Do conservative Republicans believe in freedom of speech and diversity of opinion? Apparently not. David Frum, a well-known conservative pundit, analyst and former speech writer for George W. Bush, criticized Republicans recently for their asinine all-or-nothing approach to health care reform.

A day later, he was dropped from his $100,000-per-year job at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. Speaking with Politico, Frum says he believes "donor pressure" contributed to his dismissal. "There's a lot about the story I don't really understand," Frum said from his iPhone. "But the core of the story is the kind of economic pressure that intellectual conservatives are under."

AEI issued a statement saying, "David Frum is an original thinker and a friend to many at AEI. We are pleased to have welcomed him as a colleague for seven years, and his decision to leave in no way diminishes our respect for him."

Frum's piece is a short read and a worthy critique. Rather than health care President Barack Obama's Waterloo as some Republicans predicted, the passage of the bill signaled a Waterloo for the GOP, Frum wrote. Republicans' inability to compromise on the bill, despite President Obama's desperate efforts at bipartisanship and the similarities in the plan to previous Republican health care reform proposals, was a mistake that could deal a devastating long-term blow to the party.

Frum writes:

Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s. It's hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. ...A huge part of the blame for today's disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves. At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing.


This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none. Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. ...Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views? ...Too late now. They are all the law.

Instead, fueled on by talk show conservatives, such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly, the Republican party riled up its base with lies, half-truths and exaggerations about what effects the bill would have upon American society. It was more based on the talks show hosts' desire for advertising revenue than a realistic examination of the situation. Frum writes:

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat. There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?

I've been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. ...If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush's listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleep Number beds.

It is exactly what many people have been saying all along. It seems that Limbaugh and his ilk are the leaders of the Republican Party. Republicans could have compromised somewhat on health care reform. The Republican Party has turned into a wild, screaming caricature of O'Reilly, Limbaugh and Beck. They are following the path of Britain's Conservative Party, according to Slate.

Frum has been particularly critical of Fox News and Limbaugh.

Last year, he called Limbaugh a "walking stereotype of self-indulgence -- exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party."

According to the National Post, "On Tuesday, in an interview with ABC, Mr. Frum said that Republicans were under the impression that TV network FOX worked for them, but now "we're discovering we work for FOX."

"This balance here has been completely reversed. The thing that sustains a strong FOX network is the thing that undermines a strong Republican Party," he said.

The firing of one of their most loyal soldiers shows how far right the Republican Party has gone. There was talk from Republicans that Obama's plan would socialize medicine and make big government an intruder on the lives of Americans. Maybe they should start at home and work on cultivating the right of diverse opinions to exist in a pluralistic society.