Thomas Frank Is Not Worthy of WSJ's "Wednesday Liberal" Column
Ever since Al Hunt left the Wall Street Journal, its Op-Ed page has lacked the token voice of an unabashed liberal. The editors recently rectified this situation by hiring Thomas Frank to give us capitalist pigs our mid-week dose of wooly-mindedness. I've lost count, but we're about five or six columns into the Frank Era and I have to say the WSJ hired the wrong guy. His columns are easily picked apart for their glaringly silly theses and they are not the least bit informative or entertaining. Frank makes me yearn for Al Hunt.
Today's column is no exception. Frank takes the poster child in chief of what was wrong with the Republican congressional majority - Tom DeLay - and uses him as exhibit A to declare conservatism a failed doctrine. DeLay was exactly what conservatives loathed about the Republican majority that claimed to govern in their name; he embodied the abandonment of fealty to small government principles. Just to take a few examples, conservatives howled with disgust over the Medicare section D entitlement expansion and DeLay's key role in ramming it through, as well as cringed when DeLay declared, inexplicably, that congress had squeezed all the fat out of the federal budget. Frank missed all this. Conservatives might not have liked the dishonest hardball assault that Ronnie Earle employed to go after DeLay, but in no way did that sympathy extend to believing that DeLay was good for conservatism. Frank is obviously living in a bubble somewhere because he couldn't be more wrong. If Jeff Flake were the most powerful guy in the House and Don Young was a pariah, Republicans would likely still be in the majority. If Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn were not lone voices in the Senate, then Republican coffers would be full and their prospects for the upcoming election cycle would be rosy. True conservatives have abandoned the Republican party not because they have found their beliefs wanting, but because they have found their beliefs foresaken by those who claimed to uphold them. History and experience has taught us that bigger government is worse government, government solutions create problems not solve them, and that government expands at the expense of our liberty. Tom DeLay is a blip. A hundred Tom DeLay's couldn't unteach us what history has taught us and what experience teaches us every day. Whatever name you put on it - conservatism, libertarianism - smaller, less intrusive government has an enormous appeal and advantage that grows everyday as the global laboratory gives us disappointment, failure and disaster at the hands of powerful government. If Frank thinks his worldview has won the day because Tom DeLay was a typical, power hungry politician, I welcome his misdiagnosis and false confidence. In the meantime, the WSJ should find a decent liberal columnist, Frank is sullying its Champagne pages with beer budget commentary.
Today's column is no exception. Frank takes the poster child in chief of what was wrong with the Republican congressional majority - Tom DeLay - and uses him as exhibit A to declare conservatism a failed doctrine. DeLay was exactly what conservatives loathed about the Republican majority that claimed to govern in their name; he embodied the abandonment of fealty to small government principles. Just to take a few examples, conservatives howled with disgust over the Medicare section D entitlement expansion and DeLay's key role in ramming it through, as well as cringed when DeLay declared, inexplicably, that congress had squeezed all the fat out of the federal budget. Frank missed all this. Conservatives might not have liked the dishonest hardball assault that Ronnie Earle employed to go after DeLay, but in no way did that sympathy extend to believing that DeLay was good for conservatism. Frank is obviously living in a bubble somewhere because he couldn't be more wrong. If Jeff Flake were the most powerful guy in the House and Don Young was a pariah, Republicans would likely still be in the majority. If Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn were not lone voices in the Senate, then Republican coffers would be full and their prospects for the upcoming election cycle would be rosy. True conservatives have abandoned the Republican party not because they have found their beliefs wanting, but because they have found their beliefs foresaken by those who claimed to uphold them. History and experience has taught us that bigger government is worse government, government solutions create problems not solve them, and that government expands at the expense of our liberty. Tom DeLay is a blip. A hundred Tom DeLay's couldn't unteach us what history has taught us and what experience teaches us every day. Whatever name you put on it - conservatism, libertarianism - smaller, less intrusive government has an enormous appeal and advantage that grows everyday as the global laboratory gives us disappointment, failure and disaster at the hands of powerful government. If Frank thinks his worldview has won the day because Tom DeLay was a typical, power hungry politician, I welcome his misdiagnosis and false confidence. In the meantime, the WSJ should find a decent liberal columnist, Frank is sullying its Champagne pages with beer budget commentary.
posted by Donny Baseball at 12:07 PM
3 Comments:
I was thinking the same thing when I read the column today. I stopped reading it half way through.
Someone who thinks of the Nixon administration as conservative probably has other idiotic ideas.
Yeah, you're right. It'd be a lot easier for you if the token liberal on the WSJ op-ed page would play nice and didn't ever really challenge your stereotypes of effete, elitist liberals and your fundamentalist economic views.
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