What the Hell is Frum’s Problem?

Who knows. Perhaps he’s just a Jennifer Rubin, you know, only playing a conservative when it was cool. Yeah I know all his conservative “bonifides”, but you’re only as good as your last Here he is again trying to get hits from Rush Limbaugh by writing the most incredibly ignorant post ever.

“My conservative friends argue that the policies of Barack Obama are responsible for the horrifying length and depth of the economic crisis.

Question: Which policies?

Obama’s only tax increases – those contained in the Affordable Care Act – do not go into effect until 2014. Personal income tax rates and corporate tax rates are no higher today than they have been for the past decade. The payroll tax has actually been cut by 2 points. Total federal tax collections have dropped by 4 points of GDP since 2007, from 18+% to 14+%, the lowest rate since the Truman administration.

If so minded, you could describe Barack Obama as the biggest tax cutter in American history.

We have not seen a major surge in federal regulation, at least by the usual rough metrics: the page count of the Federal Register has risen by less than 5% since George W. Bush’s last year in office. Trade remains as free as it was a decade ago.

While the Affordable Care Act itself will eventually have major economic consequences, most of its provisions remain only impending.

Energy prices have surged, but that’s hardly a response to administration policies. Conservatives complain about restrictions on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, but on a planet that produces 63 million barrels of oil per day, a few thousand more or less from the Gulf will not much budge the price of oil. Rising oil prices are a story about Chinese and Indian consumption and Middle Eastern political instability, not about US drilling or lack thereof.

The Dodd-Frank bill does somewhat curtail the activities of some banks and investment firms. But is it seriously argued that this could be the cause?

Conservatives complain about excess government spending. Fine. But isn’t the evil of excess government spending supposed to be inflation rather than recession? And where’s the inflation?”

First, according to what I hear he has no real conservative friends. Frum is known for hanging out more the cultural beltway elite than with anyone else.

So the economy is tanking, the Dow dropped 500 points today, unemployment is still over 9 percent, GDP is at the lowest level in years and according to this asswipe it has nothing to do with Obama. In fact the economy the prospect for a brighter future have never been so bad.

Still it’s not Obama’s fault. Only problem with Frum’s logic is that Obama seems to like to take credit when things go good, but shifts when things go wrong. Frum obviously has the talking points of the DNC down pat.

But it isn’t going to work. Frum might not blame Obama, but Americans in great number do. Defenders of Obama, many of them who blamed Bush for much less woes, are jumping to Obama’s defense. However like it or not much of what we see today IS either directly or indirectly tied to Obama. After all he made the promises which now have been completely broken.

For instance, take unemployment. Obama administration promised that the $819 billion “stimulus” spending package would keep the unemployment rate below 8 percent. I know that liberal fact checking sites dispute that claim (go figure), but Obama did make the promise.

He’s made other such promises too which we now know is simply Obama writing checks with his mouth that his ass can’t catch.

Frum endorsed Obama and has consistently defended him throughout his term of office, so what else is new.  

(note, I apologize for the really crappy writing on the first draft, blame it on the meds, I’ve corrected the copy).