David Frum's seductive vision of the Moderate Mitt that might have been

David Frum, as I noted last week, has been a consistent, clear-eyed and constructive critic of today's extremist, dead-end GOP.  His ebook Why Romney Lost is terrific as to diagnosis, though as usual I shake my head at the critique of Obama at the beginning and the rather hasty policy prescriptions at the end. I would take issue, too -- as I think Frum kind of does with himself -- on a perhaps moot point: the degree of responsibility Romney bears for his loss.

The basic premise is incontrovertible: the party forced Romney too far to the right:

In poll after poll, big majorities described the Republican nominee as favoring the wealthy over the middle class. 1 No surprise, therefore, that throughout the spring and summer of 2012, Obama held a multi-point lead.  over Romney, despite the president’s sub-50 percent job-approval rating. Then, in the final month of the election, Romney’s team at last released “Moderate Mitt from Massachusetts” from his six-year seclusion. Abruptly the election tightened (location 34).

Meanwhile, outside our sandbox...

In service of my lifelong reflex to ward off nemesis...as we near the end of a blissful political week for Obama and Democrats, in which Romney was exposed as a sneering oligarch mouthing Randian shibboleths, writing off a Palestinian state and licking his chops at a potential October surprise...as the multi-tiered depravity of that tape sinks in bit by bit, polls swing a bit Obama's way and he sticks the shiv in without apparent rancor or glee; as Romney campaign operatives point fingers at each other and GOP Senate candidates run from him...

I can't help but pick my head up from the Twitter sandbox to worry whether the world meanwhile will blow up on Obama, and us, before the election -- or, for that matter, after. That is, as our effort in Afghanistan verges on collapse, and Netanyahu continues to threaten his own October surprise, and the mobs keep surging at UN missions, and a decision looms re Spanish debt -- there is so much beyond the control of Obama, or this nation, or rational human effort. And some ill-timed accident or well-timed plot could still put an unprincipled plutocrat in pawn to extremist ideologues and monied interests into the White House.

Just a friendly reminder.