Frum Says Donors Forced Him Out

By GottaLaff

David Frum had the nerve-- the nerve!-- to say that the health care reform bill would be the Republicans' Waterloo. He also popped out with a little nugget about the GOP being run by Fox, not vice versa.

Of course that was stating the obvious. ClusterFox virtually owns the party, promotes the Tea Baggers, and has many GOP Congress members cowering.

Frum's abrupt termination from the American Enterprise Institute came after her wrote a CNN piece about said GOP Waterloo, as well as an appearance on MSNBC where he repeated the point.

In other words, a policy of no compromising, going the radical route, would lead to a bad outcome.

It sure did for him.

And for the party. The GOP has been undermined by the word No, by the open hostility to reason, and by subservience to a Tee Vee network that spews extreme views.

Of course, we've been saying this for years.

Here's what Frum says:

David Frum told Mike Allen last night that "he believes his axing from his $100,000-a-year 'resident scholar' gig at the conservative American Enterprise Institute was related to donor pressure following his viral blog post arguing Republicans had suffered a devastating, generational 'Waterloo' in their loss to President Obama on health reform."

Said Frum: "There's a lot about the story I don't really understand. But the core of the story is the kind of economic pressure that intellectual conservatives are under... the elite isn't leading anymore. It's trapped. Partly because of the desperate economic situation in the country, what were once the leading institutions of conservatism are constrained."

The party has boxed themselves into a corner, just as David Corn said last night on Countdown. All that groveling and catering to the far right is not good for more reasonable members, nor is it good for the country.

There needs to be real debate, honest opinion differences for a democracy to work properly. When party leaders shout "Armageddon!" and do nothing but stand against things, this is what happens.

Well, Frum can always write another book.

Cheney defends torture. Daughter defends Cheney (VIDEO)

By GottaLaff



Like father, like daughter (and speaking of daughter, read this in response to the Pincus article she references):

Next Thursday, former Vice President Cheney will give a speech at the American Enterprise Institute making a global case for the Bush administration's use of torture and indefinite detainment of suspected terrorists as core parts of its War on Terror.

Here's AEI's description of the event ... [...]

Amid claims that the interrogation methods amount to torture and that those who approved them should be prosecuted or censured, it is clear that we know surprisingly little about the scope and efficacy of the Bush administration's national security policy. Many questions linger: What type of information did enhanced interrogation methods yield? Were lives saved as a result? Could that intelligence have been effectively collected by other means? How effective was the terrorist surveillance program in detecting the threat of al Qaeda and its operatives in the post-9/11 period? Will inhibiting these procedures cost more American lives?

On May 21, former vice president Dick Cheney will speak at AEI to address these critical issues and provide a blueprint for keeping America safe in the future.

It is absolutely vital that we hang on every word that the Nation of Dick utters, because he will finally provide the long-sought answers we've all been looking for. And who would ever doubt his word? His credibility can only be surpassed by that of... well, Rumsfeld, Bush, Gonzales, Libby, Rove....