one of the few smart voices among republicans over the last couple of weeks was former bush speech writer and american enterprise institute fellow david frum. in his now famous blog entry called waterloo frum argues that the health care reform vote or better republican’s consistent “no” would not be seen as a win for republicans but rather as their waterloo:
Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.
Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views? To finance it without redistributive taxes on productive enterprise – without weighing so heavily on small business – without expanding Medicaid? Too late now. They are all the law.
he makes the more than valid point that republicans should have engaged in the debate rather then be the opposition of “no”. well now, just a couple of days after the vote and the blog frum is no longer with the american enterprise institute:
Mr. Frum said he was taken out to lunch by the president of the organization, Arthur C. Brooks. He said Mr. Brooks told him the institute valued a diversity of opinion, and welcomed that one of its scholars had become such a high-profile critic of Republican legislative leaders. Mr. Frum, who has been with the institute since 2003, said that he was asked if he would considering being associated with the institute on a nonsalaried basis.
the AEI so far seems to argue that this has nothing to do with the waterloo arguments. and to a degree they might be right. it might not be the argument mentioned above from his column that did him in, but this section of the same waterloo blog entry:
There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?
after all, you do not mess with fox news. makes one wonder if fox news and limbough (btw, has he moved yet?) pulled some strings here because they felt unhappy about being singled out.
for conservatives, and the republican party this is bad news. because they seem to have a problem with smart people within their ranks. i just finished reading a piece at ordinary gentlemen about the problems of the republican party, and the story points out:
Republicans and conservatives may have experienced a euphoric taste of resurgent popularity and shot of life with the emergence of charismatic and defiant personages like Sarah Palin and the win of Senator Scott Brown over what is broadly understood to be the dismal candidate of Martha Coakley. But the long term demographics line up squarely against Republicans and their conservative base and they have for some time.
and for more detail, here is the gallup poll graph that should be the most worrying for republicans and maybe even more so conservatives, because they might lose their home in the republican party. look at that first bar … that is a reduction in college grad americans moving away from the republican party. of all the demographics, that is the one with the largest negative jump. now long term this is also the demographic that engages in politics, that has money to give to causes … so while i don’t want to ring the death bell for the GOP here this data is serious. and for the conservative groups to trample on their few intellectual leaders that they have left (like frum and last year buckley) is dangerous. yes, palin is a crowd pleaser and fox news is a loud mouthpiece, but they will alienate the american center, and without the center the republicans have no chance of winning elections.
republicans are always talking about reagan, but i have to say that i doubt that he would have liked this movement of the GOP. after all while not the brightest guy in the room, he knew he needed bright people around him, and this didn’t just mean that he needed bright yes men (and women) like bush, but people with an opinion. following in the step of bush, the GOP seems to now move towards getting rid of any dissent in their lines, mostly driven by fox and other so called conservative loud mouths.