Written By : John Hawkins

There was a time when I respected David Frum. He was an ex-Bush speechwriter, he had a gig at National Review, and I was impressed enough with his views on the foreign policy front to interview him.

However, Frum apparently got tired of being a small fish in a big pond over at NR and decided to create his own website. Originally it was called “New Majority” and it has morphed into Frum Forum.

Despite the fact that Frum has at least some name recognition on the national political scene, influential friends over at National Review who are still talking him up, and has received tongue bathings galore from the MSM for attacking conservatives, his website has never taken off.

In the kingdom of conservatism, I’m a mud splattered peon, and even I have not one, but two websites (Right Wing News & Linkiest) that are bigger than his according to Alexa.

Moreover, Frum tries to portray himself as  a  conservative free-thinker, a Republican idea man, a rightie who thinks outside of the box, yada, yada, yada. I disagree because I think Frum is something else entirely: a sell-out who thinks he can help his career by bashing people who are popular with conservatives.

You see, there’s a group of people out there who make a living portraying themselves as “Republicans who don’t like other Republicans.” The mainstream media loves people like that because it allows them to claim to be balanced, even though they’re merely promoting the views of yet another person who agrees with the liberal line. As far as I can  tell, that’s EXACTLY the niche David Frum is trying to fit into. So, why in the world should any conservative support someone like that?

In any case, David Frum once again gave the liberal media exactly what they wanted to hear after the health care reform bill passed and his association with American Enterprise Institute ended shortly thereafter:

David Frum told us 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. “There’s a lot about the story I don’t really understand,” Frum said from his iPhone. “But the core of the story is the kind of economic pressure that intellectual conservatives are under. AEI represents the best of the conservative world. [AEI President] Arthur Brooks is a brilliant man, and his books are fantastic. But 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. I think Arthur took no pleasure in this. I think he was embarrassed. I think he would have avoided it if he possibly could, but he couldn’t.”

We talked at length afterward with an AEI official in an effort to get a specific response to Frum’s charge. …Frum, who will be 50 in June, had been on the payroll since leaving the Bush White House in 2003. He acknowledges he was very seldom at the office. But he maintains he developed and spread conservative ideas — AEI’s stated goal — with the 300,000 words a year that he writes for his blog, FrumForum.com; his weekly columns for CNN.com, The Week, and the National Post of Canada; his biweekly offerings for TIME and American Public Media’s “Marketplace”; and his three TV and three radio appearances in a typical week. He also landed Canadian Finance Minister James Flaherty for an AEI retreat last month that included donors. Frum tells us that regardless of his dismay with the party, he’ll stay registered GOP.

Let’s be honest: there are probably a hundred people just as qualified as Frum for that cushy gig at AEI and with the rest of them, you’re not going to have to wonder if they’ll “stay registered GOP.”

Furthermore, the whole idea that conservatives aren’t supposed to get down on people like Frum, Meghan McCain, Kathleen Parker, David Brooks, etc., etc., is insulting. At least liberals have the chops to let everyone know that they despise conservatives. These people pretend to be on our side, undercut us at every opportunity because they think it’s good for their career, and then whine if they get any blowback for it. If these people want to make a career out of cutting off conservatives at the knees for the amusement of the  Left, I don’t see any reason why conservatives should go along with it or worse yet, hand them cherry $100,000 jobs on a silver platter for the privilege of being insulted.

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