Hey GOP! Please Ignore David Frum!

by Stuart Shapiro

David Frum sees President Obama as vulnerable next year.  And he has a recipe for beating him.

So the Republican playbook for 2012 should follow a simple plan:

1) Focus on the president’s record.

2) Do not allow the militant wing of the party to bind the whole party to election-losing issues.

3) Keep the kooks off the main stage.

And yet this simple plan is proving surprisingly hard to execute.

Frum goes on to describe how the Ryan Medicare plan violates step two, and the attention given to Palin, Bachmann, Trump, and now Herman Cain violates the third step.  He thinks much more highly of Mitt Romney than I do (I think he can’t beat President Obama), but even I have to admit Romney is the strongest of a weak lot of candidates.  But Romney is going to take a lot of hits from his nomination rivals in the months ahead as the GOP resolutely ignores Frum.  And even if Romney takes the nomination, he is going to be very badly bruised.  I’m grabbing my popcorn to watch the spectacle.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.