Frum Urges on GOP Reformers

David Frum is shutting down his Daily Beast blog apparently due to personal and family issues.  Thoughts and prayers to David and his family on a big loss for the blogging community as Frum has been a conservative voice of reason.  His prescriptions for GOP reform in his good-bye post:

1) There remain too many taboos and shibboleths even among the conservative reformers. If the only policy tool you allow yourself to use is tax credits, your reform agenda will sputter into ineffectuality. Conservative reformers need to do a better job of starting with the problem and working forward, not starting with the answer and working backward.

2) Conservative reformers are understandably allergic to arguments about income inequality...But one of the lessons I think conservatives should take from the 2012 Romney defeat is that the increasing concentration of wealth in America has dangerous political and intellectual consequences.

3) Conservative reformers must not absent themselves from the environmental debate. Humanity's impact on the climate - and how to address that impact - is our world's largest long-term challenge. If conservatives refuse to acknowledge that challenge, they only guarantee that the challenge will be addressed in ways that ignore conservative insights and values.

4) Conservative reformers should make their peace with universal health coverage. It's the law, and it won't be repealed. Other countries have managed to control costs while covering everyone, and the US can too.

5) I appreciate that conservative reformers must pay lip-service to shibboleths about Barack Obama being the worst president of all time, who won't rest until he has snuffed out the remains of constitutional liberty, etc. etc. Dissent too much from party orthodoxy, and you find yourself outside the party altogether. Still … conservative reformers should admit, if only to themselves, the harm that has been done by the politics of total war over the past five years.