Fruming Mad
David Frum looks at the rage of the rich that fueled the Romney campaign.
The background to so much of the politics of the past four years is the mood of apocalyptic terror that has gripped so much of the American upper class.
Hucksters of all kinds have battened on this terror. They tell them that free enterprise is under attack; that Obama is a socialist, a Marxist, a fascist, an anti-colonialist. Only by donating to my think tank, buying my book, watching my network, going to my movie, can you - can we - stop him before he seizes everything to give to his base of "bums." .
Now that he’s been read out of meeting by the Movement, Frum can really write. So can fellow exile Andrew Sullivan.
He did not say: "I'll never convince them they should vote for me." He accused 47 percent of Americans of choosing not to "take personal responsibility and care for their lives." He's describing half the country as parasites, bleeding the productive half dry. Half the country. He includes me, an Obama supporter, who pays three times the tax on my income that Romney does, who immigrated at 21, whose parents never went to college, and whose blog now employs five people.
Perhaps happy days really are just around the bend.