Bait and switch

In the lobby of the federal agency where I work, a wide screen TV has been installed on the wall at the end of a bank of elevators. Quite aside from the curious decision to spend money on a television that people are likely to watch for perhaps four seconds while they wait for an elevator, the TV is almost always tuned to MSNBC – nothing surprising there, given the ideological bent of the current administration. But I just saw something that continues to stick in my craw. David Frum was on a talk show, and the helpful label at the bottom of the screen read, “Conservative Frum: Palin departure a ‘milestone’”.

Never mind whatever significance may attach to Palin leaving Fox; why is Frum still described as a conservative? He is, and has been for a considerable period of time, nothing but one of the left’s useful idiots, a so-called “moderate” whose views are practically indistinguishable from the Democrat party line. His most savage critiques have been reserved for the conservative base, and his relationship to traditional conservative values rather resembles the surgeon’s relationship to a tumor.

Maybe there’s a lesson to be learned here: how about if conservatives start self-identifying as “liberals” or some other leftist tag? I can see it now:

Liberal Mark Levin assails the president’s attack on the bill of rights.

Bolshevik Rush Limbaugh professes impatience at the slow pace of the withering away of the state.

Trotskyite Rand Paul denounces Obama’s reactionary, bourgeois, hand-me-down FDR policies.

Anarcho-syndicalist Paco condemns Obama's war on the working man.