CFN Indeed Michael, my problem with the Frum, Brooks, Mehgan McCain trifecta is that they are long on name calling and flimsy premises and short on substance people can verify. They also seem to make most arguments about the person opposing their message, rather than the merit of the message itself.

Justin Gardner Now hold on a second... Conservatives were voted out because they failed to deliver on their promises of being conservative? That doesn't make any sense. You don't vote in somebody who's less conservative to get more conservative legislation. No, people voted conservatives out because they had been at the helm for the better part of 8 years and they got us into an unnecessary war and our economy almost collapsed. But to your point about this so-call "intellectual elite," well, Frum and Brooks are that by default since so many of the most popular conservative thinkers are anything but. Beck? O'Reilly? Hannity? Limbaugh? Coulter? Do you honestly think that these folks are bringing more people to the table? The reason conservatives are losing elections is because these folks scare the bejeezus out of independents, and that's how elections are won...in the middle. Also, let's remember that the modern conservative movement was created by William F. Buckley. You think he would have a favorable opinion of Beck and company? Of course not. You want flimsy arguments, listen to any of those folks. It'll be a 7 course meal of nonsense. Last, lumping Meghan McCain in with Frum and Brooks simply isn't appropriate. She was able to get on TV because of her dad. The other two earned it with years of hard work. However...McCain does represent the Gen Y conservative who is tired of the aforementioned shock jocks. Perhaps she's not as studied, but she will vote. So ignore the voting patterns of Gen Y at your own risk fellas...because they're trending 60/40 Dem/Repub.

CFN Justin, The problem with what you have written is that the premises you are operating on can be easily demonstrated to be objectively false. I will take the first two of your premises as an example. "They got us into an unnecessary war" Actually congressional Democrats overwhelmingly supported a resolution to make regime change in Iraq the official policy of the United States and that happened under Bill Clinton. Also, we had a cease fire agreement with Iraq which their government violated repeatedly. Do you have any idea how many lives the diplomatic credibility of the United States has saved? Do you have any idea how many conflicts averted? For the United States to sit by and do nothing while Saddam continued to buck the sanctions and violate the cease fire agreement would have taken the diplomatic credibility of the United States and flushed it down the toilet. History shows us time and time again that when the United States displays uncertain leadership the bad guys in the world cause trouble. Now let us take your second premise. That the economy collapsed (and it somehow must be republicans fault). In my web site at iusbvision.wordpress.com I have a category called "mortgage crisis". At the beginning of the long series of posts you can find the evidence that proves beyond reasonable doubt that the Bush administration and many Republicans in Congress tried to get mortgage policing reform since 2001. Fannie Mae was ran by Democrat appointees who bilked millions out of it. They also spread 200 million to politicians and PAC's with almost all of it going to Democrats. Fannie Mae also bought almost very lobby firm in DC to ensure that no one would lobby against them. I have the video on my site showing you actual footage from Congressional committee's showing the Democrats calling the OFHEA Mortgage Regulator and Republicans racist because they wanted to fix the mortgage problem. I show you the evidence that you can verify for yourself that shows how Democrats in the Senate stopped legislation to help fix the problem. Do you ever wonder why Chris Dodd slipped in that amendment in Congress to make sure that the AIG and Fannie Mae people could get their big bonuses with our tax money? Look at the person they give the most money to, it is Chris Dodd who is in the fight of his life to hold his seat. None of the demonstrable facts I just gave you are in dispute. Oh and your last premise, that it is not fair to lump Meghan McCain with Frum and Brooks, if you read what they have written in "The Daily Beast" their rhetoric and tactics are virtually identical.

CFN Oh by the way Justin, have you seen the Community Reinvestment Modernization Act sponsored by 51 Democrats. It will require banks to give home loans to perceived democrat constituency groups regardless of their income (regardless of their ability to pay it back). That is a big part of what got us in trouble in the first place. http://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/here-we-go-again-democrats-trying-to-lower-mortgage-loan-standards/

Doomed No, people voted conservatives out because they had been at the helm for the better part of 8 years and they got us into an unnecessary war and our economy almost collapsed. I have to agree with this. The Democrats latched on to the antiwar movement and created a crisis ala Alinsky and then hammered on it day and night for 6 years until the contrived crisis became a reality in the minds of the moderates. As to the economy. Its a recession. The recession continues under Obama because he is following the FDR mold of thinking that only the government can cure a recession. When Bush came into office there was a democratic recession. It ended When Reagan came into office there was a democratic recession.It ended When Clinton came into office there was a republican recession. It ended. All with very little government intervention other then Reagan and Bush cut taxes and the economy roared into life. Recessions are cyclical. They happen roughly every 5-9 years because of America's penchant for driving the consumerism of this country via credit. Eventually you have to start paying back all that credit. So while the independents might have voted for a laugh, scoff, snort "MODERATE" Obama what they actually got was proclamations that he is the next FDR. Well FDR kept America perpetually in recession for an entire decade with unemployment NEVER EVER dipping below 10 percent for the ENTIRE decade of the 30's until WW2 finally brought us out of recession. It was FDR's policies many of which were deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme court that failed America. FDR was a failure and the Elite intellectuals want to cast Obama in his shadow and rewrite history to prove that FDR was the greatest president ever. Puhlease. Obama and his team of superior intellectuals want to do exactly what FDR did...perpetuate the crisis and then pretend to be the solution. In FDR's day and age he could get away with it. IN this day and age the Democrats are gonna be beat senseless in 2010.

Doomed And in conclusion. When the democrats are beat senseless in 2010 will you then say that the country switched and suddenly became Conservative/Republicans? Of course not. Its simply the moderate American people who say....whoa...those democrats are idiots. They are not saying..."Oh gee guess Ill be a conservative this year."

Tully When Bush came into office there was a democratic recession. It ended When Reagan came into office there was a democratic recession.It ended When Clinton came into office there was a republican recession. It ended. Actually the "republican recession" of the Bush 1 admin was over well before the election, everywhere but in Dem Party rhetoric. It's also worth noting that Dems held the House by even larger margins than they do today for the entire Bush 1 admin, AND held the Senate that entire time by comfortable margins. Even with all the recession-mongering, without Ross Perot, Clinton would have lost. Simplistic explanations are for simpletons. (And partisans and True Believers, of course.) Republicans got tossed from office in 2006/2008 because Dems convinced indies that Dems would be better stewards of the nation, less corrupt and not fiscally worse than the GOP. The "lesser evil" gambit. They did this by winning in swing districts -- NOTHING short of catastrophe (personal or national) gets Congresscritters tossed from safe districts, or causes those districts to swing to another party -- and it is in the swing districts where the Dems are quite vulnerable. After less than a year of those Dems in complete power, polling indicates those indies have figured out they got suckered. Those swing districts are still swing districts. The measure of GOP success in those districts (and, potentially, control of the House) will be determined by how well the GOP can match candidates in those districts to the actual voters in same, and how well they convince said voters that their candidates are less extreme, less divorced from the prevailing political mainstream in said districts than the Dem candidates are. Pretty obviously, that is more easily accomplished with somewhat moderate GOP candidates than with screaming doctrinaire right-wingers. (Hey, Frum, how'd that strategy work out in the Arizona 8th in 2006? Hmmm?) Frum is playing to the ideologues of the party, but things would have to be more desparate than they are today for far-right ideologues doctinaire conservatives to take back enough swing districts in the House for the GOP to gain a majority. In the Senate, there simply aren't that many available to take.

c3

Pretty obviously, that is more easily accomplished with somewhat moderate GOP candidates than with screaming doctrinaire right-wingers.

Ding, ding,ding, ding! Right answer. I like David Frum and David Brooks. I don't always agree with them but they generally have ideas/arguments worth considering. I have little taste for Limbaugh, Hannity or Beck. There all good for ratings but at election time? (Well they do energize the base to help out election day but I would suggest (as Tully has already pointed out) that's not going to get a lot of votes in AZ District 8 (that weren't already going to vote (R) Let's face it no matter how "pure" you make the Party, those at the left end will be considered a RINO It gets crowded on the moral high ground but folks down below have bigger things to worry about. PS The Republican Party will need to figure out how to keep the "Value Voters" energized but no inflamed. Why throw out one of your most reliable set of voters?

Doomed I was reading a gallup poll on morality. Interestingly those who think they are liberal increased their percentage of those who believed the government should espouse morality. Those who considered themselves conservative dropped by 4 percentage points in the numbers who thought the government should teach morality or put emphasis on it. Could it be the Republicans are finally starting to see the need to moderate a little. Im a Republican. Im a fiscal ultra conservative and a social moderate and even I can see that the Republicans have to be a bit more flexible to take in and encourage moderates and independents.

Justin Gardner CFN, Voters ran away from Repubs because they've overreached the last eight years. That's all there is to it. If you can't accept that fact, well, don't know what to tell you. Also, I don't think anything you said still addresses my central point...that Michael's argument has a pretty big logic flaw in it. People didn't vote conservatives out because they weren't conservative enough. Perhaps some of the base sat at home because they were demoralized, but, as Tully mentions, it's about the swing districts and the Dems ID'd a bunch of vulnerable districts and were able to make huge gains because they picked the right Dem candidates that appealed to more folks. And that brings us back to Frum and Brooks. Listen, I know you have an affinity for Beck. Anybody who visits your blog can see that. But you let guys like that define your message at your own peril. They are NOT good stewards of the conservative message and the more you start to realize this, the quicker your party will recover and the better off you'll be. As far as Meghan McCain, again, not an apt comparison. The Daily Beast is a flash in the pan and they got McCain to "write" because she made a few waves during the campaign. She's not even in the same sport as Frum and Brooks.