October 13, 2011 - 5:44 pm
In his most recent column, conservative/moderate/modernizer/No Labels David Frum considers the future of the Tea Party in light of this irony: “After three years of battling against ObamaCare, the most likely winner of the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 is the author of the Massachusetts health care plan that inspired ObamaCare’s basic mechanism.”
To Frum, this is “as if the Democrats of the 1960s had responded to the anti-war protests by nominating Robert McNamara for president.”
A fine analogy, except for the fact that, despite serving as Defense Secretary for a Democratic president, Robert McNamara was a Republican.
I’m not much of a David Frum fan but I think that may have been his point.
Good point.
Still, the 1968 Democratic nominee for president ended up being Hubert Humphrey, a pro-war Democrat and LBJ’s vice president.
The DNC wouldn’t have nominated a Republican. I realize I’m nitpicking on a very literal level, but hey, it’s Frum so you have to have some fun!
No, the point might be that nominating Romney would be the same as nominating a Democrat.
That goes for Perry too, and probably Cain. None of these idiots are going to help the situation. An Obama (or any liberal) vs some “Republican” Who is Not Ron Paul is a non-vote from me. No more lesser of two evils. It’s not lesser, they’re all the McSame! I’m not voting for some NWOist commie fraud no matter what kind of extremist idiot they kowtow to.
Really? I mean REALLY?
“Really? I mean REALLY?”
Yeah, ‘fraid so. There’s a reason I call them paultroons.
Well, good luck finding your perfect candidate. Tell Diogenes “Hi” for me.
+1
The problem is, this tool probably wouldn’t know Diogenes if he walked up and offered the tool a Starbucks.
To be clear, what you are saying is that you prefer Obama’s re-election to the election of an imperfect Republican. We still have sufficient vestiges of a free country that you can take that position if you wish, but it seems nonsensical to me.
““After three years of battling against ObamaCare, the most likely winner of the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 is the author of the Massachusetts health care plan that inspired ObamaCare’s basic mechanism.””
says who? beltway bsers.
Is there any chance that tens of millions of people like my family don’t ever answer unidentified telephone calls and are thus unpollable? But we vote every single time. Perhaps we’ll see on 6 November 2012.
I get it, but I think the game is rigged. I doubt seriously if average conservatives in this country were asked to pick a representative that Mitt Romney’s name would even be mentioned. If he is a conservative, I am a flying reindeer.
Cain comes closest to being a decent choice, but he isnt part of the political establishment, so I doubt he will get it.
so frum is a supposed centrist that spends most of his time poking the right. how exactly is he any different than andrew sullivan?
The difference is that Sully does most of his poking right up the middle.
Oh, stop. If I didn’t say it somebody else would have.
NPR-MarketPlace had Frum explain his departure from the Thursday slot – alternated w/ Reich. His basic point was that he didn’t represent the right-pole of the left/right positions. I’ll give him this much, he understood that much about reality.
I hate to confuse the issue with facts but MA was going to have universal health care no matter what the governor wanted. The vast majority of MAer’s wanted cradle to grave health care. The only reason the system partially runs is that the governor managed to deflect some of the most outlandish parts of it.
Unfortunately for the governor he has to be the leader of all citizens in his state. If the people want something it is his job to see that it happens (as much as possible).
Sooooooo. Should the pres. and congress do what they want or what we want? It’s a question that each succeeding generation will struggle with.
Dude. Ever hear of a veto?
I’ve got no problem with RomneyCare because it afflicts Massachusetts (where I’ll never live). The U.S. Constitution preserves police powers for the 50 states while denying them to Congress, which provides federalism’s central pillar – the stake through ObamaCare’s heart. Therefore, if a state government wants to experiment with statism, it should do so. The people will suffer as statism slowly and ruinously fails, but they’ll be free to vote against it with their feet as well as at the ballot box. Will the last person leaving Detroit please turn out the lights and post my absentee ballot?
What’s more, I believe Romney when he promises that he’ll repeal and otherwise frustrate ObamaCare. His position on ObamaCare is consistent with his record because it respects our federalist system. I oppose RomneyCare along with its individual mandate on conservative grounds, but it doesn’t offend anyone’s constitutional rights because it’s a constitutionally (but not morally) legitimate exercise of state power. Therefore, Romney’s main weakness is that he has in past exploited the gap between what’s constitutionally legitimate and morally legitimate in the conservative view. That’s a problem unless he convinces enough of us conservatives that he’ll work to narrow that gap as president.
“I’ve got no problem with RomneyCare because it afflicts Massachusetts (where I’ll never live).”
Would you have a problem with it if, despite not living there, you helped to pay for MA’s RomneyCare? Because you do – half of the money for it comes from the federal government – aka, your tax dollars.
Thing is, Romney is the type of candidate you’d think Frum would support. He was on medved and wouldn’t answer whether he was going to vote for Obama or not.
To Frum, this is “as if the Democrats of the 1960s had responded to the anti-war protests by nominating Robert McNamara for president.”
Meanwhile Obama is faltering and approaching his LBJ 1968 moment. Obama’s solution is to go for class warfare and many Democrats go further and urge him to embrace the Occupy street rabble, which is like LBJ linking arms with the SDS.
Whatever problems the GOP has pale to insignificance in comparison.
Frum has been at war with Republican conservatives for years now. His current enemy is the Tea Party, not Barack Obama, so this bit of snideness about Romney comes as no surprise.
I do have a problem with paying for RomneyCare as well as an ideological problem with it. I oppose federal tax dollars propping up statist programs in blue states. Let the blue states pay for their own sins, i.e. let blue state serfs follow their jobs to Texas.
That said, it seems that all of the GOP candidates support Medicare block grants, which are no-strings-attached federal dollars transfered to states to spend on state-run Medicare programs. To the extent that repealing Medicare at the federal level is politically impossible, block grants are preferable to the current strings-attached transfers. Such transfers comprise RomneyCare’s source of federal funding, and they’d proceed with our without it.
Frum’s premise is flawed from the start. He talks about the various conservative candidates, their missteps and flagging momentum, and projects a straight line from here to Election Day. Never mind that Romney’s barely been tested, that he’s tried and failed in the past, and that he faces a restive conservative base that’s far more likely to push back against him than it did the last time around.
Romney looks good right now because he’s a polished professional, with an experience campaign team to help him avoid mistakes and a lot of political insider pull to help him organize and raise funds. The Tea Party remains a bunch of disorganized novices, and so of course it struggles in the national media circus. That doesn’t change the fact that the Tea Party is huge, and energetic, and tasted enough blood in 2010 that they’re up for another round.
There’s a reason why Frum, and the MSM in general, want to crown Romney the winner at this point: they know it’s only a matter of time before he flames out, and we in the hoi-polloi pick a true reformer to shake up the comfortably corrupt machine inside the Beltway.
Keep wishing, Frum. You’ll delude nobody who isn’t already delusional.
There is also scant evidence that Obamacare was “inspired” by MA health care in the first place. The basic premise of each is the same, but I don’t recall anyone in the administration calling out Massachussetts as a model for their legislation. Hell, they didn’t even know what was in their own bill.
There’s a whale of a difference between Obamacare and Romneycare in that what MA decides to do to itself w/ re to healthcare is on the state alone. ( All states get federal money, what other states do with it is not our business. ) What Obama/Pelosi/Reid have done is override the /federal/ constitution to apply an individual mandate across the /whole/ country. Something that was nationally opposed, fiscally foolish, and clearly ( to me anyway ) unconstitutional.
I don’t like Romneycare and hold Romney accountable for it. However no one is claiming it violated the state constitution.
“McNamara was a Republican.”
So what? He was also the worst SecDef by far since before WW2. The Tea Party came into being because of Obamacare. Nominating a leftist “government health care” Republican is spitting in their face and the recipe for a quick resuscitation of the left agenda.
Frum’s point is spot on.
I guess you never heard of Louis Johnson, SecDef under Truman, who damn near scuttled the U.S. Navy and wanted to abolish the Marine Corps, too. He supported the Air Force’s insistence that the U.S. should rely entirely on the Bomb (carried only by AF bombers). The resultant criminal neglect of everything else was directly responsible for the initial debacle in Korea.
I don’t understand the objection to Frum’s metaphor. Frum is saying that Romney is a traitor to the party. His metaphor matches his point.
If you buy the notion that the GOP hates Obamacare, and that Romney is one of the first architects of an Obamacare-like system, then yes, it’s the same as an anti-war Democrat party nominating a pro-war person. The fact that McNamara is a Republican makes Frum’s point even more damaging.
If, however, you feel that comment #13 above is correct — “there’s a whale of a difference between Obamacare and Romneycare” — then you can argue Frum’s point on those grounds. But Frum’s analogy still seems sound to me, at least inasmuch as it makes the point he wants to make.
Have I read it wrong…?
Unlike many commenters above, I agree with Robert. Frum’s counterfactual analogy is fundamentally incoherent, both historically and politically. Go read Frum’s column, if you can stand it. He’s not saying what the commenters think he’s saying.
Let’s begin with where Frum stands on the Tea Party’s influence on Republican, conservative and American politics. He considers it baleful, at best, and malign, at worst. He judges that influence, moreover, to be wildly overstated and waning.
In addition, where, oh where, does Frum stand on the nomination contest? Surprise, surprise, he’s a Mitt supporter.
The article turns on two axioms, one explicit, the other planted. First, he asserts that Mitt Romney will be the nominee. Like Anonymous, I consider this proposition highly debatable in that we’ve had not one itty-bitty caucus, nary a teeny-tiny primary. And throughout all the debate folderol, no matter how smoothly our Mitt performs, he never breaks 25% in any poll; the Not Romney vote is consistent and overwhelming.
Second, Frum assumes that the Tea Party will have no influence on selecting the nominee. He strongly suggests that the Tea Party move on to other ventures, or perhaps, dare we dream, out of politics entirely. His whole essay revolves around how they might redirecting their ebbing power.
This is not merely debatable, it’s absurd wish fulfillment, on multiple levels. The Tea Party is not wait he thinks it is. It is simply the citizen action wing of grassroots conservatism, which arose from our fiscal and economic catastrophe. Grassroots conservatives will have a huge, if not decisive, influence on the nomination. The tea party may significantly direct grassroots conservative support to one or two candidates. It certainly did so during the 2009 & 2010 electoral contests. Why couldn’t it — wouldn’t it — mobilize votes and contributions for preferred candidates in the coming series of statewide primaries and caucuses?
David can pray as fervently as he likes for grassroots conservatives to just disappear. Not gonna happen. He’s more likely to return to his native Canada, then we are to abandon politics.
Well said. A lot of commenters above seem to believe Frum thinks Romney betrayed the Tea Party, when in fact Frum is quite glad the Tea Party is being portrayed.
As to the historical analogy, not only was McNamara a Republican, and thus couldn’t have been nominated by Democrats, but the Democrats ended up nominated a pro-war candidate *anyway* (LBJ’s VP, Hubert Humphrey) in 1968, despite the protests. The analogy fails totally.
That should be “betrayed,” not “portrayed.”
I’d give him a pass on McNamara. I didn’t know that, and I was alive then. (14 years old and interested in politics. Frum was a six-year-old Canadian.)
And I think he has a point.
1) MassCare was an inspiration for ObamaCare – we’ve learned that Obama consulted Romney ex-staffers when constructing it.
2) There is intense opposition to ObamaCare among Republicans, especially the Tea Party.
3) Romney is the favorite for the nomination.
That’s a problem, and mocking him for obscure error won’t make it go away.
Actually, McNamara was a Democrat.
He registered as a Republican in 1940 because his father was one. That year he voted for FDR and in 1948, he voted for Truman. Not sure how he voted in 1952/56.
Not until he moved to Washington in December 1960 to become JFK’s SecDef did McNamara change his registration to Democrat. He voted for and contributed money to JFK. In 1964, LBJ flirted with making him his running mate. In May 1968, McNamara made TV commercials endorsing RFK (in the Indiana primary, I believe).