I can’t do enough to recommend this Ross Douthat blog post about the David Frum-William Voegeli exchange over at the Claremont Review of Books. Douthat agrees with Voegeli that it is a good (and necessary) thing that Republicans followed Paul Ryan in embracing premium support Medicare because “absent a commitment to entitlement reform, there can be no fiscal conservatism
worthy of the name.” Douthat agrees with Frum that (and this is Douthat talking):
The Republican Party needs a plan to prevent entitlements from swallowing the American economy, but the evidence of 2012 suggests that it also needs what any successful political party tends to need — namely, realistic policy responses to the problems that loom largest in Americans’ everyday lives right now. These responses should be consonant with limited-government conservatism… There’s more to public policy than fiscal roadmaps, and it should be possible to correct America’s fiscal course while also displaying policy imagination on questions like work-life balance, health care access and affordability, the cost of college, social mobility, and so forth.
That is great so far, but let’s keep in mind that the modernization Frum specifically has in mind is not only undesirable, is also backward-looking. Here is Frum posting a college newspaper’s account of Frum’s recent visit with Georgetown University’s College Republicans:
Frum said. “It’s just a matter of time.” He went on to say that the Republican presidential candidate in 2024 will undoubtedly be “pro-gay marriage,” “pro-environment,” and “pro-gun control.” Frum views his role in this process of change as being the one who could potentially speed it up, so that the Republicans “modernize” their positions before 2024… As an example, he suggested that the best policy to implement the principle that abortion should be avoided is not to ban abortion in as many cases as possible but to examine the social factors that lead to abortions, in order to see if those can be corrected.”
The phrasing “pro-environment” does a lot of the work here, but we’ve already seen a more conservative-sounding version of the Republican politics that Frum is offering. It was the Schwarzenegger administration. We can see the benefits of Schwarzenegger’s policies and political strategy when we look at the condition of California’s state government and the health of the California Republican party.
February 27th, 2013 | 10:31 pm
Those comments display a shameful spirit. Even if I were a pro all-those-things Republican, I would be find them so.
February 27th, 2013 | 11:37 pm
The GOP, by all standards, will soon enough, be just as corrupt as the commie-Dems. What a perverted society we will, then, have. We need a republican party, very badly.
February 28th, 2013 | 12:03 am
[...] The New York Review. William Voegeli is a leading conservative policy analyst, while David …Back To The Future: David Frum's 2024 Happened In 2003First Things (blog)all 3 news [...]
February 28th, 2013 | 8:45 am
Who could take Frum seriously? He jumped the shark big-time when he explained that S. Palin was irresponsible because he didn’t encourage her daughter to have an abortion because the baby would get in the way of her education.
February 28th, 2013 | 9:11 am
Chronological snobbery is not my highest ideological priority.
February 28th, 2013 | 10:20 am
Speaking of idiotic GOPers who can’t miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, I see Jack Lew was easily confirmed yesterday. Pathetic. What a stupid, stupid thing to do.
February 28th, 2013 | 12:56 pm
I agree that Frum has jumped the shark with his compulsive flattery and defense of the Establishment Left (even when he disagrees with them on policy specifics) and embrace of the Leftist position on almost all social issues. (Apparently, it has worked for him as a career move – we all have to make a living.) However, he can still be interesting when he discusses issues on which he still has the courage to depart from the bipartisan elite consensus/orthodoxy (as on immigration and Israel).
I think Frum would respond to Pete’s comparison of his agenda to the Schwarzenegger administration by pointing out that the demographics are so bad for the GOP in CA that Arnold was doomed to failure. He would argue, I think, that a similar agenda would be viable in other states that, demographically, more resemble the country as it was in the 70s. BTW, I an NOT saying that this is my view.
February 28th, 2013 | 7:20 pm
djf, you’re right that Frum on Israel and immigration is pretty much right there with the modal self-described conservative Republican. As for what your Frum might say (and I think it is a good try…
“I think, that a similar agenda would be viable in other states that, demographically, more resemble the country as it was in the 70s”
Well so it the agenda of Scott Walker and Mitch Daniels and if a Frum agenda isn’t necessary, why go for it one finds it undesirable – especially when it failed as both politics and policy where it has been tried. If it can’t work in California in the last decade, there is no reason to think it would work in the America of next (I know you weren’t stating your own views.)
March 1st, 2013 | 1:54 am
California is a bad example, would a candidate who took a hard-line on select social issues, but maybe bucked the GOP orthodoxy on economics, do better than Schwarzenegger in an upcoming election? no (although if you include the death penalty and marijuana in terms of social issues, there’s a small conservative majority there, i.e. Democrats who still hold to “old” positions on those. maybe not pot anymore though.) unless conditions are optimal and people hate the Democrats running the state enough, which currently isn’t the case with Brown.
not to go all Obamaite but this is a false choice. there are certain things in deep-blue states that are gonna cut against you currently if you embrace them, period, but establishment conventional wisdom seems to be that somehow just embracing the Democratic position on them inoculates you against everything else. take Meg Whitman for example, they played the Romney card pretty well against her.
Frum wants it to be framed as respectable, moderate businessmen Republicans vs. frothing-at-the-mouth Tea Partiers, when the former loses for different reasons. you can’t beat a committed ideology with nothing.
March 1st, 2013 | 10:06 am
[...] that Republicans followed Paul Ryan in embracing premium support Medicare because “absent …read more Source: Postmodern [...]
March 1st, 2013 | 2:24 pm
Frum’s statement that the future GOP he envisions will be “pro-environment” reveals that he accepts the Left’s definition of what it means to be “pro-environment.”
March 1st, 2013 | 6:39 pm
Apparently, he sees the future envisioned by the Left as inevitable. We might as well go along, if he’s right; we should all be defining deviancy down, or rather, we have no right to be defining deviancy.
Here we’ve been talking about moral principles, which only get in the way of political success, like unplanned children.
God help us!
That’s the wrong attitude, as well, isn’t it?
March 1st, 2013 | 7:44 pm
“California is a bad example, would a candidate who took a hard-line on select social issues, but maybe bucked the GOP orthodoxy on economics, do better than Schwarzenegger in an upcoming election? no.” Socially moderate-to-liberal Republican governors were able to win and govern effectively in MA in the 1990s. They had an attractive and reformist conservative agenda. Schwarzenegger had cap-and-trade. And if Frum’s ideas don’t work in the American future that is California (I know I’m exaggerating), then what is his point?
DJF, that is correct?
Kate, Frum is pretty opportunistic in his determinism. Where social liberalism agree with him, then it is the inevitable future. When it doesn’t (drug legalization, women in the combat arms), then he drags anchor against the tide of public opinion.
March 2nd, 2013 | 11:45 am
Pete,
I assume you’re aware that the comment you’re responding to is not mine, but JDP’s.
To answer your question, the sort of moderate “reformist” Republicans that had a run of some success in Massachusetts (I think that Christie is a more colorful example of the same type; Pataki was another, at the beginning – before he became indistinguishable from the Dems) were able to pull it off because, in the context of state politics, they were able to avoid the polarizing social issues that are unavoidable in national politics – those issues are not really issues anymore in NY, NJ, and New England. I don’t think you can point to these northeastern “reformist” Republican governors as real conservatives (as Walker and Daniels are/were) that disprove Frum’s thesis that the GOP has to move left. Of course, any success these governors had was personal, did not translate into a strengthened Republican Party, and was not sustainable. I suspect that Christie’s success in NJ will prove to be ephemeral, too.
As I recall – and I neither live in CA nor follow its politics closely – Schwarzenegger started out as a genuine “reformist” Republicans on fiscal and regulatory issues (although not really a genuine conservative) but screwed up badly by running too many referenda at once, lost on all of them, and subsequently gave up the fight and joined the enemy (to whom he was married in any event).
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