When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?

[Locutus]

A long but worthwhile article from ol' David Frum:



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 cliché: “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.





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David Frum on the GOP’s Lost Sense of Reality -- New York Magazine


David Frum on the GOP’s Lost Sense of Reality -- New York Magazine


David Frum on the GOP’s Lost Sense of Reality -- New York Magazine


David Frum on the GOP’s Lost Sense of Reality -- New York Magazine


David Frum on the GOP’s Lost Sense of Reality -- New York Magazine

 

[Tonington]

Call it instead the drying up of conservative creativity.

lol, it doesn't take much when the vessel is thimble sized. I thought conservative creativity was a euphemism of a euphemism, creative accounting. :lol:

 

[Highball]

This is a hijacked GOP group. The main stream still refuse to recognize or vote for none of the current Presidential candidate aspirants. The GOP as it is presented today is a group of liars, cheats and swindlers.

 

[Bar Sinister]

Interesting. Frum wrote a similar article that I posted to CC following the Republican triumph in the 2010 elections. He predicted then that the Republican Party was well on its way to becoming irrelevant due its swing to the extreme right of American politics and the current crop of Republican presidential candidates seems to prove him right. Beating Obama in 2012 would be a cinch for any moderate Republican candidate, but the right wing ideologues who have hijacked the party cannot bring themselves to support any candidate who is even close to the centre. As a result they are stuck with a collection of Bible-thumpers and corporate mouthpieces who are incapable of grasping the imagination of the US public and who for the most part do not represent the ideals or concerns of the Average American.

 

[relic]

Lucky for them the "average american" still thinks the world is flat and the sun revolves around the good ol' us of a.

 

[Walter]

Frum would never have given Reagan a chance because he was too conservtive. The Americans will vote for a true conservative, not a RINO such as McCain or Dole, in a landslide given a chance.

 

[petros]

They make Obama look good.

 

[DurkaDurka]

Frum would never have given Reagan a chance because he was too conservtive. The Americans will vote for a true conservative, not a RINO such as McCain or Dole, in a landslide given a chance.

Walter, I so admire your partisan bootlicking, your conservative credentials are impeccable.

 

[Nuggler]

Interesting. Frum wrote a similar article that I posted to CC following the Republican triumph in the 2010 elections. He predicted then that the Republican Party was well on its way to becoming irrelevant due its swing to the extreme right of American politics and the current crop of Republican presidential candidates seems to prove him right. Beating Obama in 2012 would be a cinch for any moderate Republican candidate, but the right wing ideologues who have hijacked the party cannot bring themselves to support any candidate who is even close to the centre. As a result they are stuck with a collection of Bible-thumpers and corporate mouthpieces who are incapable of grasping the imagination of the US public and who for the most part do not represent the ideals or concerns of the Average American.

Already here in a Canada near you.............Bible-thumpers and corporate mouthpieces who follow no logical direction except their own non logic.

 

[petros]

Already here in a Canada near you.............Bible-thumpers and corporate mouthpieces who follow no logical direction except their own non logic.

Jesus saves. Moses invests. Mohammad sells wholesale to make ends meet.

 

[mentalfloss]

The GOP was in touch with reality?

 

[WLDB]

The GOP was in touch with reality?

Abraham Lincoln seemed to be in touch with reality.

 

[DurkaDurka]

Gotta love Walter handing out reds when you dare question his heroes in the GOP. I wonder if Walter is one of those airport bathroom Republicans?

 

[Tonington]

Frum would never have given Reagan a chance because he was too conservtive. The Americans will vote for a true conservative, not a RINO such as McCain or Dole, in a landslide given a chance.

Out of touch with reality.

 

[Colpy]

Interesting. Frum wrote a similar article that I posted to CC following the Republican triumph in the 2010 elections. He predicted then that the Republican Party was well on its way to becoming irrelevant due its swing to the extreme right of American politics and the current crop of Republican presidential candidates seems to prove him right. Beating Obama in 2012 would be a cinch for any moderate Republican candidate, but the right wing ideologues who have hijacked the party cannot bring themselves to support any candidate who is even close to the centre. As a result they are stuck with a collection of Bible-thumpers and corporate mouthpieces who are incapable of grasping the imagination of the US public and who for the most part do not represent the ideals or concerns of the Average American.

Rarely I agree with you Bar, but you are dead on here.....

 

[darkbeaver]

Frum was on CBC ideas and he slithered and skated and invented and lied and shared generally his delusion that he is in contact with reality. He's a speech writer for the brain dead American political class which of course has no class whatever. Frum is exactly what is wrong with the world. For a whole hour I just wanted to stuff a sock in his mouth.

 

[Bar Sinister]

Rarely I agree with you Bar, but you are dead on here.....

Well, even I cannot be wrong all of the time.

 

[Kreskin]

Frum is right about politics becoming more and more dysfunctional. As he said, the next President will find himself in the same unmanageable situation as Obama.

 

[Tonington]

 

[Mowich]

Don't ask me why but I sat up until 1am this morning watching the Republican National Security Debate. Again, I was impressed with Ron Paul. No blather about how bad Obama is, just a straight answer to the question, time after time. I liked the points he made on domestic security and agree with what he had to say about the danger posed to individual liberties by current and proposed measures of domestic security. I also thought he made some good points about the danger posed by the Taliban as opposed to the dangers posed by the current financial crisis facing the United States.

I thought Perry looked like a shadow of his former self and stumbled over his answers many times. When he couldn't think of anything constructive to say, he brought out the old 'blame Obama' mantra. Bachmann was another one who couldn't say anything without adding the Obama mantra.

On balance though, I thought the salamander probably did the best on the night.