What happens when you hitch your wagon to the crazy horse

G-Dubs' former speechwriter David Frum penned a piece about the Republicans' failure to block the health care reform bill currently getting the final once over in the House. Methinks it'll be quoted quite extensively over the next few days. Definitely worth reading the whole thing, but there are ample goodies:

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.

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.

Bipartisan Barry would have done anything for the HCR bill to be a crossing-the-aisle feather in his cap. He deep-sixed drug reimportation and the public option out-of-hand. Who knows what else he would've traded. But, with visions of rabid (and I mean TRULY rabid) turnout in Novemeber, the congressional R's fell in behind the Hannitys, Limbaughs, and Becks and followed their sanctimonious, pill-popping, sobbing selves straight off the cliff.

Bon voyage.