How to Run a Right Wing "Think Tank"

First, you hire guys who think like you.

Then you insist that they they produce "research" that supports your ideology.

Next, you fire anybody whose "research" produces something you don't agree with.

Funny... I thought research was to discover new ideas or enhance old ones. That implies something new, some surprises. But the well endowed rich in the US want "research" institutes that only produce regurgitation of the official party line.

This brings us to a little story reported by Paul Krugman in his NY Times blog:

David Frum has been fired by the American Enterprise Institute; one has to assume that this is a response to his outspokenness about the Republican failure on health reform.

In discussing the Frum firing, Bruce Bartlett asserts that AEI has muzzled its health-care experts, because the truth is that they agree with a lot of what Obama is proposing. I find this quite believable; back in 2003 Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation, which is supposedly harder-right than AEI, proposed a health care reform consisting of … drumroll … an individual mandate coupled with subsidies to make insurance affordable. In short, Obamacare.

I've never been very fond of David Frum, but if he is going to grow a backbone and have independent thoughts, then I'll have to rethink my opinions. I don't mind if he still writes right wing viewpoints. I just demand that what he writes be honest and well reasoned. This firing says I need to take a second look at what he has been writing lately.