Former-Bush speech writer blasts GOP in new OpEd saying 'I see what I cannot support' though costing him some friends
Criticized: David Frum, columnist and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, writes Sunday that despite being a long-time conservative, he has lately only seen a party he cannot support
A former-speech writer for the George W. Bush administration and acclaimed Republican 'all my adult life,' is turning the tables on his political party in a reprimanding op ed published Sunday.
David Frum is spelling out his take on the modern-day Republican party in New York Magazine using the title words, 'The GOP's Lost Sense of Reality.'
‘I voted for John McCain in 2008, and I have strongly criticized the major policy decisions of the Obama administration,' Mr Frum writes, 'But as I contemplate my party and my movement in 2011, I see things I simply cannot support.’
Mr Frum's op-ed piece comes one day before the so-called 'super committee's failure to cut 1.2 trillion in federal spending over ten years Monday, and it's an issue that doesn't escape notice by the prominent, and lately-often controversial writer - among both sides of the line.
'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,' he writes, referring to the summer's near-government default when party negotiations were crucial and collapsing.
The super committee composed of six Republicans and six Democrats these past few weeks, however, failed in their negotiations among with both sides blaming the other in their willingness to cooperate and ultimately cave.
Speech writer: Mr Frum's previous work as a speech writer to then-President George W. Bush is described as haunting to him, despite having red-blooded, conservative ideals
Arguments over tax increases to the wealthy, among other proposed government program cuts, composed a majority of the roadblocks among the members.
Similarly, Mr Frum writes his own frustration over that one single issue narrowing in on his own party to blame in the group neither meeting fruition or conclusion.
'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.'
Failure: U.S. President Barack Obama speaks after a congressional 'super committee on Monday failed to reach a deal on reducing federal government deficit, which Mr Frum attributes to the Republicans
'Tsking' his red winged party he writes, '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 per cent.
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.'
The former Fox News pundit and writer to The Wall Street journal, Forbes Magazine and the Manhattan and American Enterprise Institutes, had been fired or slowly blacklisted from the named media organizations for speaking out, candidly on his criticism of the party or his opposition.
Victim: A member of the Super Committee Senator John Kerry is interviewed following the group's failure, which Mr Frum believes is the victim of one tight focus on tax cuts for the highest earners
Abuse: Republican Senator from Ohio and Super Committee member Rob Portman is interviewed Monday evening on the group's failure Mr Frum says was the result of his party's abuse of a filibuster
With his Fox News removal, he says it was over a piece he wrote in Newsweek about the Republicans conceding too much power to radio broadcaster and conservative mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh, warning that they would come to regret it.
'Until that point, I’d been a frequent guest on Fox News, but thenceforward some kind of fatwa was laid down upon me,' Mr Frum confesses.
But he says his intent were warnings, offerings of advice, help even, for a party he claims is succumbing to fear mongering and radicalization to harvest political growth after a described second Pearl Harbor, second Great Crash, second Vietnam 'wedged in between' and now a second Great Depression.
Harmful: Mr Frum says he was a frequent Fox News contributor before writing an article that said republican attention on radio-host Rush Limbaugh will lead to regret for their party
'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,'' Mr Frum wrote in an example.
'If we say something often enough,' Mr Frum continues, 'we come to believe it.'
But Frum, a prominent and long-known Republican in his line of work, appears to take hits from both sides of the party line, however.
Once named by former-MSNBC presenter Keith Olbermann as the 'Worst Person in the World,' and yet claiming Fox News was designed to work for the Republicans yet the Republicans now work for Fox in a previous interview with ABC's Nightline, Mr Frum may lack a clear welcome ticket by either party.
Worst Person: Criticized by both sides, Mr Frum had been named the 'World's Worst Person' by former-MSNBC presenter Keith Olbermann
'I refuse to believe that I am the only Republican who
feels this way,' Mr Frum writes, hoping his recent lone-wolf ideals for the GOP party really aren't.
Yet Mr Frum ticks through the Republican candidates before he's nearly out of them, shy a few.
'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,' Mr Frum criticizes popular face-plates for the GOP nomination in his piece.
'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,' he continues.
In his written introduction to NYMag Sunday he claims he once said to his wife - following his fire from a think tank he had spent his last seven years - that 'the great thing about an experience like this is that you learn who your
friends really are.'
Which she reportedly answered to him, 'I was happier when I didn’t know.'
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