Bush Speechwriter Frum Pens Lessons for a Responsible Conservative Movement

In the most recent New York Times Sunday Magazine, former Bush speechwriter David Frum puts together five "positive and productive" lessons for conservatives to act "effectively and responsibly." A sample: 

Lesson 1: The danger of closed information systems. Well before the crash of 2008, the U.S. economy was sending ominous warning signals. Median incomes were stagnating. Home prices rose beyond their rental values. Consumer indebtedness was soaring. Instead, conservatives preferred to focus on positive signals — job numbers, for example — to describe the Bush economy as “the greatest story never told.”

Too often, conservatives dupe themselves. They wrap themselves in closed information systems based upon pretend information. In this closed information system, banks can collapse without injuring the rest of the economy, tax cuts always pay for themselves and Congressional earmarks cause the federal budget deficit. Even the market collapse has not shaken some conservatives out of their closed information system. It enfolded them more closely within it. This is how to understand the Glenn Beck phenomenon. Every day, Beck offers alternative knowledge — an alternative history of the United States and the world, an alternative system of economics, an alternative reality. As corporate profits soar, the closed information system insists that the free-enterprise system is under assault. As prices slump, we are warned of imminent hyperinflation. As black Americans are crushed under Depression-level unemployment, the administration’s policies are condemned by some conservatives as an outburst of Kenyan racial revenge against the white overlord....

Lesson 2: “The market” (the whole free-market system) must be distinguished from “the markets” (the trading markets for financial assets)....

Lesson 3: The economy is more important than the budget.... 

Lesson 4: Even from a conservative point of view, the welfare state is not all bad....

Lesson 5: Listen to the people — but beware of populism.... 

The irony of this piece appearing in The New York Times aside, it's a strong list. I'll just pray that it goes directly from Frum's lips to John Boehner's ears.