…a conservative is befuddled. This is from David Frum, ousted from AEI for not “towing the party line”:
I can’t shrug off this flight from reality and responsibility as somebody else’s problem. I belonged to this movement; I helped to make the mess. People may very well say: Hey, wait a minute, didn’t you work in the George W. Bush administration that disappointed so many people in so many ways? What qualifies you to dispense advice to anybody else?
Fair question. I am haunted by the Bush experience, although it seems almost presumptuous for someone who played such a minor role to feel so much unease. The people who made the big decisions certainly seem to sleep well enough. Yet there is also the chance for something positive to come out of it all. True, some of my colleagues emerged from those years eager to revenge themselves and escalate political conflict: “They send one of ours to the hospital, we send two of theirs to the morgue.” I came out thinking, I want no more part of this cycle of revenge. For the past half-dozen years, I have been arguing that we conservatives need to follow a different course. And it is this argument that has led so many of my friends to demand, sometimes bemusedly, sometimes angrily, “What the hell happened to you?” I could fire the same question back: “Never mind me—what happened toyou?”
In such a “revenge seeking” environment nothing can really work since any initiative will be torpedoed by one party or the other or, as in the “failure” of the “super committee”, by both!
That was a good article and explanation of much that sometimes seems odd beyond belief. Plus it goes to show that the only solutions anyone might consider are those generated outside the mindsets of either party.