Whose Waterloo ?

David Frum is a conservative and there isn't much we'd agree on in policy, not much. That doesn't mean that he isn't also a fairly astute observer of political manuevering.

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

In his political analysis he gets much right, but he misses one of the elephants (hehe) in the room - the Rovian political construct of destruction. Yes, they aped some of loon right talking points in ideology; but Cantor made it clear that this was about political destruction - health care was to be Obama's Waterloo. This was to smash him and ruin his political future.

Well, not so much luck there - I guess. I don't want to prognosticate how this will play out in the mid-term elections because I do think it could go either way. What did happen, as Frum notes, is that their influence was less than it might have been. Since I think the thing is too far right I wouldn't be pleased by that result.

I'm pretty pleased to watch the Republicans destruct with their reliance on right wing talkers... As for the tone of the rhetoric; the more the GOP demonstrates exactly who and what they are the better the chances are that ordinary Americans will recoil - resulting in either GOP re-alignment or immateriality.