David Frum's Blog, page 72

The Housing Bubbles Reinflates

The Wall Street Journal details one reason new home purchases are surging: homebuilders have gotten really good at helping people with less than ideal credit secure loans. On one hand, it's great to see the housing market recover. On every other hand, can't we wait at least a decade before doing this again?

Chris Christie, the GOP's Most Popular Governor, Not Welcome at CPAC

The most popular Republican in the country - and the only Republican who could hope to put New Jersey's 14 electoral votes into the GOP column for the first time since 1988 - is unwelcome at CPAC.

More Conservative Denialism

Ross Douthat blogs today about an exchange between William Voegeli and David Frum in The Claremont Review of Books, conservative quasi-sort-of-answer to The New York Review. William Voegeli is a leading conservative policy analyst, while David Frum is David Frum.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

The GOP by the Numbers

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press published the results of a recent survey that looks at how people view the GOP and the Democrats. Many of the results are what you would expect. It is not surprising that the image of the Republican Party is at a two-decade low, with only a 33% approval rating.

Should We Rejoice a Post-Work Future? Ctd.

After going through the comments on Ross Douthat’s coloumn ‘A World Without Work,’ as well as some of the comments from our ‘Should We Rejoice a Post-Work Future?’ series, it is clear that it put a bad taste in a lot of peoples’ mouths.

Deciphering the Sequester: It's All About the Spending

I'm among those surprised at the strong Republican unity on the sequester, which absent an unlikely deal, kicks into effect on Friday. But as I wrote yesterday, it's even more puzzling, and a tad bemusing, to see left-of-center journalists and pundits failing to recognize the basic priorities of the post-2012 GOP.

Britain's Liberal Democrats Need a Sexual Harassment Training

British politics are in an uproar over a sex harassment scandal in the Liberal Democratic party. The Telegraph has a useful summary of the story here, including this primer on what not to say to quell it:

Hagel's Orwell Moment on India

In one of George Orwell's essays, he recalls this schoolboy incident:

Dog Biscuits? No, I Prefer 109 Pebbles

This is why we love Labrador Retrievers.

President Vladimir Bloomberg?

Russia is cracking down hard on tobacco, which even casual observers know is a huge public health problem for the Great Bear.