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One helluva good read from David Frum. No doubt it won't be received well by this group, but it needs to be said.

The section on FoxNews and the conservative media is especially damning and dead-on accurate:

Extremism and conflict make for bad politics but great TV. Over the past two decades, conservatism has evolved from a political philosophy into a market segment. An industry has grown up to serve that segment and its stars have become the true thought leaders of the conservative world. The business model of the conservative media is built on two elements: provoking the audience into a fever of indignation (to keep them watching) and fomenting mistrust of all other information sources (so that they never change the channel). As a commercial proposition, this model has worked brilliantly in the Obama era. As journalism, not so much. As a tool of political mobilization, it backfires, by inciting followers to the point at which they force leaders into confrontations where everybody loses, like the summertime showdown over the debt ceiling.

But the thought leaders on talk radio and Fox do more than shape opinion. Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics. Outside this alternative reality, the United States is a country dominated by a strong Christian religiosity. Within it, Christians are a persecuted minority. Outside the system, President Obama whatever his policy errors is a figure of imposing intellect and dignity. Within the system, he�s a pitiful nothing, unable to speak without a teleprompter, an affirmative-action phony doomed to inevitable defeat. Outside the system, social scientists worry that the U.S. is hardening into one of the most rigid class societies in the Western world, in which the children of the poor have less chance of escape than in France, Germany, or even England. Inside the system, the U.S. remains (to borrow the words of Senator Marco Rubio) the only place in the world where it doesn�t matter who your parents were or where you came from.

We used to say "You�re entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts." Now we are all entitled to our own facts, and conservative media use this right to immerse their audience in a total environment of pseudo-facts and pretend information
.
Absolute BS.
Originally Posted by fish head
Absolute BS.
For sure.
Writing an article claiming reality is propaganda and opinion is truth is... well... propaganda.

Kent
A body would have to suffer a severe case of recto-cranial inversion to believe that.
Frum is a RINO/Wannabe Liberal that the liberal outlets label a conservative and cram his opinion down peoples throats as being the voice of the actual conservatives.
The GOP is a joke and Fox News is mostly neocon propaganda.

Great marketing but I'm continually amazed that the cattle still eat it up like it's some bastion of truth and conservatism.
You mean sorta like the "KoolAid" drunk by liberal Democrats? Appears you have had a heaping helping.
Oruacat2: Are you a cat?
For you to give any creedence what so ever (re-posting it!) to this bit of leftist propoganda is a damning testimonial to your intellect.
Of which I now assume you have NONE!
The GOP is 1,000 times MORE reality based than ANY other political party in the United States today!
AND... I see 100 times more truthful interpretaion and commentary on what few "conservative media" there are, than when I force myself to watch the much more populaced "liberal media" - like someone else posted "get your head out of YOUR ass".
This is NOT a "good read" as you describe but is simply worthless tripe and propoganda for the leftist MSM!
YOU should be ashamed of yourself.
Sheesh.
But... you ARE right about one tiny bit of your worthless posting - the post you made was NOT received well at all by me - I hold your posting in the same contemptuous category as lawn fudge in my waffle stompers.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy
I am NOT going to waste the time to read the whole Frum piece, but it is for certain that oruacat2 has fallen into his/her own false reality by accepting the excerpted baloney copied into here.

On one hand, I see no convincing evidence that there is a concise form of GOP at this time, and some real shaping up needs to take place in the coming months - with appropriate inclusion of some important conservative values along with practical approaches to the mega-mess over which Obama has presided. On the other hand, anyone who attempts to present a reality that Obama is seen as a "figure of imposing intellect and dignity" by any sensible audience is whistling in the graveyard. No cross-section of my numerous intelligent contacts - domestic and abroad - views Obama as such, nor do they see the US populace "hardening" socially as stated. Yes, foreigners and liberal domestics see our problems and are concerned about paths to be taken and the effects upon them

In the case of the politicians who are trying to figure out how to win their points and stay in office - that's another matter. Clearly, oruacat2is frightened by the clout of the conservative media and, no doubt, dumbfounded by the ineffectiveness of the intentional liberal bias of the other big media. But, this Frum ploy is a joke in the face of some serious matters.
I couldn't really follow the logic of the article, but if he is trying to say Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram, and the other Fox pundits, are neo-cons and a joke . . . then yes I agree. The only person worth listening to is Rush.
Originally Posted by oruacat2
One helluva good read from David Frum. No doubt it won't be received well by this group, but it needs to be said.

The section on FoxNews and the conservative media is especially damning and dead-on accurate:

Extremism and conflict make for bad politics but great TV. Over the past two decades, conservatism has evolved from a political philosophy into a market segment. An industry has grown up to serve that segment and its stars have become the true thought leaders of the conservative world. The business model of the conservative media is built on two elements: provoking the audience into a fever of indignation (to keep them watching) and fomenting mistrust of all other information sources (so that they never change the channel). As a commercial proposition, this model has worked brilliantly in the Obama era. As journalism, not so much. As a tool of political mobilization, it backfires, by inciting followers to the point at which they force leaders into confrontations where everybody loses, like the summertime showdown over the debt ceiling.

But the thought leaders on talk radio and Fox do more than shape opinion. Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics. Outside this alternative reality, the United States is a country dominated by a strong Christian religiosity. Within it, Christians are a persecuted minority. Outside the system, President Obama whatever his policy errors is a figure of imposing intellect and dignity. Within the system, he�s a pitiful nothing, unable to speak without a teleprompter, an affirmative-action phony doomed to inevitable defeat. Outside the system, social scientists worry that the U.S. is hardening into one of the most rigid class societies in the Western world, in which the children of the poor have less chance of escape than in France, Germany, or even England. Inside the system, the U.S. remains (to borrow the words of Senator Marco Rubio) the only place in the world where it doesn�t matter who your parents were or where you came from.

We used to say "You�re entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts." Now we are all entitled to our own facts, and conservative media use this right to immerse their audience in a total environment of pseudo-facts and pretend information
.


Another piece of [bleep] floats in from blue grass country (as in blue state) LOL get a life loser.
Quote
Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics.
Of course, this exactly describes what the progressive/liberal/marxist/communist/facist movement that is the democrat/moveon party of the US has done. True to the falsehood propagation techniques of their mentor, Goebbels, they will now attribute their own reprehensible characteristics to the betters who oppose them.
That Rick is what they always do. It's in the handbook.
Have not read one word besides the title of the OPs' thread, but I have an answer, right or wrong. Wasn't Lincoln a Republican? He or that time period IIRC was the beginning of the end on the freedoms our founding fathers fought and died for to create this nation.. Now we have fools electing and will probably reelect a foreign raised socialist.
David Frum and his like are the ones who have �built a whole alternative knowledge system� about Obama, their Champion with feet of clay.

Reality is the landslide election of 2010 and all the Democrats and RINOs who lost their jobs in Washington.

Reality is the landslide election of 2010 and some 660 plus Democrats in statehouses around the country who lost their jobs.

Reality is the landslide election of 2010 caused the greatest political turnover in the nation since Reconstruction after the Civil War.

Reality is that Obama cannot survive his 60 percent disapproval rating.

Reality is that Obama cannot survive without Hillary Clinton as his running mate.

Reality is�
OBAMA:CLINTON
2012
Obama will win with or without Hillary.

I've given up on the GOP. They trot out Rino after Rino and laugh and mock a real conservative like Ron Paul. Fox News is nothing more than the mouthpiece of LIBERAL Republicans.

I hope RP runs as a third partier and wrecks Romneys plans. I'm of the opinion that Obama can do less damage, at least with an opposing Congress.

Just like with all the best lies, there is a tiny amount of truth. Just enough to make the reader think �yea, that part is true, so maybe I should give some credence to the rest of it�.

It is basically worthless to listen to this type of citizen of Conservatism without a fact based comparison with liberalism.

Is FOX news sometimes off base with a right wing bias ? Yes, but compare that to ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC and CNN, who are all way off to the left and one realizes that FOX is closer to reality than any of them.
Do right wing pundits stretch the truth and slant things to the right ? Yes, but consider this.
The most influential of them, like Rush & Hannity openly admit that they are conservatives.
Compare that to the likes of Brian Willams and Catie Couric who pretend to be non partisan news people while spewing their left wing agenda.
Originally Posted by Anaconda
Just like with all the best lies, there is a tiny amount of truth. Just enough to make the reader think �yea, that part is true, so maybe I should give some credence to the rest of it�.

It is basically worthless to listen to this type of citizen of Conservatism without a fact based comparison with liberalism.

Is FOX news sometimes off base with a right wing bias ? Yes, but compare that to ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC and CNN, who are all way off to the left and one realizes that FOX is closer to reality than any of them.
Do right wing pundits stretch the truth and slant things to the right ? Yes, but consider this.
The most influential of them, like Rush & Hannity openly admit that they are conservatives.
Compare that to the likes of Brian Willams and Catie Couric who pretend to be non partisan news people while spewing their left wing agenda.


You miss the point. They're ALL liberal, including Fox. It's just a different brand of liberalism.
The GOP and conservatives are dedicated to preserving our country were individual rights are of primary importance and to maintain that which has made us the most successful country in the world.

The progressives are dedicated to the destruction of our country as we know it so they can build a progresive fascist paradise. Where they can enforce their will on the populace. Just like the Nazis, Communists and Fascists controlled their countries.

Look at how Obama and the progressives have targeted the 1%, they have focused the anger of the weak minded on this minority so that Obama and his crew could remain in power. This has had two benefits for Obama. First it has filled the media space, when it should be talking about unemployment, Solyndra, the deficit spending and all "great" accomplishments of Obama. Furthermore it has given him something to blame for his failures as president. "It was all the fault of those evil rich the 1% and their servents the Republicans."

Adolf had the Jews amd Obama has the 1%. We all know what happened to the Jews. It was the ultimate evil. Hopefully the same thing won't happen here. It is evil to prey on the weaknesses of people to gain political power. That is what Adolf did and that is what Obama is doing.

You complain about Fox News as being biased. They are the just about the only news media who gives both sides an opportunity to present their views fairly. The mainstream medis has abandoned the notion of objectivity and presenting the facts to inform their viewers. They have become agents of the progressive movement. Working for change hand in hand with the progressive movement.

Just look at their sickening performance in the 2008 election where they did everything possible to win the election for Obama. Just about every story on Obama was positive. Covering up his Reverend Wright failures, his drug dealing, his friendship with terrorists, his utter lack of accomplishments and that fact that he was pretending to be a moderate while being the most extreme liberal politician in the Senate. I don't think that anyone in the news media, except for Fox, asked him one difficult or challenging question.

While McCain was shafted by the mainstream news media. The best example of this is the frontpage story in the New York Times that claimed he had an affair with anonomous sources.

They are still at it today. Just a week ago or so a reporter asked Obama if the Republicans were stupid or evil. That says it all. Have you seen much in the news about Fast and Furious? For some reason the BATF started flooding Mexico with thousands of our guns with out making any attempt to trace the guns or arrest anyone. All the while Obama and Holder were promising the anti-gunners that they were working on gun control under the cover. This is a crime much worse than Watergate, yet the mainstream newsmedia is largely downplaying or ignoring it. If they weren't working for Obama they would be demanding Obama and Hoder's resignation or impeachment.

If you still believe in Obama and the progressive after the last 4 years you are one of them. Working for the destruction of our country, rebuilding it as a progressive fascist state.
Frum is not just a hack; don't shoot the messenger. The article is accurate in many respects, and a reach in others. But it truly points out a fundamental problem: a huge part of the Republican Party disagrees with the extremists:

"The most extreme voices in the GOP now denounce everybody else as Republicans in Name Only. But who elected them as the GOP�s membership committee? What have they done to deserve such an inheritance? In the mid-sixties, when the party split spectacularly between Ripon Republicans, who embraced the civil-rights movement, and Goldwater Republicans, who opposed it, civil-rights Republicans like Michigan governor George Romney spoke forcefully for their point of view. Today, Republicans discomfited by political and media extremism bite their tongues. But if they don�t speak up, they�ll be whipsawed into a choice between an Obama administration that wants to build a permanently bigger government and a conservative movement content with permanently outraged opposition."

Originally Posted by DoeDumper
Frum is a RINO/Wannabe Liberal that the liberal outlets label a conservative and cram his opinion down peoples throats as being the voice of the actual conservatives.



exactly, he is the liberal media's favorite faux conservative, because he says all the stuff liberals believe.

like conservatives are crazy, and need to stop being so.....well, conservative. if consevatives would just act like liberals, we wouldn't have all these problems. he's a joke, and has been for years.
Same garbage troll baiting thread from the "former military and ccw holder" doucebag who also had the gumption to call the Politico a "right wing" publication. Frum is just another RINO at best and Frum fits that to a tee.
Same garbage troll baiting thread from the "former military and ccw holder" doucebag who also had the gumption to call the Politico a "right wing" publication.
===============

I vaguely remember the wingnut. The confused folks who are outside the sphere of reality themselves shouldn't be posting threads relating to reality.
Originally Posted by oruacat2
One helluva good read from David Frum. No doubt it won't be received well by this group, but it needs to be said.

The section on FoxNews and the conservative media is especially damning and dead-on accurate:

Extremism and conflict make for bad politics but great TV. Over the past two decades, conservatism has evolved from a political philosophy into a market segment. An industry has grown up to serve that segment and its stars have become the true thought leaders of the conservative world. The business model of the conservative media is built on two elements: provoking the audience into a fever of indignation (to keep them watching) and fomenting mistrust of all other information sources (so that they never change the channel). As a commercial proposition, this model has worked brilliantly in the Obama era. As journalism, not so much. As a tool of political mobilization, it backfires, by inciting followers to the point at which they force leaders into confrontations where everybody loses, like the summertime showdown over the debt ceiling.

.


I get it, I get it! So what you're saying is that Occupy protesters are really closet Republicans?
Originally Posted by oruacat2
One helluva good read from David Frum. No doubt it won't be received well by this group, but it needs to be said.


shockedshockedshocked
Couldn't get into reading the whole thing.

Whether it's the liberals vs conservatives, Dems vs Reps, it doesn't matter--that's our reality. Look at the results of our past elections. Our big fat government has too much mass and inertia to respond swiftly to economic changes, even if it had competent and incorruptible leaders who were not too busy feathering their own nests. Look at Obama. America wants some smooth talker who looks good on TV while lying and blaming and shirking.

It's wonderful that there's so much competition among the media; that way at least some of the truth comes out, something we don't get from our own government

Posted by "Oh, are you a cat too?".
Originally Posted by oruacat2
One helluva good read from David Frum. No doubt it won't be received well by this group, but it needs to be said.


You call this "One helluva good read" !?!? Man how can you be so deceived of so deceitful?

This article is typical of the standard democrat/Marxist propaganda methodology: you accuse you enemy of perpetrating you own crimes.

In the article change Republicans for Democrats, change conservatism for Marxism and everything will fall right in its place.
I give no creds to azz wipe liberals like the op for this thread.
Liberal or conservative is just an exercise in name-calling these days. Most every member of Congress is owned by one special interest or another. They are not there to represent you or I. The upshot is the vanishing middle class. Most of the middle class attrition is falling below the poverty level, not rising to the upper economic group. It will stay that way until money is removed from the political/electoral process. Hint: Don't hold your breath.

It's no accident that not a single banker involved in the shenanigans that broke the economy has gone to jail. Nor is it an accident that most of the subsequent consumer protection legislation has been de-funded by the Congress. Meanwhile we're all at each other's throats over bull$hit social legislation while the Republic burns.

Pass the KY Jelly, there's more $crewin' coming.

It's a good thing I'm not cynical...

Originally Posted by OlyWa
Liberal or conservative is just an exercise in name-calling these days. Most every member of Congress is owned by one special interest or another. They are not there to represent you or I. The upshot is the vanishing middle class. Most of the middle class attrition is falling below the poverty level, not rising to the upper economic group. It will stay that way until money is removed from the political/electoral process. Hint: Don't hold your breath.

It's no accident that not a single banker involved in the shenanigans that broke the economy has gone to jail. Nor is it an accident that most of the subsequent consumer protection legislation has been de-funded by the Congress. Meanwhile we're all at each other's throats over bull$hit social legislation while the Republic burns.

Pass the KY Jelly, there's more $crewin' coming.

It's a good thing I'm not cynical...



Can't think of a single thing to argue with there. Not a one.
another leftie shill weighs in, singing from the democrat hymnal.
Oruacat2, Thanks. That was some funny chit grin

Ernie
Quote
Meanwhile we're all at each other's throats over bull$hit social legislation while the Republic burns.
such as?
the article:

It�s a very strange experience to have your friends think you�ve gone crazy. Some will tell you so. Others will indulgently humor you. Still others will avoid you. More than a few will demand that the authorities do something to get you off the streets. During one unpleasant moment after I was fired from the think tank where I�d worked for the previous seven years, I tried to reassure my wife with an old clich�: �The great thing about an experience like this is that you learn who your friends really are.� She answered, �I was happier when I didn�t know.�

It�s possible that my friends are right. I don�t think so�but then, crazy people never do. So let me put the case to you.

I�ve been a Republican all my adult life. I have worked on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, at Forbes magazine, at the Manhattan and American Enterprise Institutes, as a speechwriter in the George W. Bush administration. I believe in free markets, low taxes, reasonable regulation, and limited government. I voted for John �McCain in 2008, and I have strongly criticized the major policy decisions of the Obama administration. But as I contemplate my party and my movement in 2011, I see things I simply cannot support.

America desperately needs a responsible and compassionate alternative to the Obama administration�s path of bigger government at higher cost. And yet: This past summer, the GOP nearly forced America to the verge of default just to score a point in a budget debate. In the throes of the worst economic crisis since the Depression, Republican politicians demand massive budget cuts and shrug off the concerns of the unemployed. In the face of evidence of dwindling upward mobility and long-stagnating middle-class wages, my party�s economic ideas sometimes seem to have shrunk to just one: more tax cuts for the very highest earners. When I entered Republican politics, during an earlier period of malaise, in the late seventies and early eighties, the movement got most of the big questions�crime, inflation, the Cold War�right. This time, the party is getting the big questions disastrously wrong.

It was not so long ago that Texas governor Bush denounced attempts to cut the earned-income tax credit as �balancing the budget on the backs of the poor.� By 2011, Republican commentators were noisily complaining that the poorer half of society are �lucky duckies� because the EITC offsets their federal tax obligations�or because the recession had left them with such meager incomes that they had no tax to pay in the first place. In 2000, candidate Bush routinely invoked �churches, synagogues, and mosques.� By 2010, prominent Republicans were denouncing the construction of a mosque in lower Manhattan as an outrageous insult. In 2003, President Bush and a Republican majority in Congress enacted a new �prescription-drug program in Medicare. By 2011, all but four Republicans in the House and five in the Senate were voting to withdraw the Medicare guarantee from everybody under age 55. Today, the Fed�s pushing down interest rates in hopes of igniting economic growth is close to treason, according to Governor Rick Perry, coyly seconded by TheWall Street Journal. In 2000, the same policy qualified Alan Greenspan as the �greatest central banker in the history of the world,� according to Perry�s mentor, Senator Phil Gramm. Today, health reform that combines regulation of private insurance, individual mandates, and subsidies for those who need them is considered unconstitutional and an open invitation to �death panels.� A dozen years ago, a very similar reform was the Senate Republican alternative to Hillarycare. Today, stimulative fiscal policy that includes tax cuts for almost every American is �socialism.� In 2001, stimulative fiscal policy that included tax cuts for rather fewer Americans was an economic�-recovery program.

I can�t shrug off this flight from reality and responsibility as somebody else�s problem. I belonged to this movement; I helped to make the mess. People may very well say: Hey, wait a minute, didn�t you work in the George W. Bush administration that disappointed so many people in so many ways? What qualifies you to dispense advice to anybody else?

Fair question. I am haunted by the Bush experience, although it seems almost presumptuous for someone who played such a minor role to feel so much unease. The people who made the big decisions certainly seem to sleep well enough. Yet there is also the chance for something positive to come out of it all. True, some of my colleagues emerged from those years eager to revenge themselves and escalate political conflict: �They send one of ours to the hospital, we send two of theirs to the morgue.� I came out thinking, I want no more part of this cycle of revenge. For the past half-dozen years, I have been arguing that we conservatives need to follow a different course. And it is this argument that has led so many of my friends to demand, sometimes bemusedly, sometimes angrily, �What the hell happened to you?� I could fire the same question back: �Never mind me�what happened to you?�

"If we took away the minimum wage�if conceivably it was gone�we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely."
(Photo: Jim Spellman/WireImage/Getty Images)

So what did happen? The first decade of the 21st century was a crazy bookend to the twentieth, opening with a second Pearl Harbor and ending with a second Great Crash, with a second Vietnam wedged in between. Now we seem caught in the coils of a second Great Depression. These shocks radicalized the political system, damaging hawkish Democrats like Hillary Clinton in the Bush years and then driving Republicans to dust off the economics of Ayn Rand.

Some liberals suspect that the conservative changes of mind since 2008 are opportunistic and cynical. It�s true that cynicism is never entirely absent from politics: I won�t soon forget the lupine smile that played about the lips of the leader of one prominent conservative institution as he told me, �Our donors truly think the apocalypse has arrived.� Yet conscious cynicism is much rarer than you might suppose. Few of us have the self-knowledge and emotional discipline to say one thing while meaning another. If we say something often enough, we come to believe it. We don�t usually delude others until after we have first deluded ourselves. Some of the smartest and most sophisticated people I know�canny investors, erudite authors�sincerely and passionately believe that President Barack Obama has gone far beyond conventional American liberalism and is willfully and relentlessly driving the United States down the road to socialism. No counterevidence will dissuade them from this belief: not record-high corporate profits, not almost 500,000 job losses in the public sector, not the lowest tax rates since the Truman administration. It is not easy to fit this belief alongside the equally strongly held belief that the president is a pitiful, bumbling amateur, dazed and overwhelmed by a job too big for him�and yet that is done too.

Conservatism has evolved from a political philosophy into a market segment.

Conservatives have been driven to these fevered anxieties as much by their own trauma as by external events. In the aughts, Republicans held more power for longer than at any time since the twenties, yet the result was the weakest and least broadly shared economic expansion since World War II, followed by an economic crash and prolonged slump. Along the way, the GOP suffered two severe election defeats in 2006 and 2008. Imagine yourself a rank-and-file Republican in 2009: If you have not lost your job or your home, your savings have been sliced and your children cannot find work. Your retirement prospects have dimmed. Most of all, your neighbors blame you for all that has gone wrong in the country. There�s one thing you know for sure: None of this is your fault! And when the new president fails to deliver rapid recovery, he can be designated the target for everyone�s accumulated disappointment and rage. In the midst of economic wreckage, what relief to thrust all blame upon Barack Obama as the wrecker-in-chief.

The Bush years cannot be repudiated, but the memory of them can be discarded to make way for a new and more radical ideology, assembled from bits of the old GOP platform that were once sublimated by the party elites but now roam the land freely: ultralibertarianism, crank monetary theories, populist fury, and paranoid visions of a Democratic Party controlled by ACORN and the New Black Panthers. For the past three years, the media have praised the enthusiasm and energy the tea party has brought to the GOP. Yet it�s telling that that movement has failed time and again to produce even a remotely credible candidate for president. Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich: The list of tea-party candidates reads like the early history of the U.S. space program, a series of humiliating fizzles and explosions that never achieved liftoff. A political movement that never took governing seriously was exploited by a succession of political entrepreneurs uninterested in governing�but all too interested in merchandising. Much as viewers tune in to American Idol to laugh at the inept, borderline dysfunctional early auditions, these tea-party champions provide a ghoulish type of news entertainment each time they reveal that they know nothing about public affairs and have never attempted to learn. But Cain�s gaffe on Libya or Perry�s brain freeze on the Department of Energy are not only indicators of bad leadership. They are indicators of a crisis of followership. The tea party never demanded knowledge or concern for governance, and so of course it never got them.

Many hope that the tea-party mood is just a passing mania, eventually to subside into something more like the businessperson�s Republicanism practiced in the nineties by governors and mayors like George Pataki and Rudy Giuliani, Christine Todd Whitman and Dick Riordan, Tommy Thompson and John Engler. This hope tends to coalesce around the candidacies of Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, two smart and well-informed former governors who eschew the strident rhetoric of the tea party and who have thereby earned its deep distrust. But there are good reasons to fear that the ebbing of Republican radicalism remains far off, even if Romney (or Huntsman) does capture the White House next year.

"[Obama] grew up in a privileged way. He never had to really work for anything; he never had to go through what Americans are going through."
(Photo: Kevin Winter/NBC Universal/Getty Images)

1. Fiscal Austerity and Economic Stagnation
We have entered an era in which politics increasingly revolves around the ugly question of who will bear how much pain. Conservative constituencies already see themselves as aggrieved victims of American government: They are the people who pay the taxes even as their �earned� benefits are siphoned off to provide welfare for the undeserving. The reality is, however, that the big winners in the American fiscal system are the rich, the old, the rural, and veterans�typically conservative constituencies. Squeezing the programs conservatives most dislike�PBS, the National Endowment for the Humanities, tax credits for the poor, the Department of Education, etc.�yields relatively little money. Any serious move to balance the budget, or even just reduce the deficit a little, must inevitably cut programs conservative voters do like: Medicare for current beneficiaries, farm subsidies, veterans� benefits, and big tax loopholes like the mortgage-interest deduction and employer-provided health benefits. The rank and file of the GOP are therefore caught between their interests and their ideology�intensifying their suspicion that shadowy Washington elites are playing dirty tricks upon them.

2. Ethnic Competition
White America has been plunged into a mood of pessimism and anger since 2008. Ron Brownstein reports in the National Journal: �63 percent of African-Americans and 54 percent of Hispanics said they expected their children to exceed their standard of living. Even �college-educated whites are less optimistic (only about two-fifths agree). But the noncollege whites are the gloomiest: Just one-third of them think their kids will live better than they do; an equal number think their children won�t even match their living standard. No other group is nearly that negative.� Those fears are not irrational. In postrecession America, employers seem to show a distinct preference for foreign-born workers. Eighty percent of the net new jobs created in the state of Texas since 2009 went to the foreign-born. Nationwide, foreign-born workers have experienced a net 4 percent increase in employment since January 2009, while native-born workers have seen continuing employment declines. Which may explain why President Obama�s approval rating among whites slipped to 41 percent in January 2010 and is now testing a new low of 33 percent. The president�s name and skin color symbolize the emergence of a new America in which many older-stock Americans intuit they will be left behind.

It is precisely these disaffected whites�especially those who didn�t go to college�who form the Republican voting base. John McCain got 58 percent of noncollege-white votes in 2008. The GOP polls even higher among that group today, but the party can only sustain those numbers as long as it gives voice to alienation. Birtherism, the claim that President Obama was not born in the United States, expressed the feeling of many that power has shifted into alien hands. That feeling will not be easily quelled by Republican electoral success, because it is based on a deep sense of dispossession and disinheritance.

3. Fox News and Talk Radio
Extremism and conflict make for bad politics but great TV. Over the past two decades, conservatism has evolved from a political philosophy into a market segment. An industry has grown up to serve that segment�and its stars have become the true thought leaders of the conservative world. The business model of the conservative media is built on two elements: provoking the audience into a fever of indignation (to keep them watching) and fomenting mistrust of all other information sources (so that they never change the channel). As a commercial proposition, this model has worked brilliantly in the Obama era. As journalism, not so much. As a tool of political mobilization, it backfires, by inciting followers to the point at which they force leaders into confrontations where everybody loses, like the summertime showdown over the debt ceiling.

But the thought leaders on talk radio and Fox do more than shape opinion. Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics. Outside this alternative reality, the United States is a country dominated by a strong Christian religiosity. Within it, Christians are a persecuted minority. Outside the system, President Obama�whatever his policy �errors�is a figure of imposing intellect and dignity. Within the system, he�s a pitiful nothing, unable to speak without a teleprompter, an affirmative-action �phony doomed to inevitable defeat. Outside the system, social scientists worry that the U.S. is hardening into one of the most rigid class societies in the Western world, in which the children of the poor have less chance of escape than in France, Germany, or even England. Inside the system, the U.S. remains (to borrow the words of Senator Marco Rubio) �the only place in the world where it doesn�t matter who your parents were or where you came from.�

"I'm ready for the gotcha questions...and when they ask me who is the president of Uzbeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I'm gonna say, you know, I don't know."
(Photo: Kevin Winter/NBC Universal/Getty Images)

We used to say �You�re entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.� Now we are all entitled to our own facts, and conservative media use this right to immerse their audience in a total environment of pseudo-facts and pretend information.

When contemplating the ruthless brilliance of this system, it�s tempting to fall back on the theory that the GOP is masterminded by a cadre of sinister billionaires, deftly manipulating the political process for their own benefit. The billionaires do exist, and some do indeed attempt to influence the political process. The bizarre fiasco of campaign-finance reform has perversely empowered them to give unlimited funds anonymously to special entities that can spend limitlessly. (Thanks, Senator �McCain! Nice job, Senator Feingold!) Yet, for the most part, these Republican billionaires are not acting cynically. They watch Fox News too, and they�re gripped by the same apocalyptic fears as the Republican base. In funding the tea-party movement, they are �actually acting against their own longer-term interests, for it is the richest who have the most interest in political stability, which depends upon broad societal agreement that the existing distribution of rewards is fair and reasonable. If the social order comes to seem unjust to large numbers of people, what happens next will make Occupy Wall Street look like a street fair.

Republican billionaires are not acting cynically; they watch Fox News too.

Over the past few years, I have left this alternative knowledge system behind me. What is that experience like? A personal story may be relevant here.

Through the debate over health-care reform in 2009�10, I urged that Republicans try to reach some kind of deal. The Democrats had the votes to pass something. They could not afford to lose. Providing health coverage to all is a worthy goal, and the core mechanisms of what we called Obamacare should not have been obnoxious to Republicans. In fact, they were drawn from past Republican plans. Democrats were so eager for Republican votes to provide bipartisan cover that they might well have paid a substantial price to get them, including dropping the surtaxes on work and investment that supposedly financed the Affordable Care Act. My urgings went unheeded, obviously. Senator Jim DeMint predicted that health care would become Obama�s Waterloo, the decisive defeat that would destroy his presidency, and Republicans accepted DeMint�s counsel. So they bet everything�and lost everything. A major new entitlement has been written into law, financed by redistributive new taxes. Changes in the bill that could have been had for the asking will now require years of slow, painful legislative effort, if they ever come at all. Republicans hope that the Supreme Court will overturn the Affordable Care Act. Such a decision would be the most dramatic assertion of judicial power since the thirties, and for that reason alone seems improbable. Yet absent action by the Supreme Court, outright repeal of President Obama�s health-care law is a mirage, requiring not only 60 votes in the Senate but also the withdrawal of benefits that the American people will have gotten used to by 2013.

On the day of the House vote that ensured the enactment of health-care �reform, I wrote a blog post saying all this�and calling for some accountability for those who had led the GOP to this disaster. For my trouble, I was denounced the next day by my former colleagues at The Wall Street Journal as a turncoat. Three days after that, I was dismissed from the American Enterprise Institute. I�m not a solitary case: In 2005, the economist Bruce Bartlett, a main legislative author of the Kemp-Roth tax cut, was fired from a think tank in Dallas for too loudly denouncing the George W. Bush administration�s record, and I could tell equivalent stories about other major conservative think tanks as well.

I don�t complain from a personal point of view. Happily, I had other economic resources to fall back upon. But the message sent to others with less security was clear: We don�t pay you to think, we pay you to repeat. For myself, the main consequences have been more comic than anything else. Back in 2009, I wrote a piece for Newsweek arguing that Republicans would regret conceding so much power to Rush Limbaugh. Until that point, I�d been a frequent guest on Fox News, but thenceforward some kind of fatwa was laid down upon me. Over the next few months, I�d occasionally receive morning calls from young TV bookers asking if I was available to appear that day. For sport, I�d always answer, �I�m available�but does your senior producer know you�ve called me?� An hour later, I�d receive an embarrassed second call: �We�ve decided to go in a different direction.� Earlier this year, I did some volunteer speechwriting for a Republican contemplating a presidential run. My involvement was treated as a dangerous secret, involving discreet visits to hotel suites at odd hours. Thus are political movements held together. But thus is not how movements grow and govern.

Some call this the closing of the conservative mind. Alas, the conservative mind has proved itself only too open, these past years, to all manner of intellectual pollen. Call it instead the drying up of conservative creativity. It�s clearly true that the country faces daunting economic troubles. It�s also true that the wrong answers to those problems will push the United States toward a future of too much government, too many taxes, and too much regulation. It�s the job of conservatives in this crisis to show a better way. But it�s one thing to point out (accurately) that President Obama�s stimulus plan was mostly a compilation of antique Democratic wish lists, and quite another to argue that the correct response to the worst collapse since the thirties is to wait for the economy to get better on its own. It�s one thing to worry (wisely) about the long-term trend in government spending, and another to demand big, immediate cuts when 25 million are out of full-time work and the government can borrow for ten years at 2 percent. It�s a duty to scrutinize the actions and decisions of the incumbent administration, but an abuse to use the filibuster as a routine tool of legislation or to prevent dozens of presidential appointments from even coming to a vote. It�s fine to be unconcerned that the rich are getting richer, but blind to deny that �middle-class wages have stagnated or worse over the past dozen years. In the aftershock of 2008, large numbers of Americans feel exploited and abused. Rather than workable solutions, my party is offering low taxes for the currently rich and high spending for the currently old, to be followed by who-knows-what and who-the-hell-cares. This isn�t conservatism; it�s a going-out-of-business sale for the baby-boom generation.

I refuse to believe that I am the only Republican who feels this way. If CNN�s most recent polling is correct, only half of us sympathize with the tea party. However, moderate-minded people dislike conflict�and thus tend to lose to people who relish conflict. The most extreme voices in the GOP now denounce everybody else as Republicans in Name Only. But who elected them as the GOP�s membership committee? What have they done to deserve such an inheritance? In the mid-sixties, when the party split spectacularly between Ripon Republicans, who embraced the civil-rights movement, and Goldwater Republicans, who opposed it, civil-rights Republicans like Michigan governor George Romney spoke forcefully for their point of view. Today, Republicans discomfited by political and media extremism bite their tongues. But if they don�t speak up, they�ll be whipsawed into a choice between an Obama administration that wants to build a permanently bigger government and a conservative movement content with permanently outraged opposition.

This is, unfortunately, not merely a concern for Republican voters. The conservative shift to ever more extreme, ever more fantasy-based ideology has ominous real-world consequences for American society. The American system of government can�t work if the two sides wage all-out war upon each other: House, Senate, president, each has the power to thwart the others. In prior generations, the system evolved norms and habits to prevent this kind of stonewalling. For example: Theoretically, the party that holds the Senate could refuse to confirm any Cabinet nominees of a president of the other party. Yet until recently, this just �wasn�t done.� In fact, quite a lot of things that theoretically could be done just �weren�t done.� Now old inhibitions have given way. Things that weren�t done suddenly are done.

We can debate when the slide began. But what seems beyond argument is that the U.S. political system becomes more polarized and more dysfunctional every cycle, at greater and greater human cost. The next Republican president will surely find himself or herself at least as stymied by this dysfunction as President Obama, as will the people the political system supposedly serves, who must feel they have been subjected to a psychological experiment gone horribly wrong, pressing the red button in 2004 and getting a zap, pressing blue in 2008 for another zap, and now agonizing whether there is any choice that won�t zap them again in 2012. Yet in the interests of avoiding false evenhandedness, it must be admitted: The party with a stronger charge on its zapper right now, the party struggling with more self-�imposed obstacles to responsible governance, the party most in need of a course correction, is the Republican Party. Changing that party will be the fight of a political lifetime. But a great political party is worth fighting for.
what? you think it's less of a crock of schit when you print out the whole thing?

the fact that you like it saves most the trouble of having to wade through Frum's nonsense to conclude it's just leftie agitprop. he has been reliably wrong about just about any topic you can name for many many years.

he wants a liberal party is really upset the Republicans don't want to be one for him.
This is RINOism gone wild in the extreme.

This guy IS completely out of touch with reality.

That people like him may consider themselves "Republicans" is a strong indication of the problems the Republican party will have to solve to regain some sort of coherence and standing.
Originally Posted by OlyWa
It's no accident that not a single banker involved in the shenanigans that broke the economy has gone to jail. Nor is it an accident that most of the subsequent consumer protection legislation has been de-funded by the Congress. Meanwhile we're all at each other's throats over bull$hit social legislation while the Republic burns.

It's the government and primarily the progressive fascists, Clinton, Dodd, and Franks, who did it and should be in jail. They are all Democrats.

Remember how ACORN was protesting against racist bankers who were preventing minorities and the poor from owning homes? Remember how the banks were required to make loans to minorities and poor districts? Giving loans to people who could not afford them is a progressive policy. Furthermore, Clinton, Dodd and Franks are the ones who changed the laws to allow it. While Dodd and Franks prevented the Republicans from stopping it around 2006. Then they had the gaul to blame it on Bush and the Republicans.
RUAcat . . . You related to gus or Jeff O?
Originally Posted by Steve_NO
what? you think it's less of a crock of schit when you print out the whole thing?

the fact that you like it saves most the trouble of having to wade through Frum's nonsense to conclude it's just leftie agitprop. he has been reliably wrong about just about any topic you can name for many many years.

he wants a liberal party is really upset the Republicans don't want to be one for him.


I printed it out, because a number of people on 24 hr campfire don't click on links.

I'm not sure where you got the notion I liked it, unless you are making that part up.

How long is "many, many years"? 1 year? 3 years? What was the kiss of death for you on Frum? what statement or decision that he made that let you know he wasn't in tune with your vision of the world? What year was that?

Sycamore
Frum lost me when he decided that there was more media popularity to be had by being their favorite whore who would crap on his former "allies"....if he was ever really a republican in any sense.

when commie homos like Frank Rich are praising your books as really really smart....it's a good sign you're writing bullshit, and that was the case with Frum at least as far back as 1994.

you're welcome to him, sycamore. he's your kind of conservative.
The only difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is who gets to control the spending. Both parties answer to their masters, the IFC (international financial cartel).

I'm studying the tax code right to prepare for the upcoming tax season. What a mess. The tax code is not designed to collect revenue, it's designed for social engineering, social justice, and control and power. Both parties are the problem.

A real, true conservative is a anti-nationalist and the only presidential candidate that comes close to being a conservative is Ron Paul. But don't worry, the IFC will make sure Paul never sees the inside of the White House.
okay, okay I see it coming, the term conservative is desired by the moderates, makes sense I guess since the socialists co-opted the term Democrat or liberal.


they can have the moniker I suppose, but there's still a bunch of us "old fashioned" Americans that believe in the Constitution and that it guarantees us the "pursuit of happiness", not the result of happiness from the sweat of our neighbors brow.

it's turned into a big freakin word game, but the truth of the matter is.....politicians suck
Originally Posted by Steve_NO
Frum lost me when he decided that there was more media popularity to be had by being their favorite whore who would crap on his former "allies"....if he was ever really a republican in any sense.

when commie homos like Frank Rich are praising your books as really really smart....it's a good sign you're writing bullshit, and that was the case with Frum at least as far back as 1994.

you're welcome to him, sycamore. he's your kind of conservative.


Wow! You had him spotted as far back as 1994! Your prescience is amazing! If only you could have tipped off some of the lesser lights of the Conservative Movement (lesser than yourself of course) like WSJ, National Review, and 43 Bush.

From Frum's wiki bio:

Quote


After graduating from Harvard, Frum returned to Toronto to serve as an associate editor of Saturday Night.[9] He was an editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal from 1989 until 1992, and then a columnist for Forbes magazine in 1992-94. During his tenure at the Journal, Frum "accepted the freelance assignment that would make his name: a 1991 cover story for The American Spectator attacking Pat Buchanan."[9] From 1994 through 2000 he was a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. During the 1990s he attended "three or four" Bilderberg Group meetings as a guest of Conrad Black.[10]

Following the election of George W. Bush in 2000, Frum was appointed to a position within the White House. Frum would later write that when he was first offered the job by chief Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson,
� I believed I was unsuited to the job he was offering me. I had no connection to the Bush campaign or the Bush family. I had no experience in government and little of political campaigns. I had not written a speech for anyone other than myself. And I had been only a moderately enthusiastic supporter of George W. Bush � I strongly doubted he was the right man for the job.[11] �

Still a Canadian citizen, he was one of the few foreign nationals working within the Bush White House. He had filed for naturalization and took the oath of citizenship on September 11, 2007.[12] Frum served as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Speechwriting from January 2001 to February 2002. He is credited with inventing the expression �axis of evil� Bush introduced in his 2002 State of the Union address, since Frum's wife, Danielle Crittenden, bragged about it in e-mails that were picked up by the media.[13] Frum shortly afterwards resigned from his position. Both he and the White House denied any connection to the incidence.[14] He later explained, that he used the term �axis of hatred�, referring to terrorist groups and extremist governments, in the first draft of the speech and the phrase was changed to �axis of evil.�[12]

While serving in the Bush White House, Frum was "one of the most vociferous voices . . . calling for war in Iraq," and "wrote in 2003 about the Iraqis 'welcoming their liberators.'"[15]

Frum strongly supported John Roberts, George W. Bush's nominee for Chief Justice of the United States. However, like many conservatives, he opposed the nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court of the United States, on the grounds that she was insufficiently qualified for the post, as well as insufficiently conservative.

On October 11, 2007, Frum announced on his blog that he was joining Rudolph Giuliani's presidential campaign as a senior foreign policy adviser.[16][17]

Frum was a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, from 2003 until March 25, 2010, when his paid position was terminated and he declined to accept the offer of a non-paying position.[18][19] Media reports noted that the termination came three days after Frum's strongly worded criticism of the Republican strategy on health care reform, but Frum said that the AEI had not cited his criticism as the reason for his termination.[18][20] It was also suggested that he was fired for criticizing Fox news, saying "Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox.�[21]
[edit] NewMajority.com and FrumForum.com

On November 16, 2008, The New York Times reported that Frum would be leaving National Review where he was a contributing editor and run an online blog.[22] Frum announced to readers of his blog that he would be starting a new political website, NewMajority.com, describing it as "a group blog, featuring many different voices. Not all of them� conservatives or Republicans." He added that he hoped the site would "create an online community that will be exciting and appealing to younger readers, a generation often repelled by today's mainstream conservatism."[23] The website was launched on January 19, 2009,[24] on October 31, 2009, it changed to FrumForum.com.
[edit] Writings

Frum's first book, Dead Right, was released in 1994. It "expressed intense dissatisfaction with supply-siders, evangelicals, and nearly all Republican politicians."[11] Frank Rich of the New York Times described it as "the smartest book written from the inside about the American conservative movement," William F. Buckley, Jr. found it "the most refreshing ideological experience in a generation,"[25] and Daniel McCarthy of The American Conservative called it "a crisply written indictment of everything its author disliked about conservatism in the early �90s."[9] He is also the author of What's Right (1996) and How We Got Here (2000), a history of the 1970s, which "framed the 1970s in the shadow of World War II and Vietnam, suggesting, 'The turmoil of the 1970s should be understood ... as the rebellion of an unmilitary people against institutions and laws formed by a century of war and the preparation for war.'"[9] Michael Barone of U.S. News & World Report praised How We Got Here, noting that "more than any other book� it shows how we came to be the way we are." John Podhoretz described it as "compulsively readable" and a "commanding amalgam of history, sociology and polemic."[26]

In January 2003, he released The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush, the first insider account of the Bush presidency. As the title suggests, Frum also discusses how the events of September 11, 2001 redefined the country and the President. Frum writes, "George W. Bush was hardly the obvious man for the job. But by a very strange fate, he turned out to be, of all unlikely things, the right man."

Frum's book An End to Evil was co-written with Richard Perle. It provided a defense of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and advocated regime change in Iran and Syria. Furthermore, it called for a tougher policy with North Korea, as well as advocating a tougher U.S. stance against Saudi Arabia and other Islamic nations in order to "win the war on terror" (from the book's subtitle).

In 2008, he published Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again, a work which garnered "lavish praise from his friends."[9] Former Congressman David M. McIntosh called "required reading for all GOP candidates."
Originally Posted by Sycamore
Originally Posted by Steve_NO
what? you think it's less of a crock of schit when you print out the whole thing?

the fact that you like it saves most the trouble of having to wade through Frum's nonsense to conclude it's just leftie agitprop. he has been reliably wrong about just about any topic you can name for many many years.

he wants a liberal party is really upset the Republicans don't want to be one for him.


I printed it out, because a number of people on 24 hr campfire don't click on links.

I'm not sure where you got the notion I liked it, unless you are making that part up.

How long is "many, many years"? 1 year? 3 years? What was the kiss of death for you on Frum? what statement or decision that he made that let you know he wasn't in tune with your vision of the world? What year was that?

Sycamore

smile
Glad ya printed it out. Whats funny is the truth in that article slapped Steve_No in the face so bad he couldn't ramble on and on with his usually brilliant bullschit.
Quote
but is simply worthless tripe


You besmirch, slander and libel tripe when you say that.

Liberal talk may be "drivel" but it does not rise to the level of tripe.

Frum, like George Will is no Conservative and by his writings proves it. He has like, Juan Williams, a turned coat. Let him be what he is; a Liberal who will vote for BHO.

And Syc is in sync with both.
Originally Posted by Spanokopitas

Frum, like George Will is no Conservative and by his writings proves it. He has like, Juan Williams, a turned coat. Let him be what he is; a Liberal who will vote for BHO.

And Syc is in sync with both.


You lost me there, Spanky. You mentioned four other individuals, and stated that I was in sync with both. Subject/Object disagreement. Your people need to get you a new editor!

I do think the interesting discussions are what does it mean to be a Republican, or a Democrat. And also, is it more important to support the country, or the party? And can one support the country without supporting the party, or is there only one way, through the party?

Brings to mind the book "The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer, I think.

Party politics (IMO) are responsible for a lot of the waste, fraud, abuse and mis-direction in our country today.

I don't hold it against dumb people when they don't know it, or recognize it, or see it.

When smart people claim to not see it, or think it only runs one way, it makes me wonder if they have deceived themselves, or if they may be trying to deceive me or others.

Watching sports is unfortunate analogue for our current situation, it fosters the spirit of my team (party) right or wrong. No one stops to think about the league or the conference (nation).

Sycamore

The arcticle in it's entirety is very interesting. Not the political views. As a character study into the mind of someone that's very intelligent and knowlegeable but has lost touch with reality.

There are flashes of brilliance and deep insight into the workings of politics in America. There are points that he makes that I wholeheartly agree with but in the end the majority of his conclusions are absurd.

The guy's mind is like a ping-pong ball in clothes dryer. He bounces from one extreme to the other, picks up a few dings and dents along the way and in the end his ball/mind is mangled.

This quote sums it all up.

"It�s possible that my friends are right. I don�t think so�but then, crazy people never do."
Originally Posted by Bushmaster1313
Quote
but is simply worthless tripe


You besmirch, slander and libel tripe when you say that.

Liberal talk may be "drivel" but it does not rise to the level of tripe.


LOL it doesn't even rise to the level of [bleep]!
The Frum piece is a very well written opinion piece, nevertheless just that, an opinion piece. Like with many other Liberal opinion pieces I do not agree.

He could have used Liberal examples to support a rant against Conservatives and come closer to the truth. Since he has burned his Conservative bridges, like Williams burned his Liberal bridges, he is now looking for a gig on the Liberal side. Turncoats both, I have no respect for either.

I doubt he will land as lucrative gig as did Williams.

Sycamore---Sorry about the minor grammatical infelicities in my last post, you were right to call me on them. Being a publisher I always attempt to present clean copy. Please be assured that I am not in charge of Copy Editing at Paradise Cay Publications, we have professionals and if you read any of our books I believe you would conclude that our editing is superb.---Spano.
My opinion is that all the politicians have lost touch with reality. Both parties of them. I used to be a registered Republican. I am now a registered 'no party affiliation'. That doesn't, of course, mean that I am not 'conservative'. It simply means that the Republican party no longer represents my value (small government, small spending, and freedoms for all). They are closer to it than the Democrats, but not close enough to earn my support, or respect. I am not alone in this, either. There is a reason why the second largest block of voters in Arizona is 'no party affiliation'. Republicans are first (but maybe not for long). Democrats are third.

We need a party that fights for a return to the Constitution. Them I could join.
excellent post Chromescholar!


it's better explains my "sucks less" mantra
Originally Posted by Chromescholar
...the politicians have lost touch with reality...the Republican party no longer represents my value (small government, small spending, and freedoms for all). They are closer to it than the Democrats, but not close enough to earn my support, or respect...
We need a party that fights for a return to the Constitution. Them I could join.


This. It's called the T-party.
T-party.
The Tea Party is not a party. They are a group of people who are trying to force the GOP to do what they want. It is a lost cause. When they register as a political party, I will consider them.
Excellent read. Thanks for posting.
Originally Posted by 17ACKLEYBEE
Originally Posted by oruacat2
One helluva good read from David Frum. No doubt it won't be received well by this group, but it needs to be said.

The section on FoxNews and the conservative media is especially damning and dead-on accurate:

Extremism and conflict make for bad politics but great TV. Over the past two decades, conservatism has evolved from a political philosophy into a market segment. An industry has grown up to serve that segment and its stars have become the true thought leaders of the conservative world. The business model of the conservative media is built on two elements: provoking the audience into a fever of indignation (to keep them watching) and fomenting mistrust of all other information sources (so that they never change the channel). As a commercial proposition, this model has worked brilliantly in the Obama era. As journalism, not so much. As a tool of political mobilization, it backfires, by inciting followers to the point at which they force leaders into confrontations where everybody loses, like the summertime showdown over the debt ceiling.

But the thought leaders on talk radio and Fox do more than shape opinion. Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics. Outside this alternative reality, the United States is a country dominated by a strong Christian religiosity. Within it, Christians are a persecuted minority. Outside the system, President Obama whatever his policy errors is a figure of imposing intellect and dignity. Within the system, he�s a pitiful nothing, unable to speak without a teleprompter, an affirmative-action phony doomed to inevitable defeat. Outside the system, social scientists worry that the U.S. is hardening into one of the most rigid class societies in the Western world, in which the children of the poor have less chance of escape than in France, Germany, or even England. Inside the system, the U.S. remains (to borrow the words of Senator Marco Rubio) the only place in the world where it doesn�t matter who your parents were or where you came from.

We used to say "You�re entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts." Now we are all entitled to our own facts, and conservative media use this right to immerse their audience in a total environment of pseudo-facts and pretend information
.


Another piece of [bleep] floats in from blue grass country (as in blue state) LOL get a life loser.


And another impressive rebuttal from a knuckle dragging Cretin, proving Frum's thesis in spades!
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