Rediscovering David Frum

Some of the most enjoyable blog reading these days is Frum’s Diary on NRO. Over the years the National Review had become insignificant to me. Too socially conservative, too partisan. I hadn’t given much thought to Frum since he left the National Post to go to work as a speechwriter for George W. Bush. After he got fired resigned from the White House he wrote The Right Man about how great Bush was for the times he lived in. There was no way I was going to pay for, let alone read a sycophantic snoozer like that.

But word came out in September that Frum called out Sarah Palin as being unqualified and ultimately a disastrous pick for the GOP. Feeling the same myself, I started to read him again. He’s a talented writer and I enjoy his earnest posts trying to fight the other NRO writers who have accused him as being a traitor to the cause for pointing out the obvious.

In today’s post, for example, he defends Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize winning writer of Gulag, A History, who came out in support of Obama this election. His fellow NRO writers have written her off.

How small has the house of conservatism shrunk when it can find no room for Anne Applebaum? What has happened at NR when this generation's greatest living expert on the crimes of communism can be dismissed as an unserious and dishonorable person?

It’s amazing that Frum hasn’t been fired for treason. Check it out.

Bonus: Earlier in the month he appeared on the dreadful Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC. He was cranky and exposed her show as a silly joke that has no business talking about important issues. Worth watching, just for watching her shocked face absorb what he is saying. (Clip here)