Thursday, August 30, 2012

Frum Fail (and Romney's a Loser)


As the election nears, David Frum seems to be ramping up the stupid. Here he is talking about Ann Romney's convention speech:
To my ear, Michelle Obama often missed that mark in 2008, talking too much about how her husband had never let her down, which was not the ballot question for most voters. Ann Romney did much better, with her hard-hitting theme: Mitt Romney does not fail at what he undertakes. And he really doesn't.
What? Romney does not fail at what he undertakes? I guess Frum forgot that Romney lost to McCain in the 2008 primary, and then lost to Palin for the VP slot. In 1994, he lost to Ted Kennedy in the Senate race. He followed up his big victory as Governor of Massachusetts by deciding not to run for a second term, thus avoiding a likely loss that may have killed his presidential prospects.

Meet the New Condi


More convention stupidity. Responding to Condoleeza Rice's speech, Bill Keller in The New York Times says:
She is also an out-of-Republican-fashion moderate on social issues like abortion…Rice has the pedigree and the chastening experience to present a more sophisticated and more temperate Republican take on the world. And Wednesday night she did so.
She did? I must have missed it. I don't recall her talking about her views on abortion. I do recall her talking about a return to her aggressive with-us-or-against-us foreign policy. She clearly has learned about as much from her chastening experience as Dick Cheney.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

David Frum is a Privileged White Racist

In a good faith effort to consider viewpoints of the right wing, I've been reading David Frum for the last couple months. It took a while for me to figure out how he could claim to be a moderate. He eventually revealed that he supports gay marriage, higher inflation, and universal health care. That's pretty good for a Republican.  Of course, like other self-proclaimed moderates before him, I expected Frum to eventually write something so over the top that he would destroy his credibility with me. That day was yesterday.

What Frum wrote was so unbelievable that I checked multiple times to verify that the author was indeed David Frum and not one of his minions. The only way fore to tackle this is to go through his post paragraph by paragraph. Bear with me.
Much is being said about the overwhelming whiteness of the delegate mix at the Republican National Convention. But many political movements in this country draw more from some ethnicities than others. It would be no surprise if Republicans felt that this unique criticism of their delegate mix was one sided. How might a Republican respond? Here is one imaginative guess:
Notice Frum's technique here. By saying, "Here is one imaginative guess" at what some hypothetical Republican might say, Frum is trying to preemptively distance himself from what he's about to say. Nice try.
So now I'm reading all this criticism of us for being too white. That's nerve. This convention is no whiter than the conventions that nominated the libs' precious Franklin Roosevelt - or John F. Kennedy for that matter. And we have a damn sight more women.
Frum is proud of the Republican Party for being no whiter and having more women than the Democratic Party had -- prior to signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964! Could he set the bar any lower?
Anyway, when did it become a crime to be white? Who built this country? Not people from Kenya, I can tell you that.
Wow. Did he really write that? This is the start of Frum going off the rails. He's right though. It was white people that built this country. They built this country by enslaving black people, exterminating red people, abusing yellow people, and going to war with brown people. He's also right about the slaves not being from Kenya. They were from East Africa, but why does Frum even bring up Kenya? Is this "moderate" Republican a birther, or does he just like to use birtherism as a political tool?
The polls tell me that something like 100% of black Americans will vote for Barack Obama. Are they bigots because they rally to their guy? So why are we supposed to be bigots because maybe 60% of us rally to our guy?
Blacks have been voting for white Democrats for decades. It's not surprising that they support an incumbent black Democrat in large numbers, especially when the Republicans are using racist dog whistles (much like those in Frum's post) and disenfranchising black voters via dubious voting restrictions.
Like all white Americans, I'm a mutt: a little English, a little Irish, a little German. Probably got some Cherokee up there too, but you don't hear me making a big whoop out of it for an affirmative action board, unlike some Democrats I can mention. My wife's half-Italian. My son's married to a Chinese girl, and my grandkids will be half Chinese. Doesn't bother me. I just want us all to be Americans.
Frum blows his cover with this paragraph. He's been pretending that he's expressing the views of some hypothetical Republican, but now, he's talking specifically about himself. Frum claims he is a mutt because he's got white blood from England, white blood from Ireland, and white blood from Germany? Wow. It's a miracle that he even looks white! And Frum can't possibly be racist against blacks because he's OK with the Italians and the Chinese!? And how about that last sentence for a finale?  "I just want us all to be Americans." Translation: you're either with me or you're not an American.
But let's face it: this president has no idea what it means to be American, and I don't care whether he was born in Hawaii or Kenya or Indonesia or Uzbeky-beky-beky-stan. To be an American means to work for everything you get. When's he ever worked for anything? It was all handed to him! And now he wants to hand my work over to somebody else.
This is rich. Frum claims that Obama has no idea what it means to be an American, even when he knows, despite his nod to the birthers, that Obama was born in America. You know who wasn't born in America? David Frum! He was born in Canada, and he didn't even bother to become an American citizen until September 11, 2007! Surely, that was driven by Frum's love of America and not by his career move from George W. Bush's economic speech writer to a political pundit.

Frum says, "To be an American means to work for everything you get".  This is supposed to be an argument against Obama and in favor of Romney? Mitt Romney!? Obama was born into a middle-class single-parent family. Romney's father was the CEO of American Motors, the Governor of Michigan, and a Presidential candidate.  Frum himself is the son wealthy parents, his mother was an acclaimed journalist at the Canadian Broadcast Corporation, but I'm sure he's a self-made man than never benefited from her connections.
This whole thing about us not being "diverse" enough - can we cut the crap on that? You suddenly load up the country with millions of newcomers, put them on food stamps and unemployment insurance and Medicaid and what all, put them on the voting rolls without any ID - invite them to help themselves to everything that was earned before they showed up - and what do you expect the original Americans to do?
Frum rips of his moderate mask and goes full-tilt Tea Party here. Does he think there aren't white people on food stamps, unemployment, and Medicaid? Does he know the voter fraud doesn't really exist? The Republicans who are implementing the voter ID laws have acknowledged that it doesn't. Republican officials in Ohio and Pennsylvania have even admitted that it's about disenfranchising those likely to vote for Democrats. Finally, when he talks about "the original Americans" does he include his Canadian-born self?
You think we're not diverse? This is what diversity looks like: the newcomers bunching up in one party, the old stock inhabitations bunching up in the other. It's the same in Britain and in France and in Germany, and just about everywhere. You don't like it? Maybe you should have thought of that before you invited half of Mexico to move here.
The so-called "newcomers" might be drawn to the Democratic Party, but the "old stock inhabitations" are not bunching up in the Republican Party, unless that means elderly and/or less-educated white people.  I'm not sure what "old stock inhabitations" are. Maybe he meant inhabitants? Seems rude to call the elderly old stock. In any case, there are still a large number of white people in the Democratic Party -- even elderly white people. It's not just the "newcomers". That's called diversity.
Nothing against Mexican people! Or black people! Or any kind of people! So long as they pull their weight. Maybe instead of asking us why all these so-called diverse people are not Republicans, maybe you should ask them why they don't support the party for the people who do the work and pay the bills. Maybe it's their problem, not ours, that they identify with a president who is tearing down everything I grew up with.
Frum's implied message: Mexicans (Mexican-Americans?) and black people are not pulling their weight, but hey, nothing against them! And he wonders why they don't support his party. Maybe it has something to do with his party's determination to exploit the poor to service the rich.
Whoever you blame, I don't see why I should change my beliefs just because somebody with a different color skin doesn't like them. I don't like Barack Obama's beliefs, but he won't change them on my account. Why is it that the guy with the white skin has to change his mind, not the guy with the other kind of skin? Or why can't we just respect the fact that some of us have one set of beliefs - others have different beliefs - and let us all compete on voting day and may the best team win? Why do you liberals always have to be dragging race into it? Makes me think that it's you guys, who are always blaming just one race for everything that's wrong with America, who are the real racists.
More Tea Party talk. Why should I stop being racist just because black people don't like it? In fact,  it's actually rich white males like me, David Frum, that are the victims of racism. Poor me. Of course, he's very sincere about respecting different beliefs. That's why he implied in a previous paragraph that anyone that disagrees with him is not American. As far as liberals dragging race into it, it wasn't the liberals that have been asking for birth certificates, talking about Kenyan Muslim socialism, and claiming that Obama's life experience is not a real American experience. That was the Republicans, including Romney, and you yourself, David Frum (refer to your writing above).
What you want is a country where everybody looks different, and everybody thinks the same. That's what you call diversity. No thanks. You work hard, you pay your way, you quit asking for handouts, and you're American enough for me - and you'll be up there on the podium with Bobby Jindal, Allen West, Herman Cain, and Nikki Haley as a leader of the one party in this country that isn't hung up on race.
No, what I want is a country where everybody has the same opportunities regardless of what they look like, what they think, or who there parents are. I want a country not run on the philosophy of  David Frum, Bobby Jindal, Allen West, Herman Cain, and Nikki Haley -- a philosophy that says I'm above average and everyone else should be too.

For those that think I'm being unfair to Frum because his post was satire, well then, my post is satire too! Double satire! Isn't that hilarious? Especially when the subject is racism! Good times.