antiwar | David "Axis
of Evil" Frum first gained notoriety as one of George W. Bush’s more
polemical speechwriters. During the run-up to the Iraq war, he was all over
the media, agitating for the invasion and viciously denouncing anyone who questioned
the wisdom of such a course. In an infamous article
for National Review, entitled "Unpatriotic
Conservatives," he attacked those conservatives and libertarians who
counseled caution, smearing Robert Novak, Pat Buchanan, Llewellyn Rockwell,
Samuel Francis, Thomas Fleming, Scott McConnell, Joe Sobran, Charley Reese,
Jude Wanniski, Eric Margolis, Taki Theodoracopulos, and myself as, variously,
"defeatist," "conspiracy theorists," and "anti-Semitic."
Here is Frum, in March of 2003:
"They have made common cause with the left-wing and Islamist antiwar movements
in this country and in Europe. They deny and excuse terror. They espouse a potentially
self-fulfilling defeatism. They publicize wild conspiracy theories. And some
of them explicitly yearn for the victory of their nation’s enemies."
Frum went on for at least three thousand words, attacking his enemies as traitors
and terrorist-sympathizers. It was all lies, of course, and I answered them
here. Yet now we see
Frum has reinvented himself as a "moderate" Republican, and has carved
out a new career for himself as the kind of conservative who gets invited on
NPR
and CNN to snark at his former comrades. In a recent
interview with Politico, he was asked: "What do you know now
that you wish someone had told you 10 years ago?" His answer:
"That the Iraq War would be a disaster. Come to think of it, they did
tell me."
In the accompanying photo, Frum is sitting on a patio somewhere, smiling and
petting his golden retriever. Who, me worry? Such a blithe spirit,
that Frum, who is wearing white pants with no socks. Deaf to the bitter cries
of the dead and the maimed, not to mention those he accused of treason, he puts
his feet up in a pose of summery relaxation. The memory of his hysterical smears
– "They began by hating the neoconservatives. They came to hate their party
and this president. They have finished by hating their country" – seems
to have dissipated into the stratosphere. He’s put it out of his mind.
This is the New David Frum, the moderate, measured, wonkish would-be charmer,
who only loses his soft edges when the subject of foreign policy is raised.
After a well-publicized break
with the American Enterprise Institute over his supposed opposition to Republican
orthodoxy, he also broke with National Review, where he had once taken
on the role of ideological enforcer, and underwent a makeover. He set up the
"Frum Forum" as the online
headquarters of the Frummian Republicans, a small but extremely self-satisfied
gaggle of online bloviators, who sneered at the Tea Party and cheered as Frum
announced the GOP was in danger of being taken over by anti-government "extremists."
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