David Frum Is The New David Brooks

David Brooks is often tagged with a back-handed compliment: He is the only conservative pundit liberals can admit to liking. Sometimes Brooks' columns head for strange tangents, but I'll gladly be more direct in my admiration. He firmly believes in moderation, rationality, intellect, compromise and personal values, without being huffy, offensively judgmental or dismissive of those who disagree. When so much of the right is dictatorial and obsessed with purity and exclusion these days -- ironic considering it's the party of the free market -- Brooks is a refreshing alternative.

Add David Frum to the list. Now, Frum, as a former speechwriter for Bush 43 who's credited with coining "Axis of Evil," former WSJ editorial page editor and champion of conservative causes, has a lot working against him. But on his Web site, which is "dedicated to the modernization and renewal of the Republican Party and the conservative movement," Frum is similar to Brooks. He doesn't find as much to like about Democratic causes as Brooks, but Frum takes apart the current, dangerously reactionary version of the Republican Party with reasoned, intelligent analysis.

In criticizing a conservative platform signed last month, he notes the manifesto's silence on middle-class wages, health insurance, the military, the environment, education and illegal immigration, among other, oh, monumentally important domestic and foreign policies. He writes the platform -- and perhaps the whole party, though I may be projecting -- "exists in airless isolation from the actual concerns, troubles and challenges facing the people of the country conservatives seek to lead." He concludes: "The document answers one question and one question only. If you agree that Barack Obama is engaged in a deliberate and relentless attack on the American constitutional order, well be assured: the conservative establishment is on your side. But if you think those worries are a hysterical distraction from the country's actual problems? To you, the conservative world says: go away."

In short, Frum gets it. As the official and unofficial sides of the Republican Party have flown into a stratosphere of name-calling, overblown rhetoric and bloodlust without having any carefully considered basis or ideas, Frum asks everyone to return to earth to think. Even if one disagrees with what he thinks, it's still hard to object to his approach. That Frum blogs in the influential but obscure corners of the Internet and Tea Parties mount a furious charge against the national political system reveals something sad about our current state of affairs.

Update: The conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute has fired David Frum.