Another Triumph for the Club for Growth
With Arlen Specter's defection, all that stands between the Democrats and a 60-seat Senate majority are Norman Coleman's lawyers. I wish them every success -- but they have not exactly been on a winning streak to date.
Which means that Democrats won't need to resort to unorthodox tactics to push, say, their healthcare bill through Congress. They'll have the votes.
If the Democrats do succeed in pushing through national health insurance, they really should set aside a little extra money to erect a statue to Pat Toomey. They couldn't have done it without him!
Pat Toomey is of course the former president of the Club for Growth who planned to challenge Arlen Specter in the 2010 Pennsylvania Republican primary. Polls showed Toomey well ahead -- not because he is so hugely popular in the state, but because the Pennsylvania GOP has shriveled to a small, ideologically intense core. Toomey now looks likely to gain the nomination he has sought -- and then to be crushed by Specter or some other Democrat next November.
The Specter defection is too severe a catastrophe to qualify as a "wake-up call." His defection is the thing we needed the wake-up call to warn us against! For a long time, the loudest and most powerful voices in the conservative world have told us that people like Specter aren't real Republicans -- that they don't belong in the party. Now he's gone, and with him the last Republican leverage within any of the elected branches of government.
For years, many in the conservative world have wished for an ideologically purer GOP. Their wish has been granted. Happy?
Let's take this moment to nail some colors to the mast. I submit it is better for conservatives to have 60% sway within a majority party than to have 100% control of a minority party. And until and unless there is an honored place made in the Republican party for people who think like Arlen Specter, we will remain a minority party.
This post originally appeared on NewMajority.com.
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. Not only the so-called prosperity of the past years was highly unequally shared, but it was not even real, as the income and profits of the good years are now dwarfed by the losses of today. Arguments about growth need to be dismissed by a reference to the "full cycle," i.e. the prosperity of the recent past can only be accepted as real if it wasn't a capture of the prosperity of today and the near future. If the forthcoming growth and GDP numbers are dismal, this should be seen as a direct proof that the growth of the past was nothing but, and that the policy prescriptions focused on financial profit are abject failures.
"Exponential economic growth required by the mathematics of compound interest on a money supply based on money as debt must always run up eventually against the finite nature of Earth’s resources."6
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10589
I enjoyed reading your article Mr. Frum and agree with your assertions. In fact, I think you have one of the brightest, pragmatic minds on either side of the political aisle.
Frum is like the Cassandra of his party. I can't imagine how frustrating it must be and I'm sure the radical right has given him nothing but grief. I remember being a kid and thinking George H.W. was so presidential and Republicans were the party of efficency. Gulf 1 was carried out so well and the Bush's seemed like a classy family. Republicans have really lost the narrative big time. When I hear republican, all that comes to mind now is gun totting militia men clad in flannel shirts, swilling Coors light as they harass minorities as "illegals" or "terrorists," not exactly a likable picture.
Tell that to all the Middle Class men who have lost jobs to them and have seen their working class neighborhoods turned into barrios.
David Frum himself is waking up a little late. Where was he all the years? He did not speak up to put distance between all the extremists like Falwell, Robertson, Limbaugh and all the others, as long as they helped to win the votes it was fine. They did not hijack the party over night.
You know that the GOP has completely fallen off the rails when David Frum seems like a voice of reason.
Well, Frum has certainly found his niche.
Win at all costs. Specter is the poster boy.
David: Why don't you pretend that the Conservative "New Majority" stands for the exact same things that Obama does.
Immediate Victory! We're Back!
As incompetent as they were at so many levels, the Bush administration at least could see the future political landscape, and were trying to modernize the Republican Party. The attempts by the Bush admin at Immigration Reform were really an effort to gain support from a growing Hispanic population. The problem was, the Bush admin could not control the far-right ideologues (mainly on TV and radio) who screamed about "amnesty" and killed the bill. The Bush administration saw the future, but the rest of the Party refused to join that future.
Even on the gay marriage issue, the smarter members of the Republican Party can see that issue hurting them in the longterm, but the ideologues refuse to moderate their anti-gay rhetoric.
In other words, the Republicans couldn't control their angry, radical fringe. That fringe became so powerful, it now runs their whole Party.
Well said. And now the Republican drifts on to oblivion.
Rush, Sean, Dick, and Glen, you are not helping!
The fringe they courted and nurtured for years. It grew into a monster, and is currently out of control.
The GOP is reaping the rewards of its divisive, polarizing, and vitriol-filled efforts to bend America to its ideologies. Diversity, multiculturalism and tolerance are dirty words to this bunch of CINO's (Christians in Name Only).
Their only hope for any sort of comeback, has been wishing and literally praying for President Obama and the Democratic majority to fail in their efforts to fix the mess GWB left us- while sabotaging their efforts as much as possible. If they had any actual morals that extend beyond the desire for power, they would stop their unpatriotic, downright seditious behavior, and consider the fact that our country has a deep mess to dig its way out of.
Bravo! Excellent post!
There are three parties now.
The dems, the true republicans (a disappearing breed) and the religious right.
I don't agree much with the republicans but we do need a competent, intelligent, other side of the argument party and the religious far right is neither.
I don't know whether to send money to the Club for Growth with a note saying "Please continue to purge the party of communists like Specter" or to send money to Specter's campaign ! Maybe I'll do both.
I think the Club for Growth ought to consider a name change. They seem to be bent on shrinking the Republican Party to a regional party that may be ideologically pure, but one that is also unable to put up viable candidates in general elections. "Growth" doesn't appear to be part of their mission.
Now, we Democrats might be more accepting of moderate (and even conservative) members of their party, but I think we would do well to actually listen to them from time to time. The reason is that if there were any room for a new political party, it will be somewhere in the center, comprised of moderate Democrats and Republicans who are dissatisfied with the extremes of their parties, and also of independents looking for a viable candidate of their own. If trends continue as they are, that might be the only way that anyone provides a serious alternative candidate to President Obama, because as polling indicates, Mike Huckabee is the only one who comes close, and he still loses by seven points in the latest poll.
Bush speechwriter says "The Specter defection is too severe a catastrophe to qualify as a "wake-up call." His defection is the thing we needed the wake-up call to warn us against!", and comment section notes that Frum himself was part of the problem. Frum Russia With Love is not a Bond flick, Comrade Frum!
The Club for Growth is the tattered remnant of the old Federalist Party of John Adams -- angry, authoritarian, convinced of their entitlement to privileges not enjoyed by the hoi polloi, and hell-bent on twisting the government, taxation, and social/economic policies to their sole advantage. They are among those charlatans who caused the current economic mess with their frauds, thefts and rapine of the financial system.. Anything they're for, all thinking citizens should stand against. These free-booters, rather than communists/socialists, are the real enemies of the people.
You are absolutely correct. The GOP is a sinking ship that's talking s h i t as they are slowly going under. Specter abandoned that ship and swam to a raft of people calling for him to jump and they will help him to safety and security. The sinking ship crew wanted everybody to be brave and "go down with the ship" because either you're with them or you're not! However, isn't the captain the only one who's supposed to go down with his ship?
That just goes to show that intelligent people know "which way is up".
Frum, you were a speechwriter for Bush so you helped sew some of the seeds that have led to the catastrophe your party faces, make no mistake about that. It's interesting how you all of a sudden want your party to wear its moderate hat when you helped your president feed his right wing extremists with his illegal war and your "axis of evil" nonsense, very interesting.
That said, here's some free advice: encourage your party to go seek Republicans with a spine, some who won't cowtow to Rush Limbaugh at every turn. We had Dean to be our spine when most Dems were giving Bush everything he wanted. You need to find Repubs who are conservative but not racist, strong but not condescending, and who aren't afraid to call a spade a spade ie someone who will admit that Bush was the worst thing to ever happen both to your party and this country. If you can find conservatives like that (hint: they shouldn't all be White either), your party might have a fighting chance. But that's a big IF.
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