Frum Leaving National Review
It seems that David Frum, one of National Review’s very best writers, is going to be leaving the magazine and he suggests that NR’s burgeoning penchant for cocooning and purges is part of the issue:
In October came the resignation of Mr. Buckley’s son, the writer and satirist Christopher Buckley, after he endorsed Barack Obama for president. He did so on Tina Brown’s blog, The Daily Beast, to avoid any backlash on The Corner.
Now David Frum, a prominent conservative writer who enmeshed himself in a minor dustup during the campaign by turning negative on Governor Palin, is leaving, too. In an interview, he said he planned to leave the magazine, where he writes a popular blog, to strike out on his own on the Web.
“The answers to the Republican dilemma are not obvious and we need a vibrant discussion,” he said. “I think a little more distance can help everybody do a better job of keeping their temper.”
An interesting development. An End to Evil is a preposterous book, but Frum’s Comeback and Dead Right are both very interesting and, frankly, more worthy of your time than a lot of political books written by people I have more substantive agreements with.
40 Responses to “Frum Leaving National Review”
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November 17th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Does your blogger membership card require you to write a certain amount of bullshit like this every year?
November 17th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
It’s amazing how popular a conservative can become among liberals if he’ll just start distancing from those other “bad” conservatives. I wonder if Matt has ever said anything positive about David Frum before?
November 17th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
I can’t say I’m drowning in respect for Frum after his little temple tantrum on Rachel Maddow. I think Christopher Buckley was a far greater loss.
November 17th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
his little temple tantrum
Again with the stereotypes.
November 17th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Frum is a neocon scumbag. He should be permanently deported from the U.S.
November 17th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
An End to Evil is a preposterous book
David Frum is a preposterous person. Very, very disingenuous.
November 17th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I’m not too impressed with Frum bailing on NR as a sign of intellectual honor or integrity. He may be unhappy with where conservatism is today but as his “little temper tantrum” on The Rachel Maddow show demonstrated, he has zero interest in actually dealing with what has really gone wrong with the Right.
The problems in conservatism didn’t just crop up overnight or in the last 6 months or in the last 4 years. The rot set in a long time ago and Frum was perfectly happy to both ignore the trouble and more than occasionally contribute to it. It’s only now that everything has gone to hell that he wants to proclaim that he is shocked, shocked to discover that gambling has been going on.
Mike
November 17th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
There is a tendency to find strange new respect for those who have just been purged from the self-immolating conservative movement (to mix metaphors).
Frum was and is utterly unremarkable, but I respected him at least for his willingness to say what he thinks rather than what his paymasters order him to think, as is the case with virtually everbody else at NRO.
But it is slim praise, patting him on the back for not completely selling his soul.
November 17th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Inlike most National review gasbags, Frum is not stupid. He is evil.
That’s why he’s a great read. Evil is interesting. Stupid is not.
November 17th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Al -
The word “purge” is fun because it associates the conservative movement with behaviors more typical of totalitarians like the Soviets or North Korean colonels. Also, it’s true.
November 17th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
I wonder if Matt has ever said anything positive about David Frum before?
Thanks to the miracles of technology, you need wonder no more! The “Frum” tag on this post will only get you so far, but it’s a start; feel free to click on it. Doing a google search on this blog for “Frum” will turn up a lot more; I’d say Yglesias has said things about Frum both in the “preposterous” and “interesting if wrong because” categories a bunch in, at least, the last year.
November 17th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Is there anyone who just attacked Matt who has read either or both of Comeback and Dead Right? I mean, Matt might be doing some blogger cred thing, but in the absence of any countervailing argument I’d say y’all are just being assholes.
Asshole = assuming the worst of your host without any particular evidence.
November 17th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Congratulations to a rat who leaves a sinking ship? Yay. Yippee.
November 17th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Ah, but Frumbledum was at least responsible for this.
November 17th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Back in the day, I hear, you could read NR and get a preview of what the political world would be talking about in the next few months. In the Clinton era, you could at least get a clue what the Republicans would be doing in the coming week, but since the turn of the millennium it’s been more and more a chronicle of what happened last week. Frum was one of the major exceptions.
November 17th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
I think CNP’s tax exemption requires MY to say something nice about a conservative, every now & then.
November 17th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Al – You’re right. It’s probably just a coincidence that everybody at NRO who voiced a strong anti-Palin opinion has suddenly decided to leave immediately. And the one guy left who we would expect to have strongly anti-Palin views – Derbyshire, the atheist racist – quite literally stopped blogging altogether until the Palin bubble burst.
November 17th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
I, for one, welcome our new crypto-stalinism cannibalist overlords.
November 17th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Dammit 16, I was getting excited that I was this far into a thread which mentions Dead Right and no one had linked that yet, giving me the opportunity to and massive glory of doing so.
November 17th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
There are three and a half regular NRO writers still worth reading: Ponnoru, Frum and Derbyshire — and Victor Danid hanson when he is writing about history seasoned enough that it has no direct limk to current aafirs (on current afairs he’s as much a hack as the rest of the here-unmentioned gang). With Frum gone there are now two and a half.
Too bad Florence King no longer writes her National Review column. I can just imagine how she would have lambasted Sarah Palin– and gotten away with it too since no one over there, not even Bill Buckley, ever had the balls to challenge the resident High Church Episcopalian Atheist Sapphic Misanthrope.
November 17th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
This is the same David Frum who wrote the National Review cover story Unpatriotic Conservatives: a war against America.
November 17th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
As pseudonymous in nc in DC reminds us, Frum is a total scumbag, but I can see, if one were a fellow writer, how one could be attracted to his writing. It is well-reasoned and well-written scumbaggery. Nevertheless, I don’t have respect for him– I regard his views to be execrable, though it’s nice to see such execrable views so fully articulated for all to see. I don’t feel sorry for Frum; I feel embarrassed for the NR for hitching their wagon so closely to Palin that anyone who rightfully mocks her gets tossed.
November 17th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Agree with comment #11: Frum is very smart AND very evil. I enjoy reading him from time to time and watching him on Bloggingheads.
November 17th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
I love watching the “useful idiots” turn on their masters. The Frum-Kristol faction promoted idiots like Jonah Goldberg, Steyn, et al., and now the hag-masses are waving their pitchforks at the “intellectuals” in the GOP (uh, people who read books without mouthing the words). Pass the popcorn.
November 17th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Derbyshire surrendered his ‘intellectually honest’ credentials with his conspicuous silence on the whole Palin fiasco; there’s no way he would have supported her. That he only started griping once Obama won merely underlines my point.
November 18th, 2008 at 9:06 am
It’s amazing how popular a conservative can become among liberals if he’ll just start distancing from those other “bad” conservatives. I wonder if Matt has ever said anything positive about David Frum before?
Brad, I don’t know what Matt has said about Frum before, but you’ve got a lot of gall accusing Matt of orthodoxy in general. I’m not trying to be a suck-up here, and I disagree with Matt a lot. That said, his willingness to criticize both Democrats and liberals makes his one of the most interesting political blogs going, and you’re basking in ignorance to imply otherwise.
November 18th, 2008 at 9:11 am
I can’t say I’m drowning in respect for Frum after his little temple tantrum on Rachel Maddow.
Look, again, I’m nobody’s conservative, or even moderate, but Frum was bemoaning the ironical turn in political commentary. It was funny to see him so grumpy (didn’t he know how Maddow works before he agreed to an appearance?), yet I also get tired of Rachel going to the dumb-it-down-to-a-silly-analogy and snark away more often than the smart, substantive analysis of which she’s capable.
So I wouldn’t call it a temper tantrum. Frum may be a buzzkill, but he’s not wrong about the mediocrity of that smartass style.
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