What’s wrong with David Frum?

Last week, following passage of the Democrats’ much-hated healthcare bill, David Frum penned an article on his web site stating that Republicans and conservatives had suffered their “most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s”. The article went on to explain that the Republican Party had caved to its intransigent lunatic fringe headed by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and would prove to be the party’s undoing.

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Why? Because Frum insists that a lot of what’s in the bill is actually good and that Republican lawmakers should have made deals with the administration and compromised its principles in the interest of getting into the game. To my mind, that’s kind of like saying if rape is inevitable, then one might as well lie back and enjoy it. As I recall, when the Republicans did attempt to get into the game, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi weren’t particularly interested in anything they had to say. So much so, that in the end the healthcare monstrosity was devised behind closed doors by a small cabal of leftist lawmakers and fellow travelers and it was passed pretty much unread by the Democrats with no Republican support. This means they own the bill and its inevitably dire consequences. But Frum thinks passage with no Republican input was a huge strategic error on the part of the Republicans, citing that much of what was in the bill was akin to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts healthcare bill and had elements of ideas first floated by the Heritage Foundation in 1994. Problem is the Massachusetts healthcare program is nearing bankruptcy, as a bill that was initially calculated to cost some $400 million is now pushing $2 billion and is necessitating that state to juggle its revenue to keep the program afloat. And the Heritage Foundation never proposed forcing all Americans to purchase health insurance because it’s quite simply unconstitutional. But facts like these do not seem to deter Frum in urging Republicans to drink the Obama Kool Aid. Frum has long been an advocate of accommodating progress and his recipe for Republican ascendancy is to go with the flow and give in to ideas such as gay marriage, healthcare that’s imposed from the top down and financial controls that will gradually turn America into a planned economy. Frum is in favor of the incremental transformation of society, which differs from what Obama wants in only one respect: it ruins America at a slower pace. Prior to penning this article, Frum was a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Following publication of his article in various newspapers across the country, Frum was unceremoniously dumped from his post at AEI. AEI has been around since 1943 and is dedicated to “defending the principles and to improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and responsibility, vigilant and effective defense and foreign policies, political accountability and open debate”. Frum’s screed didn’t even bother paying lip service to these principles. Frum claims that this healthcare monstrosity will never be repealed, as repeal would mean a return to having insurance companies decline coverage for people with preexisting conditions and repeal would remove 26-year-old offspring from their parents’ policies. Be that as it may, it’s clear the bill is not economically sustainable, and at some point a decision will have to be made whether or not the US government can continue to borrow, tax and spend at its current rate. There’s no argument that healthcare in the US is badly in need of reform. The question is whether the government assuming control of 1/6 of the American economy is the right reform. Clearly, most Americans do not think so and the Republicans did the right thing in refusing to be party to the Obama’s wet dreams. As a conservative thinker David Frum is beginning to lose much of his credibility because what he advocates amounts to participating in the incremental transformation of America into a socialist entity. It’s ironic that socialism, having failed in pretty much every jurisdiction it has ever existed, is now attempting to take root in the United States. It’s even more ironic that one of conservatism’s great thinkers is urging conservatives and Republicans to participate in this transformation.