right is detrimental to this effort.
HOROWITZ: I think Republicans generally want a fighter. You can be a centrist and a fighter. Why not? But in the first nine months of the Obama Administration, it is Palin who has set the standard in facing down the Left. You say that angry protests did not work for the Left during the 60s. Are you forgetting that our angry protests were aimed at the Democrats and that by destroying the Democrats we elected Reagan governor of California, and Nixon president in 1968? Psychotic anger worked for the Democrats in 2006 and 2008 and brought them victories in Congress and the White House. What can you be thinking?
You can read the whole exchange here. Parts 1 & 2 appear here and here.
Category: News