Canadian Pantywaist Dribbles "Rush is Wrong"

David Frum, who sabotaged PJBuchanan's 1988 campaign against Global Bush (I), doesn't like Limbaugh.

It's pretty clear that Frum has nothing substantial to say when he begins his attack on Limbaugh thus:

A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as "losers." With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence...

Once Frum actually gets around to argumentation, he doesn't like Rush's 4-word take on Obama:

"I hope he fails."

At least Frum is honest enough to print the rest of that statement:

...everybody thinks it's outrageous to say. Look, even my staff: "Oh, you can't do that." Why not? Why is it any different, what's new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what's gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here … I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: "Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails." Somebody's gotta say it

Frumfretting over the non-nuanced 4 words. Elephants, tigers, O My!

Then there are the polls.

Forty-one percent of independents have an unfavorable opinion of him, according to the new NEWSWEEK Poll. Limbaugh is especially off-putting to women: his audience is 72 percent male, according to Pew Research

Yah...that "independent" vote worked for John McCain, didn't it, David?

The Canadian really likes Big Gummint!

Government is implicated in many of today's top domestic concerns as well … But the connection between big government and today's most pressing problems is not as close or as pressing as it was 27 years ago.

Really? When Gummint's taxes and regulations consume around 55% of GDP, I think that is "close and pressing." In fact, it's VERY pressing, and DE-pressing, too. Frum acknowledges that:

At the peak of the Bush boom in 2007, the typical American worker was earning barely more after inflation than the typical American worker had earned in 2000. Out of those flat earnings, that worker was paying more for food, energy and out-of-pocket costs of health care.

"Food/energy" costs were elevated because our Big Gummint Democrats (and Big Gummint Republicans) refused to allow offshore drilling and decided that we should burn CORN instead of petroleum. Burning food is likely to increase the price of food, yes.

And when regulatory costs go up (think SarbOx, just for openers), then the money available to pay workers goes down. Finally, at least SOME of "medical costs" have risen precisely because of Big Gummint's Medicare/Medicaid programs, which under-pay docs and hospitals, forcing them to recover the expenses from others. (PI lawyers don't help, either, and it's not a co-incidence that PI lawyers send money to Democrat politicians.)

Yes, yes, there's more to it than that--global competition means tightening the belt to survive, and there are a number of other variables in the economics mix.

But to state that BigGummint doesn't really have anything to do with costs and earnings? Frum is not in the real world.

Frum carries on at length about Republicans losing elections and some components of various demographics.

More ominously, Republicans are losing their appeal to voters with whom they've historically done well...

...mentioning "college grads, California, and youth".

What he doesn't mention is that Bush 43 and McCain lost those voters for a reason: Bush 43 had only "not Gore" and "the war" as his platforms ('00 and '04)--as Bush had effectively rejected most Conservative principles long before running for the Presidency. One could make the argument that Bush won both those elections because of the ONE Conservative principle he kept: he was against abortion.

And we know about McCain, who was NOT a Conservative by any stretch of the imagination. If you're going Liberal, buy the genuine brand--which is (D). That's what the country did in '08.

Frum has at least one half-good idea, however.

We need to put free-market health-care reform, not tax cuts, at the core of our economic message

Not both? Why not, David?

David also favors gay "marriage," and actually believes that such a construct is determined by polls. And he thinks anthropogenic global-warming IS real.

And, of course, David does NOT like Sarah Palin. Curious, no? Because Sarah Palin was the answer to Frum's fret about Rush's male/female demographic. And the damn fool Canadian even implies that Sarah was the cause of McCain's loss, rather than McCain's "suspension" and utterly clueless 'the fundamentals are dandy' remark. (The WINNING McCain called that turn perfectly.)

Fortunately, you don't have to read the FrumFret. If you do, put on your anti-whine headset.