Quotable: David Frum

“Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s. ... So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.”

David Frum, former speechwriter for George W. Bush

I agree with Mr. Frum. He is an astute enough student of history and politics to have realized the Republicans were playing a dangerous ideological all-or-nothing game with the President. By vowing to oppose every initiative of the President’s, even those in which common ground could be found; by whipping up their angry fringe, the Teabaggers, which in my view they and the punditocracy have grossly overestimated; and by playing infantile process games of obstruction, the Republicans gambled everything on Jim DeMint’s catchy but recklessly self-destructive prediction of President Obama’s “Waterloo” -- and lost.

Deal with it, Republicans. And try cutting the Teabaggers loose. You stoked that ugly flame; now you own it. David Frum may be a minority of one -- or three -- in the GOP.