Conservative Moderate (Yeah, Sort of) David Frum is Withdrawing From His Frum Forum Blog

And Leaves Us With a Puzzling Statement

One of the Conservatives that Conservatives hate is David Frum.  A former Bush advisor and Wall Street Journal editorial writer, Mr. Frum has from time to time tried to be reasonable and address reality.  Although he supports many conservative positions, it seems he tries to do so without hate, something that Conservatives just cannot stand.  Modern Conservatism without hatred is not Modern Conservatism.

After a death in his family Mr. Frum has decided to scale back his public commentary.

So it's been a rough month for my family and me. It's been a rough month for the blog too. I'm well aware that people come here to read about public affairs, not personal losses.

Unfortunately, family and personal matters must claim my attention for some time to come. I won't be able to write as much or as well as required to produce a blog worth reading. I've long been a proponent of term limits for pundits and columnists. At least for the time being, my term has expired.

 and that is not a good thing because sometimes he has good thoughts.  And though it would be insensitive to criticize him at this time, the following comments in his farewell post require everyone to say “Huh?”

This summer seems an especially propitious time for a hiatus. As Ross Douthat has perceptively observed, the cause of conservative reform has gained increasing coherence and force since the 2012 election. More and more good work is being done by more and more people.

What Mr. Frum is apparently doing is simply ignoring much of the reality of what has happened since the last election.  Intolerant conservatives such as Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have taken over the stage, and produced a great deal of political invective.  In Virginia Republicans are turning so radical they may even lose an election to a Democratic ticket headed by Terry McAuliffe, a man who is a non-entity as a politician.

In the Congress the Republicans seems so enthralled with investigations that they refuse to govern.  Conservatives are leading the charge to involve the United States in another war in the Middle East, and want the U. S. to support terrorist based radical Islamic Groups in Syria in the name of trying to end the carnage in that country.  In the coming months Conservatives will block immigration reform, they will try to make the U. S. default on its debts by trying to block raising the debt ceiling, they will want to pass a Farm Bill that increases aid to wealthy corporate farms and cuts food and nutrition assistance for low income people, they will want to increase the interest rate on student loans and a whole bunch of other things.  Mr. Frum sees none of this because he does not want to see any of this.

It is okay for Mr. Frum to ignore some of the radical elements in his party, Democrats do the same thing.  But to argue that somehow Conservatism is doing good work is to ignore the entire movement, where it is going, and how ugly a road (see homophobic rants, for example) it is taking to get there.

And as for Mr. Douthat and his ideas that conservative reform is gaining “coherence and force”, well we will take a look at his thoughts in another post.  We don't expect to find much.