David Frum Leaves 'National Review'

Have you ever been at a party and had a swell time drinking fancy drinks with nifty folks and suddenly you look up, it's 3: 30 in the morning, all the cool kids have gone home, and you're stuck on a pee-stained couch drinking vodka and milk cocktails with a pimpled, silent loser pawing your knee? That is the story of theNational Review,where David Frum says he'll no longer be writing. (In this somewhat tortured metaphor, Frum is actually one of the "cool kids," the party is over, and you have to give Kathryn Jean Lopez a ride home and hope she doesn't vomit in your car.)

David Frum is the father of the "axis of evil," a reliable conservative, known twit, generator of mealy-mouthed commentaries for NPR'sMarketplaceand NRblogger. (According to Wonkette Editor Ken Layne, "He also looks exactly like the Beatles manager who committed suicide because he was a lonesome queer.")

None of the wingnuts at The Corner ever had a problem with David Frum until, along with such Communists as Peggy Noonan and Christopher Buckley and David Brooks and Kathleen Parker, he started pointing out that the Republican party has become the party of mouth-breathing illiterate cretins. For this he has been BANISHED.

Now David Frum, a prominent conservative writer who enmeshed himself in a minor dustup during the campaign by turning negative on Governor Palin, is leaving, too. In an interview, he said he planned to leave the magazine, where he writes a popular blog, to strike out on his own on the Web.

“The answers to the Republican dilemma are not obvious and we need a vibrant discussion,” he said. “I think a little more distance can help everybody do a better job of keeping their temper.”

So, to recap: NRhas now lost Buckley and Frum. The only scribes who remain are K-Lo, Starburst, and their fat Mexican secretary, Jonah Goldberg. Together this threesome will save American conservatism.

 At National Review, a Threat to Its Reputation for Erudition [New York Times]