David Frum

Friday 29th of March 2024

2016 Presidential election The 472 counties won by Hillary Clinton in 2016 spanned only a small part of the acreage of the United States, but they produce 64 percent of all US output. The 2,584 counties won by Trump produce only 36 percent of US output. David Frum, Trumocalypse  © 2020 Kwiple.com
2020 Presidential election The Trump campaign plan for 2020 is all culture war, all the time. David Frum, Trumpocalypse  © 2020 Kwiple.com
2022 modterm election Plausible theories about why Republicans fared so badly in 2022 abound. … The economy? … Abortion? … Attacks on democracy? … All of these factors clearly played a role. But don't under-weight the impact of the performative obnoxiousness that now pervades Republican messaging. Conservatives have built career paths for young people that start on extremist message boards and lead to jobs on Republican campaigns, then jobs in state and federal offices, and then jobs in conservative media. Dsvid Frum, The Atlantic, March 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Congress Ambition will counteract ambition only until ambition discovers that conformity serves its goals better. At that time, Congress, the body expected to check presidential power, may become the president's most potent enabler. David Frum, “How to Build an Autocracy” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Congress As politics has become polarized, Congress has increasingly become a check only on presidents of the opposite party. David Frum, “How to Build an Autocracy” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Conservatives Maybe you do not care about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy. David Frum, Trumpocracy © 2018 Kwiple.com
Corruption A rule-of-law state can withstand a certain amount of official corruption. What it cannot withstand is a culture of impunity. So long as officials believe that corruption will usually be detected – and if detected, then certainly punished – for just that long they will believe that corruption is wrong. It is for this reason that corrupt regimes swiftly evolve toward authoritarianism, and authoritarian regimes toward corruption. David Frum, Trumpocracy © 2019 Kwiple.com
Democracy Democracy is a work in progress. So is democracy's undoing. David Frum, Trumpocracy  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Filibusters Indeed, most often, the real effect of the filibuster is to enable big donors in big cities to buy influence with veto-wielding senators in tiny states for much less than  the cost of persuading their own senators. Once the filibuster is gone, not only will nobody except the crassest interest groups miss it.  Nobody except the crassest interest groups will ever understand how or why it could have existed in the first place. David Frum, Trumpocalypse  © 2020 Kwiple.com
Immigration Economists will argue that a slow-growing population needs more immigrants to sustain the growth of its labor force. But a population is a citizenry as well as a labor force, and when it grows slowly, it can less easily assimilate newcomers. Immigration is to natural population increase as wine is to food: a good complement, a bad substitute. David Frum, Trumpocracy © 2019 Kwiple.com
Immigration When natives have lots of children of their own, immigrants look like reinforcements. When natives have few children, immigrants look like replacements. No wonder that, according to a 2016 survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic, nearly half of white working-class Americans agree with this statement: “Things have changed so much that I often feel like a stranger in my own country.” David Frum, The Atlantic, April 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Nation-states American conservatives take pride in their nation but mistrust their nation's state. American liberals value the state, but feel discomfort with the concept of “nation.” Yet it is the power of the state that makes of the nation something more than a phrase of speech; it is the idea of the nation that legitimates the power of the state. David Frum, Trumpocalypse  © 2020 Kwiple.com
Pardons and commutations Just as Stone was supposed to go to prison, Trump commuted his sentence. Commutation was more useful to the cover-up than an outright pardon. A commuted person retains his Fifth Amendment right not to testify; a pardoned person loses that right. David Frum, “Last Exit From Autocracy” © 2020 Kwiple.com
Political inequality … by 2040, 70 percent of the American population will live in fifteen states. Thirty percent of the population will live in thirty-five states. Think about what this means. That widely distributed 30 percent will be disproportionately white, dispropor- tionately nonurban, disproportionately older than fifty years of age. They will control seventy seats in the US Senate, enough to override a presidential veto. If they all support the same candidate for president, that candidate will begin every election with 40-vote head start in the 538-vote Electoral College. The 30 percent who live in thirty-five states are only three states short of the num- ber necessary to amend the US Constitution. David Frum, Trumpocalypse  © 2020 Kwiple.com
Political inequality In an August 2019 op-ed in defense of the legislative filibuster, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell  invoked the authority of Thomas Jefferson: “great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities.” But as it is, even great  majorities are prevented from pursuing even small  innovations. As of 2018, the fifty states and the Dis- trict of Columbia were home together to 327 million people. A law passed by Sena- tors representing 290.4 million of them can effectively be vetoed by Senators re- presenting 36.6 million … or 11 percent. David Frum, Trumpocalypse  © 2020 Kwiple.com
Politics Americans more and more begin by choosing their politics and then choose facts to support their politics. David Frum © 2017 Kwiple.com
Politics In politics, the urgent will usually overwhelm the important. David Frum, Trumpocalypse  © 2020 Kwiple.com
Populism Demagogues don't arise by talking about irrelevant issues. Demagogues rise by talking about issues that matter to people, and that more conventional leaders appear unwilling or unable to address: unemployment in the 1930s, crime in the 1960s, mass immigration now. Voters get to decide what the country's problems are. Political elites have to devise solutions to those problems. If difficult issues go unaddressed by responsible leaders, they will be exploited by irresponsible ones. David Frum, The Atlantic, April 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Power The benefit of controlling a modern state is less the power to persecute the innocent, more the power to protect the guilty. Unnamed speaker quoted by David Frum in “How to Build an Autocracy” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Power The intelligence agencies in particular would likely find themselves exposed to retribution from a president enraged at them for reporting on Russia's aid to his election campaign. “As you know from his other career, Donald likes to fire people.” So New Jersey Governor Chris Christie joked to a roomful of Republican donors at the party's national convention in July. It would be a mighty power – and highly useful. David Frum, “How to Build an Autocracy,” The Atlantic, March 2017 issue © 2017 Kwiple.com
Presidency The president of the United States, on the other hand, is restrained first and foremost by his own ethics and public spirit. What happens if somebody comes to the high office lacking those qualities? David Frum comparing American presidents to British prime ministers, who can be quickly removed from office if they lose Parliament's confidence © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Demagogues need no longer stand erect for hours orating into a radio microphone. Tweet lies from a smartphone instead. David Frum, The Atlantic, March 2017 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Selfie Some of my Republican friends ask if I've gone crazy. I say: Look in the mirror. David Frum © 2017 Kwiple.com
Snapshot If curiosity killed the cat, then any cat owned by Robert Mueller can look forward to a long, full life. Robert Mueller portrayed by David Frum © 2020 Kwiple.com
Snapshot  He loved nobody and nobody loved him. Donald Trump portrayed by David Frum © 2020 Kwiple.com
Snapshot The rooster who took credit for the sunrise was outraged to be blamed for the sunset. Donald Trump portrayed by David Frum © 2020 Kwiple.com
Snapshot Trump loves nobody and has no sense of tomorrow.  Like an animal, he lives only in the present. Yet even an animal will avoid fouling the place in which it lives and sleeps. Trump cannot even meet that test. Donald Trump portrayed by David Frum © 2020 Kwiple.com
Snapshot Trump's superpower is his absolute shamelessness. He steals in plain view. He accepts bribes in a hotel located smack in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue. His supporters do not object. His party in Congress is acquiescent. Donald Trump portrayed by David Frum © 2020 Kwiple.com
Snapshot The worst human being ever to enter the presidency, and I include all the slaveholders. Donald Trump portrayed by David Frum, 8:06 AM – Jan 20, 2017 © 2020 Kwiple.com
State bankruptcy Of the 15 states least reliant on federal transfers, 11 are led by Democratic governors. Of the 15 states most reliant on federal transfers, 11 have Republican governors. A state bankruptcy process would thus enable a Republican Party based in the poorer states to use its federal ascendany to impose its priorities upon the budgets of the richer states. State bankruptcy is a project to shift hardship onto pensioners while protecting bondholders–and, even more than bondholders, taxpayers. David Frum, The Atlantic, April 25, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
State of the union The Trump movement was always authoritarian and illiberal. It indulged periodically in the rhetoric of violence. Trump himself chafed against the restraints of law. But what the United States did not have  before 2020 was a large national movement willing to justify mob violence to claim political power. Now it does. David Frum, The Atlantic, July 13, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Trumpism The Republican Party was built on a coalition of the nation's biggest winners from globalization and its biggest losers. The winners wrote the policy; the losers provided the votes. While the party leaders coalesced upon more immigration, less secure health coverage, and one more Bush, the rank and file were frantically signaling: less immigration, better health coverage, and no more Bushes. David Frum, Trumpocracy  © 2019 Kwiple.com
Trumpism The thing to fear from the Trump presidency is not the bold overthrow of the Constitution, but the stealthy paralysis of government; not the open defiance of law, but an accumulating subversion of norms; not the deployment of state power to intimidate dissidents, but the incitement of private violence to radicalize supporters. … Trump gambled that Americans resent each other's difference more than they cherish their shared democracy. So far, that gamble has paid off. David Frum, Trumpocracy  [2018] © 2019 Kwiple.com
Trumpism Two traits have historically marked off European-style fascism from more home- grown American traditions of illiberalism: contempt for legality and the cult of violence. Presidential-era Trumpism operated through at least the forms of law. Presidential-era Trumpism glorified military power, not mob attacks on government institutions. Postpresidentially, those past inhibitions are fast dissolving. The conversion of Ashli Babbitt into a martyr, a sort of Horst Wessel, expresses the transformation. David Frum, The Atlantic, July 13, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Trumpism When scientists examine a species that resembles another, but only incompletely or imperfectly, they add the suffix oid. A chemical compound that's not quite an alkaline is an alkoloid;  an orbiting space rock not quite a planet is a planetoid. In the same way, Trump and his ilk are fascoid  — near it,  but not quite the same, a failure even as fascists. David Frum, Trumpocalypse  © 2020 Kwiple.com
Trumpists They brought the Trumpocalypse upon the country and a post-Trumpocalypse country will have to find a way to either reconcile them to democracy — or to protect democracy from them. David Frum, Trumpocalypse  © 2020 Kwiple.com
Trumpists What set them apart from other Republicans was their economic insecurity and their cultural anxiety. David Frum, Trumpocracy  © 2019 Kwiple.com