Conservative pundit David Frum is taking time off from his column at the Daily Beast, and on his way out of the door, he decided to drop a truth bomb on Republicans. He did it in just one paragraph.
Frum pointed out that the “scandal” at the IRS is an agency scandal, not a White House scandal, and urged Republicans to stop trying to destroy government because they would need it to work when they take the White House again.
I am going to break this one paragrahp down point by point. Via the Daily Beast, Frum acknowledged that Republicans/conservatives have engaged in Total War on President Obama, “Still … conservative reformers should admit, if only to themselves, the harm that has been done by the politics of total war over the past five years.”
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Frum pointed out that even though the GOP won’t tolerate this being said out loud, secretly, they must admit that Barack Obama is not the worst president of all time, “I appreciate that conservative reformers must pay lip-service to shibboleths about Barack Obama being the worst president of all time, who won’t rest until he has snuffed out the remains of constitutional liberty, etc. etc. Dissent too much from party orthodoxy, and you find yourself outside the party altogether.”
Frum tried to warn conservatives that as they deliberately shut down Congress for the next 18 months hoping for an impeachment crisis, they just might destroy the political institutions that form our government, “Now Republicans are working themselves into a frenzy that will paralyze Congress for the next 18 months at least, and could well lead to an impeachment crisis… There will be a Republican president again someday, and that president will need American political institutions to work. Republicans also lose as those institutions degenerate.”
Frum isn’t buying the IRS scandal as sold and packaged by Darrell Issa. Or maybe he can just afford to say it like it is now. Either way, Frum let the cat out the bag that the IRS ‘scandal’ is at most an agency scandal, not a White House scandal, “As it becomes clear that the IRS story is an agency scandal, not a White House scandal, conservative reformers need to be ready to do their part to apply the brakes and turn the steering wheel.”
Of course, Frum won’t admit that the real scandal is that many conservative nonprofits have been operating like PACs, and that the dark money is ruining our political system.
It’s sad that Republicans and conservatives will not tolerate this kind of truth telling, even from their own side. It’s obvious to anyone who pays attention that they overreached in their desperate and ridiculous attacks on Obama. It’s obvious that all they have really done is swing the door open on Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) criminal past, and reminded the country of exactly how noxious Nixon, a Republican, really was.
Each party needs people willing to tell the truth to the base, even though ideologues will rarely take it well. The problem with the Republican Party is that the inmates are running the asylum. The ideologues are actually in office, gumming up government out of petty and desperate spite.
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