Before the Bulwark, there was Frum Forum

It’s time again for a news source interested in new ideas for a new day.

It’s early 2009. Barack Obama is inaugurated as the first African American president. The US and most of the world is in the grips of what would be called “The Great Recession.”

As Obama and the Democrats assume full power in Washington, the other side of the aisle was asking questions. The end of the Presidency of George W. Bush had left the Republican Party in bad shape and many were wondering how John McCain, a war hero, lost to Senator that hadn’t even finished his first term. In a few months, we would see the rise of Tea Party with their limited government agenda. This rebellion would become a rising power and they would drive the GOP agenda for years.

At the same time a former Bush Administration official was also wondering where the conservative movement would go from here. But where the Tea Party said they were against spending and wanted to stop growing government, this speechwriter was thinking that the Republican Party might need to do the exact opposite of the Tea Party. There was room for a little more government involvement in people’s lives and there was a need to challenge conservative orthodoxy. “My fellow conservatives and Republicans have tended not to worry very much about the widening…