Frum Treats Ace Like a Dirty Whore

OK, all I did was attend a cocktail party, but now -- as Justin Hawkins observes -- David Frum is imposing himself on Ace, an act of ideological date-rape, as it were.

The question is whether Ace was askin' for it, struttin' around in lipstick and tight jeans like a whore.

Oh, yeah. We know the story: Frum was just chillin' in his center-right Republican dorm room with a bit of herb, some cold malt liquor, watching ESPN with his moderate posse.

Knock, knock, knock -- "It's me, Ace." The sultry little minx wants to hang out with the homies, drinking a few of Frum's 40s. Starts doing the tease routine, talking sexy about "electability" and "pragmatism." Yadda yadda. Ba-da-bing. Et cetera.

So what if Conor got sloppy seconds after Ace passed out? Whose fault was that, huh?

Next morning, Ace runs off crying to the campus medical center claiming he said "no" (ah, but his eyes said "yes"), and before you can say "presumed innocent," there's a Take Back the Night candelight vigil with chants and posters and . . .

What? Too lurid, Ace? Am I "blaming the victim"? Is the trauma induced by your ordeal still a raw wound? Perhaps you'd prefer soothing poetry:

Ace and David,
Sittin' in a tree,
K-I-S-S-I-N-G

I could roll that way. (Outlaw!) But once I whip out my big thick analogy like this, I gotta go all the way.

I don't blame Frum for taking what he wants, seeing as how Ace was obviously so willing to give it up. The problem is this I'm-not-that-kind-of-girl victim act on Ace's part.

Like I said, I've got no problem with cocktail parties. That's just coalition politics, an obligatory ritual like the high school prom. Laura Ingraham and Mark Krikorian were there as chaperones, just in case things got out of hand. (Some conservatives have one too many glasses of that reserve pinot and start stumbling around, badmouthing NRA and Club For Growth like a whore.)

Oh, we all saw it coming. Signing that Coulter petition was like showing up for your date in a tube top and a mini-skirt, an unmistakable advertisement that you were ready for some action. Ace, you were like that stupid tramp in Colorado who thought she could just "fool around a little" with an NBA superstar and that Kobe Bryant would stop exactly where she said stop. A lesson learned the hard way, so to speak.

Now, Friedersdorf is accusing conservatives of trying to "purge" you, Ace. If that's what Hawkins or anyone else is up to, count me out.

I've had my bad moments, too, so I have empathy, like Sotomayor.

Ace, what I'm saying is that you made an error of judgment for which you are responsible, like that chubby freshman girl who arrives early at the Teke open-house party, starts right in on the tequila and doesn't stop until the pledges are lined up down the hall waiting to take their turns.

But why bring Meghan McCain into this?

My point is that if Ace is a dirty slut, he's our dirty slut. We don't blame Frum and Friedersdorf for wanting to do a three-way and then hand him off to David Brooks, David Letterman, David Gergen, David Brock, David Hasselhof, David Copperfield . . . but again, why bring Meghan McCain into this?

Ace knows what he is, and we respect what he is, insofar as he is at least honest enough to admit that he has these unfortunate tendencies to be "center-right," a weakness for "pragmatic" arguments about "electability."

Like a whore.

UPDATE: Speaking of which, who is this "Mindy" who shares her correspondence with Friedersdorf? The analysis Ace gives Mindy -- "The last 'good year' was the election of 2004" -- is solid, so far as it goes.

What it ignores is the original folly of making Philadelphia-on-the-Tigris the focal point of Republican electoral strategy. You can get away with that kind of blunder for a while, especially when the Democrats are content to nominate a guaranteed loser like John Kerry and rely on the strategic advice of Bob Shrum.

Karl Rove got his winning reputation too easily. The fundamental flaws in the policy/politics formula of Bushism were exposed just as soon as the Democrat grassroots used the Internet to organize a coup against their clueless leaders, installing Howard Dean at the DNC and putting Rahm Emanuel in charge of their congressional campaign.

However, the flaws of Bushism were there all along: The GOP cannot build an enduring majoritarian coalition on the basis of overseas adventures, nebulous domestic "triangulation" and a rhetoric of symbolic appeals to patriotism. If Bushism appeared to work for a while, that was mainly because Democratic leaders were out of touch with, and therefore incapable of effectively organizing, the grassroots resentment that the Kos/MoveOn axis saw as the natural fulcrum upon which to leverage a strategy of direct opposition (as opposed to an absurd DLC "Me-Too-ism") to the Bush agenda.

Never mind. t I don't want to discuss that now. What I want to do is to ask a question: Surely the "Mindy" who writes this is not Mindy Finn?

Clarify, Conor.

UPDATE II: Ace just e-mailed to say that "Mindy" is not Mindy Finn, so excuse my throwing that name out there. She just happened to be the only Republican named Mindy who came to mind. I'll await further information. This poison-pen stuff -- trashing an entire political movement in an e-mail exchange and then allowing the exchange to be published with only "Mindy" as identifying one half of the exchange -- is bad business.