David Frum: "Conservatism as an Alienated Cultural Sensibility"

Readers may recall my earlier post on Glenn Beck, "Worst Case Scenario? Preparing for Anarchy in America," as well as my more recent entry, "Michele Bachmann, Saving America," which features video of Beck hammering Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's market-crashing gaffe on the replacement of the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

Well, Beck's in the news today with the New York Times' essay, "Fox News’s Mad, Apocalyptic, Tearful Rising Star," plus the additional commentary at Memeorandum.

The article praises Beck, saying that the Fox News host "is suddenly one of the most powerful media voices for the nation’s conservative populist anger." Then the Times proceeds to tear him down as if he's some whacked out Black Copter/Roswell conspiracist. That meme alone would be unsurprising coming from the Times. But what caught my attention is that the essay includes an interview with David Frum, who is foisted off as some reference authority on Beck's supposedly marginalizing conservative appeal:

The conservative writer David Frum said Mr. Beck’s success “is a product of the collapse of conservatism as an organized political force, and the rise of conservatism as an alienated cultural sensibility.”

“It’s a show for people who feel they belong to an embattled minority that is disenfranchised and cut off,” he said.

Frum's not the only "authority" on conservative populism cited at the article. But his inclusion here is highly significant, in that he's a key ringleader for a "new right" of "progressive Republicans." Recall that Frum, along with David Brooks, is leading the "dinner party conservatives" in their attacks on the grassroots tea party movement now sweeping the nation, so expect to see more marginalization of folks like Glenn Beck, Glenn Reynolds, Michelle Malkin, and Little Miss Attila, who are rallying a real salt-of-the-earth constituency against the Obamocratic Europeanization of America.