TW: Challenging to find but they exist. I certainly do not agree with everything Frum says (I mean he is a Republican so the hurdle must be set fairly low) but at least he makes one think. If more Republicans adopted his less strident, less ideological approach then they might actually accelerate their progression back to electoral strength.
From Economist (Democracy in America blog aka DIA):
DIA: The other week you wrote, "Conservatives stopped taking governance seriously—and so Americans ceased to trust conservatives in government." Now in opposition, what can Republicans do to win back this trust? (And are they doing it?)
Mr Frum: Republicans must do two things now: a) provide examples of effective governance at the state level and b) articulate a clear and convincing alternative to the Obama policies at the federal level.
We are seeing some good results from a: the examples set by Jon Huntsman in Utah, Charlie Crist in Florida and Bobby Jindal in Louisiana head the list. As to b, however, the results are not so good. On the $800 billion stimulus and now on the multi-trillion-budget, Republicans have made clear what they oppose, but not what they favour. Rather than offer a grab bag of tax measures as our substitute stimulus, we should have rallied to a payroll tax holiday: a clear and powerful single alternative idea. Instead of fighting the science on climate change, we should champion nuclear power against the Obama administration's preference for costly, subsidised wind and solar power.
DIA: Is today's Republican Party too beholden to social conservatives?
Mr Frum: Today's Republican party is too beholden to factions generally [TW: losing parties always fret about this, when in power those groups are their base, when out they are a chain around the neck]. No social conservative has ever done the party as much harm as those Republicans who kept insisting against the facts that the Bush economy was "the greatest story never told"[TW: he is referring to Larry Kudlow et al.]. The greatest problem Republicans faced in 2006 and 2008 was not Iraq but the stagnation in personal incomes since 2000—and yet we refused even to acknowledge the fact, never mind rethink policy to deal with it.
At the same time, we have evidence (like this Muhlenberg College survey of the half-million plus Pennsylvania Republicans who reaffiliated as Democrats between 2004 and 2008) that a perception of our party as excessively religious and sectarian is doing us tremendous harm.
DIA: Let's look ahead ten years. What positions that are inarguable to today's Republicans, will future Republican candidates leave by the wayside?
Mr Frum: Ten years from now, Republicans will have left behind today's dismissive attitudes on environmental questions. They will be immersed—as all Americans will be—in the problem of how to pay for a baby boomer retirement for which too little provision was made when it would have made a difference, back in the 1990s.
Oh, and they will also have rejected the open immigration policies of George Bush and John McCain. In the years ahead of slow recovery, long debt payback, and increased social welfare demand, the addition of millions of low-skilled workers to the US labour pool in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s will look at least as unwise as any of the financial errors of the time. [TW: I hope he is wrong on this, is he really advocating slamming the borders shut]
DIA: Conservatism has a proud tradition of intellectual thinkers—Burke, Hayek, Von Mises, Friedman, Buckley, etc. Who do you credit with carrying on that tradition today? Whose ideas do you value among today's thinkers?
Mr Frum:...As a result, much of what passes for intellectual life on the right is a product for local consumption only, like those Argentine-made television sets that could exist only behind the old Peronist tariff walls. Unlike Hayek and Friedman, it has no impact at all on the thinking of those not already committed to the ideology from which it emerges. It's a sorry situation, and it has very ominous real world consequences: It means that conservatism as a body of ideas will not attract the best minds among the young and open, in the way that it was often able to do in previous generations.
DIA: People often talk about a Republican collapse, but what do you think the Democrats are doing right?
Mr Frum: Democrats in Congress have said "No" to organized labour on its demand to eliminate secret ballots before union certification. To date, the Obama administration has brushed off demands from its angrier constituencies to impose some kind of legal sanction on those in the Bush administration who made national security decisions with which Democrats have disagreed. They have not acted precipitately in Iraq, they have not granted a blank check to the auto companies, and they have shown impressive open-mindedness and adaptability in addressing the crisis in the banking sector—even if they have been awfully slow to arrive at a credible final policy. And, of course, President Obama himself has shown great calm, reassurance, and dignity in office. The "reset" of tone in US foreign relations is a great service both to America and the world.
Those are all good things. Not sure they're worth $800 billion in wasteful stimulus spending though. "
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