Stupid Shit David Frum Says, Ctd.

"Republicans are vastly more personally hostile to President Obama than they were to President Clinton. "

-- David Frum, 06/04/12

Ever since David Frum turned his column at Tina Brown's "Daily Beast" into a digital car-trunk out of which he now promotes his book along with...reviews of his book...questions about his book...interviews about his book...excerpts from his book...links to other excerpts about his book...odd bits of news that sound like something he wrote in his book...stuff he eavesdropped on in the seat next to him at the screening of "The Avengers" that might have been about his book...nine-dimensional, dodecaphonic visions about his book that came to him while on his biennial ether frolic...and a sentence fragment he thought he heard while falling asleep to a nostalgia teevee rerun of "Mannix" but which was later confirmed to be Joe talking to an army buddy on the phone...

...none of which anyone should begrudge him in the slightest. No kidding. It's simply a fact that without the Devil's own luck or a relentless, promotional engine behind your efforts, any non-Stephen King-type book out there is almost certainly doomed to lose money for its author, and since Mr. Frum put the time into writing a book, he would be a damn fool not to use the megaphone Tina Brown gave him for God-alone-knows-what-reason to flog the Hell out of it...

...OK, so where was I?

Oh yes.

Ever since David Frum's "Daily Beast" byline became his personal bargain book bin, the purely  promotional posts have diluted and displaced the opportunity for Mr. Frum to write stupid things by sheer volume.

That being said, Mr. Frum does manager to fire off some rounds of pure, Grade "A" wingnut dissembling stupid on a fairly regular basis, and this one was worthy of note precisely because it so perfectly parallels the very stupid things being said by former RNC Chair Michael Steele and "independent" right-wing shill Michelle Bernard (president of the Bernard Center for Women, Politics Public Policy) on "Up with Chris Hayes":

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As the late Steve Gilliard used to say of Useful Republican Idiot Michael Steele, he is "not a Republican for free."

People like Steele and Frum and oh so many other very recent Conservative deathbed converts were perfectly happy to bed-down with monsters -- perfectly happy to take their money and do their dirty-work -- right up until the monster kicked them in the head. Then -- suddenly and far too late -- came the shocked, indignant, torrent of "OMFG! Can you believe how craaaazy these fuckers are!" whining. as if instead of  sharing a Cialis tub with the Pig People  for the last +40 years, the lunatic base of the GOP had just sorta snuck up on 'em all sudden like.

This permits people like Steele and Frum to now do what Republicans love to do more than anything else in the world: play the whiny victim. Instead of grubby careerists who put their lot in with a mob of depraved lunatics and shrieking bigots because they were paid to, they instead now market themselves as aggrieved victims who were taken cruelly in and then cast cruelly out.

Of course, in the matter of William Jefferson Clinton, Conservatives left behind them a gigantic and ineradicable slime trail known as a "public record" --

...because he did not run for office with an "(R)" after his name, according to the leading voices in the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement, Bill Clinton was, in no particular order, Hitler, a Socialist, a rapist, a warmonger, a serial murderer, and a drug dealer, whose Presidency was somehow vaguely illegitimate.

And counterpointing the 24/7 slime campaign, there were those endless, endless hearings. Whitewater. Travel office. Christmas Card lists. Lincoln bedroom. Etc ad nauseum.

Or don’t you remember?

He was “Not my President!” (Ollie North: War criminal, terrorist arms dealer, GOP Senate Candidate [1994] and FoxNews Contributor.)

He was warned “not to set foot in my state.” (Jesse Helms: Professional Bigot, Confederate Senator, 1820-2003)

His picture was used for target practice by G. Gordon Liddy, the Watergate felon, would-be assassin, radio personality and Republican hero.

From "The American Prospect":

...it's worth remembering just how virulent the opposition to Clinton's presidency was. Republicans began plotting to impeach Clinton long before anyone had ever heard the name "Lewinsky," and many on the right simply refused to accept that he legitimately occupied the office he held. Then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey, when talking to Democrats, used to refer to Clinton as "your president."

It was a warped, hysterical campaign funded by wealthy Right Wing thugs like Richard Mellon Scaife



and propagated by wealthy Right Wing thugs like Rupert Murdoch who made sure the lies were jack-hammered into the headlines day after day, year after year.

And judging by its objectives, it was also a very successful campaign: it legitimized and metastasized Hate Radio; killed the credibility of the "objective" media once and for all; made the overt mass-slander of political opposition by the Right acceptable; moved radicals, militia nuts, bigots, Creationists and Limbaugh zombies to the center of the Republican Party; accelerated the exodus of reasonable moderates the hell out of the Republican Party; destroyed the possibility of public discourse; and kicked the door open to the use of Congressional hearings as instruments of political vendetta.

But as successful as it was, it was also an incredibly high-risk strategy, because of a thing called the "public record".

The public record meant that each and every time a Republican stood up to, say, slam the Democrat Commander-in-Chief during a time of war (from The Poor Man Institute:)

“You can support the troops but not the president”
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)

“President…is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation’s armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy.”
-Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA)

“American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy.”
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)

“If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy.”
-Karen Hughes, speaking on behalf of George W. Bush

“I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning…I didn’t think we had done enough in the diplomatic area.”
-Senator Trent Lott (R-MS)

“Well, I just think it’s a bad idea. What’s going to happen is they’re going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years”
-Joe Scarborough (R-FL)

“I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our overextended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today”
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)

“Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?”
-Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/6/99

“Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is.”
-Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)

“This is President Clinton’s war, and when he falls flat on his face, that’s his problem.”
-Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN)

“Bombing a sovereign nation for ill-defined reasons with vague objectives undermines the American stature in the world. The international respect and trust for America has diminished every time we casually let the bombs fly.”
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)

they left a documentary trail wide and bright enough to be visible from space.

Or from the next election cycle.

The public record meant that every frivolous Republican witch hunt and every syllable of hate and demagoguery gleefully poured out through public megaphones and megachurch pulpits to malign and demonize the Left could potentially represent a thick bar on the cage of any future Republican president's imperial ambitions.
...

-- so the only way their latest scam can work is if they continually lie about the past, and especially about how the now-beloved and respected Bill Clinton was actually treated by them just a few, short years ago until history disappears is gone and all that remains (as one, long-forgotten wag once put it) is Meme-nto:



The pathological inability to form any new political memories past 1997.

Or 1993.

Or 1981.

Or 1862.

And the thing is, the scam works because outside of rarefied venues like "Up with Chris Hayes", there is not a soul in the Beltway Media who will risk their career by calling people like Steele and Frum out on their bullshit.

Instead, (as that long-forgotten wag once noted) "...Conservatives get to stand on desks with their hair on fire and shriek the most ludicrous, vile and mendacious hogwhiz – year after year after year after year after motherfucking year -- unchallenged" after which "...these same howler monkeys -– who have been not just wrong but spectacularly, catastrophically wrong about everything, every time -- keep getting invited back in front of the cameras and onto the pages of major newspapers..."


Instead:

...the MSM continues to prop up the rotting carcass of the GOP like the corpse in ”Weekend at Bernie's”, and waltz it lovingly across the national stage year after year after year, protecting it as ferociously as they would their own children even as it goes raving mad, putrefies and crumbles to reek and maggots in their arms.

Is it that meme-nto disease? That inability to form any new political memories after 1997? Or is it something darker?

Whatever the reason, the story behind it would certainly be gripping, epic, infuriating and a great and lasting service to the cause of Democracy.

Too bad we no longer have a press capable of telling it.