Well, I really enjoyed listening to David Frum on podcast you recommended, Eversor. Thanks!
Wookie, you mention the book Ameritopia, written by conservative talk radio host Mark Levin. Since we're discussing Frum, I was reminded of an incident I heard on Levin's radio program back in 2009, where he had an angry exchange with Frum. (I will link to it below for those who are interested, but I have to say it is a rather cacophonous and cringe-inducing thing to sit through.) Nevertheless, I think it is instructive to see what happens when somebody like Frum collides with a much more doctrinaire individual like Levin. Levin initially† criticizes Frum on his radio program, and later‡ invites him on to defend himself, and a bitter quarrel ensues. Levin seems particularly upset that Frum would dare say some rather negative things about Rush Limbaugh.
Much like organized religion, I really do think that this incident illustrates the degree to which conservative media personalities
must respond to internal criticism by attacking the messenger, until the movement is again synchronized in lock-step agreement--or else the entire house of cards risks coming down. A scary parallel which Frum himself discusses in his prognosis of our government's failing separation of powers in the era of President Trump (see my above
post), is that while the president himself has mostly deferred to the Congress to set the agenda, Congress itself is loathe to upset the president, for fear of putting its agenda in jeopardy--a reversal from previous governments controlled by a single party, in which it was the president who had to reign in an unruly Congress to implement a well defined agenda.
What I feel has happened, is that much like organized religion and the conservative movement, Congress is synchronized in lock-step allegiance, afraid that too much wavering could cause the entire thing to unravel, because there is no objective standard to accept exactly what criticism, and how much.
But this is incredibly dangerous, since it could mean that the Congress of Paul Ryan (who pretends not to know or care about Trump's statements and ideas when questioned by the media--for good reason, seeing that his approval rating plummeted to ~50% among conservatives when he refused to campaign for Trump in the campaign) will largely abdicate its role as a check on executive power.
Just as church is not the place to discuss the veracity of the gospel, or talk radio is not the place to say anything negative about a conservative, it would seem that the Congress is no longer the place to do anything to stop a president of your own party.
Finally, is it any wonder that my three abstract categories of people now more or less describe the actual same group of people, for the most part?
†
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI629COK0o0
‡
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqDPfv5JwrI