I’m not sure how I feel about this. David Frum and Robert Reich have been doing a radio show called Marketplace for years. David Frum has resigned from his position because he no longer agrees with the Republican Party on a host of issues, including economic policy. His reasoning is that the show is supposed to have a right/left format, and if he isn’t representing the right’s point of view, there’s something wrong with that. Here’s how he puts it:
When speaking wholly and declaredly for myself, I can shrug off (admittedly – with some regret) the distance I have drifted from old comrades. When I’m called on to do point-counterpoint, I can’t deny that there is something false about the situation. The many listeners to Marketplace who share the consensus conservative view are entitled to hear somebody articulate that view as well as it can be articulated. The listeners who do not share the consensus conservative view would benefit even more from a strong presentation of that alternative opinion.
If I can’t or won’t do that job, then I should make way for somebody who can and will.
Accordingly, I have resigned my role on the Marketplace program, nominating potential replacements from closer to the present GOP consensus. I may not agree with that consensus, but I cannot deny its existence and importance.
Imagine if Joe Lieberman refused to be cast opposite a Republican because he doesn’t represent the left anymore on foreign policy. We often complain about how the progressive point of view isn’t heard in media. We’ll see Evan Bayh debating Jon Kyl, as if that represented the political divide in this country. From that standpoint, I can understand how Frum feels like a phony.
But why do we have to have programs with such a black and white format? First of all, I have never gotten the sense that Robert Reich shies away from making unorthodox comments or criticizing the leadership of the Democratic Party. I never listened to the show, but I think it’s more interesting to hear from thoughtful people who aren’t just going to parrot the party line.
Yet, being more interesting cannot be allowed. So, some hack will replace Frum to parrot the party line. I understand why the right pushed Frum to quit this job. We’d get annoyed under the same circumstances in reverse. Just think about the heat Alan Colmes took for sticking with Sean Hannity for all those years.
Still, this is no way to have a political debate.
This is the the hot, distilled core of Frumism. He and every other conservative faux intellectual wanker – George Will, Bill Kristol, RIP Bill Buckley, etc. – absolutely depend on this format to legitimize their bad-faith arguments. He’s laying a burnt offering at the feet of the golden statue of Leo Strauss that he fellates every morning.
In a more pure world, the Right & Left ceased having a debate years ago, about the time Fox opened its doors. Instead, the concept of opinion debating filled the airwaves of the Right.
Frum’s departure says more to me about how literally muddled the Right is. They’ve been saying NO for so long now that they’ve left themselves no room to move anything for this country forward. That box is empty. And Frum’s lighter side would like to push working policies; good, bad or indifferent, but he simply can’t identify any.
I heard this interview driving home from work the other day. Frum, to me, sounded defeated. Being one of the last sane (sort of)Republicans, he just couldn’t agree with their current fiscal policies. I sort of felt sorry for him. I wonder, if he will come to the conclusion (one that most progressives have come to) that the Republicans are deliberately trying to sabotage the economy for political gain? Frum, still considers himself very much a Republican. He had a post saying as much the other day on Frumforum. (sorry no link). I wonder, if that will change if he realizes that his party is trashing the economy on purpose.
I’m annoyed by this because Frum is still a conservative. You listen to his opinions on things and they’re actually conservative. Having him opposite Robert Reich is fine – in fact it may still lean a bit rightward because I don’t think Reich’s economics are as liberal as Frum’s are conservative. But whatever – folks will disagree on that kind of judgment.
The problem is that the Republican Party is no longer conservative. If they can be classified on a right-left spectrum at all they’re reactionaries, but more to the point they’re “do whatever it takes to make the Democrats/Obama fail” – which is not a traditional classification of political behavior in Political Science (unless my PolySci profs were poor ones, or I slept through those lectures – could have happened I guess).
Frum’s basic ideology hasn’t changed as far as I can tell – he hasn’t had a big epiphany moment like David Brock did where he realized that he was a scumbag and decided to make amends. Frum’s problem is that the Republicans have moved off the deep end and he isn’t crazy enough to follow them. That doesn’t mean that he isn’t conservative – it means he isn’t an idiot.
On the other hand, by insisting on not being an idiot, Frum has essentially taken himself out of the debate. You begin to understand why so many conservative pundits are forced to continually say stupid (and stupider) things. You either speak stupid or you are silenced.
It doesn’t have to be that way – they could be vocal critics instead of giving up.
Frum has chosen to give up instead of being an honest conservative voice and being willing to criticize both the reactionaries and the liberals. That’s not good – if he really wants to be the “sane conservative” then giving up a position where he’s expected to present the conservative position because he no longer toes the Republican line is basically giving up to the stupid and the crazy. He might as well shoot conservatism in the head himself.
Of course the very idea that David “Axis of Evil” Frum could be an “honest conservative voice” reduces me to sobs, and is another indication of just how stupid the discourse in this country is.
You stole my thunder. I was going to point out that Frum was the one who coined the term “Axis of Evil” for Bush, and if that’s what we consider sane from the Republicans, and he’s too sane for them, then we’re all in a world of hurt. Of course we already know we’re in a world of hurt, but this is just another example of how ridiculous the right is getting.
I can see why Frum would quit under the circumstances. It’s not so much that his voice isn’t interesting or thought-provoking as a relatively old-guard conservative, it’s more because as an old-guard conservative, his voice is irrelevant. It’d be like a radio show featuring Dennis Kucinich debating Ron Paul. A certain segment of the audience would enjoy it, but at the end of the day it would be a moot exercise because neither of their opinions carry any weight with the political establishment. Unicorn vs Pegasus.
That said, I wish Reich had more pull with the Democratic establishment than he does. Maybe it comes to the same thing having him debate Frum on the radio.
Frum is definitely still a conservative, but he has moved to the left since the economy crashed. He has re-looked a lot of his “free market” positions, and has said that he was wrong. So yes, he is still a conservative, but he has moved left.
Whether that’s a genuine shift or not remains to be seen.
It’s not as if it’s hard to find programs where you can hear people articulating the consensus conservative view. In fact, I hear there’s a whole cable network devoted to such programming.
Or is Frum saying nobody on Fox, or any of the legions of right-wing radio hosts, is articulating the view as well as it can be articulated? I doubt that. The consensus conservative view itself doesn’t make any sense, so why should any articulation of it?
I would say the consensus conservative view deserves the same treatment on Marketplace as intelligent design deserves in biology classes. Creationists say intelligent design should be taught along with evolution, and I actually do agree. It’s just that it only takes about a half hour to explain why intelligent design is unscientific garbage.