SocraticGadfly: David Frum nails the future of conservativism

November 22, 2011

David Frum nails the future of conservativism

Not only is it older, whiter, and less educated than Americans on average, it's also more dependent on federal funding transfers in many ways than are the "welfare freeloading minorities." That's all part of a long Frum piece telling why he's become ever more of a conservative apostate. That said, to consider George W. Bush a non-crazy conservative shows just how far conservativism had fallen already in 2000. That, of course, is not something Frum wants to address. Nor does he mention that a fair amount of the old, white folks, or at least their emotional first cousins, aren't 60-something, or 70-something, Nebraska Republicans, but current, or former, Pennsylvania Democrats of the same age.

I agree that a more intelligent conservativism is needed in America. So, too, is a less fearful, more affirming, more new-thinking (and NOT in a neoliberal way) liberalism. What is NOT needed is Jon Chait, in a bookender to Frum's piece, being a rank Obamiac.

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