A Country that No Longer Exists

From the March 8 issue of Newsweek, an excellent essay from David Frum called Why Rush is Wrong. Frum is apparently reviled among the hardened core of the GOP as a “RINO” (Republican in name only), despite the fact that he volunteered for Reagan, supported the impeachment of Bill Clinton, wrote speeches for GW Bush, and voted McCain/Palin. The reason for their ire? He refuses to join the dittoheads.

Frum describes Limbaugh as

A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence [...]

Of the GOP’s position at the moment, he says

At the peak of the Bush boom in 2007, the typical American worker was earning barely more after inflation than the typical American worker had earned in 2000. Out of those flat earnings, that worker was paying more for food, energy and out-of-pocket costs of health care. Political parties that do not deliver economic improvement for the typical person do not get reelected. We Republicans and conservatives were not delivering. The reasons for our failure are complex and controversial, but the consequences are not.

It’s a shame that more Republicans aren’t like Frum. He seems to be an entirely level-headed, contemplative and reasonable guy. Unlike virtually every other modern conservative of which I am aware, he went on for four pages without saying anything extreme, obscene, insane, or even objectionable. Of course, he’s dead wrong here and there, (particularly toward the end, where he dismisses the severity of the climate crisis and lets it slip that he harbors some delusions about the perceptions of the average voter) but overall, he’s, well, absofuckinglutely sensible.

After reading this bit of praise you might be surprised to learn that I found reading this essay almost unbearable. I arrived at the end of the essay despondent; here is a Republican with whom collaboration, compromise, and yes, even consensus are possible. But, seemingly, Frum one of very few.