And I do believe David H. is correct about politics. I too was an activist for a time. You can flawlessly logical and brilliant ideas, but unless you can convey them in a sound byte, you'll have very little impact. Most people don't have the time or the inclination to go through textbooks and plod through history. But almost everyone seems to know what's “right” — even if they're wrong (!) A candidate has to resonate with voters on a personal level, beyond — or below — the intellectual.

Reagan was a brilliant politician because he was also an actor. To this day, it's much easier for me to visualize Reagan in a cowboy hat and on a horse than leading a Cabinet meeting. Yet he was one of the most conservatively pure Presidents we've ever had. Amazing.

You need a bit of the showman, the marketing package. You also need some level of rage — whipping up that rage is a key factor in securing Obama's election.

And, as David H. also pointed out — look who we're fighting. You can bring a knife to a gun fight if you want, if you believe it's more ethical and civil, but you probably won't win.

But if this doesn’t convince you, then please explain how Alaskans found to be among the top five least religious states in the Union by a Pew Forum study would elect an overtly religious “holy roller?” It makes no more sense than most of the other idiocy disseminated by the loony left about her.

Believe it or not, Alaska's one of nation's least religious states

http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=16401

David Frum shrieks “That will hurt their feelings!.”

Beck fights and does it so effectively that Axelrod & Co. have to now expend resources to fight him rather than others.

Beck is a huge plus to libertarians and conservatives.

Frum is a nobody and it really really irritates him that he is a nobody.

Post counts on “New Majority” anybody? Go take a look.

Post counts on C4P? Go take a look.

Frum is the most insider of insiders. While Beck uncovers the vermin under the log, Frum should just crawl under it before Beck lowers it back down.

Frum is Scum! Oooo that's catchy.

Your “death panels” insights is also right on, IMO. Even though the smoking gun of that exact phrase cannot be reproduced the described effect of the concept of death panels does logically exist. If there is to be an inclusive public health care program it will be administered by a government bureaucracy. Public health care is funded by the government and not by revenues generated by those providing the service as it properly would be in a free market type of system. All those using the public system are a cost to the system. As a cost or expense to any system, it is only logical to ask how costs can be controlled, and as this type of system evolves (or devolves) it is only logical that those costing the system the most would be considered as candidates for reducing those costs. The chronically ill and elderly use the health care system the most because they need it the most. Bureaucrats crunching numbers could logically see those costs and begin offering ways to eliminate them — so “death panels” are surely one way to eliminate those costing the system the most.

President Bush turned the other cheek, rather than stand by his convictions.While we fight amongst ourselves continuing to castrate one of the best messengers to benefit the cause for all Americans.

As David H. pointed out regarding the Coleman loss, we fractionalized our own candidates. It points out how splintered the Republican party has become.
The Democrats stood by their candidate even though many didn't fully realize how socialist he was, but they push him anyway. (Many now regret that now, I think.)

I drew my sword in another blog and was chastized for it. Why should I join a cause if someone on my team allows the knife to pierce my heart.

In football, do you bench the quarterback for one interception forgetting the three touchdowns he made earlier.

Yes, abolish it. At a minimum open it up for an audit. After the audit the cries for abolition will arise by themselves. The housing debacle was direct result of the Fed's monetary expansion. Let an audit show that.

The Fed is an arbitrary, unaccountable force in the economy not subject to normal market forces. It is a political instrument where none should be.

“Do you think the United States should have allowed Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and other banks to follow Lehman into bankruptcy in October 2008?”

Absolutely! Extending the lives of these vampire banks with the blood of living banks does nothing but destroy wealth and prolong the recession, or worse, create a long term depression. Do we really need more banks that are leveraged 30 to 1? Could such leveraging have ever occurred if investors knew that the government would not bail them out? Will bailing them out discourage or promote future over leveraging?

“Do you think that any cuts to Medicare amount to a death panel for grandma?”

The bill has nothing as clean as a “death panel”. At least with a death panel you get to face your assassin. This bill has death by faceless bureaucratic procedures. Ezekial Emanuel's paper in “The Lancet” was quite explicit about limiting care for the elderly with exceptions (of course) for “indispensable” persons.

“Do you think we can sustain an adequate military – never mind finance future tax reductions – if we allow healthcare to continue rising from its current 16% of GDP to a projected 20% of GDP a decade from now if nothing changes?”

The military is less than 4% of GDP. These days this is little more than a rounding error.This argument is stupid at best and disingenuous at worst.

Every position that Frum holds is just progressivism lite. You cannot oppose the rapid expansion of government by saying “Just go slower”. It is the principles of progressivism that must be challenged, not the degree of their implementation.

Beck's real crime was to name what Obama is doing, something that Frum seems to regard as impolite and extreme. If you call North Korea's policy “adjusting the population/food imbalance” does make starvation any more palatable?

The magnitude of the attacks by Frum on Beck, Limbaugh and Palin is wildly out of proportion with the alleged absurdity of their ideas. If these ideas were so patently ridiculous they could be dispensed with rather easily. Instead, Frum behaves like Al Gore when challenged on man-made global warming and insists that these ideas are “settled science” and not debatable.

The attempt to argue by intimidation, suggesting that only knuckle dragging troglodytes could possibly oppose the wondrous Federal Reserve Board, reveals a shallowness of mind and a fear of being seen as out of the mainstream of American thought. Unfortunately, the mainstream is the monolithic liberalism that we are trying so very desperately to change.

You cannot win by accepting the enemy's principles, terminology and goals. What is needed to give no intellectual quarter, to force the argument to be fought on our terms, not theirs. Beck took on the challenge of cleaning out the Augean stables of Progressive ideas. If you don't like his cleaning methods then show us someone doing a better job.

Bush was asked by the Republican Party to run in 2000. He said at the time he wanted to think about it and discuss it with his family, before he accepted. I should remind you that what conservatives like me were really upset about during his Presidency, was, his immigration reform program, and spending in general.
I should also mention Rush Limbaugh was against immigration reform as well.

To be fair, Bush campaigned in 2000 saying he believed in a guest worker program for illegal immigrants. So we knew that when we voted for him, and when it came up during his Presidency we fought him on it, because it was more far reaching than we expected. Rush was outspoken against it himself.

I found Bush to be a principled man. The fact that I didn't agree with everything he did, doesn't change that opinion.

Having said all that, I'm not an apologist for the Republican Party either. I have found them to be spineless, and too willing to buckle in the face of attacks from the democrats. Right now, they seem pretty sane, in comparison to what we're stuck with.

Frum is an elitist. People like Beck or Sarah Palin don't measure up to Frum's mistaken image of what a conservative is or what a leader is. In other words he's a snob, and too infected with the beltway cocktail crowd, and other elitists. He's a fairweather republican, not a conservative.

Pris