– The conservative movement as I knew it is over

David Frum was born to a liberal family in Canada, but starting out as an editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal in 1989, he has spent most of his adult life in the American conservative movement. He worked for the Manhattan Institute, contributed to The Weekly Standard, served for a year in the George W. Bush White House, and then worked for the American Enterprise Institute.

So there was a gap between the values of the organization and the interests of its membership. And Donald Trump stepped into that gap.

However, and in particular starting from his 2007 book Comeback: Conservatism that can win again, Frum has been a critic of the existing Republican party, challenging the orthodoxy of the party on anything from health care to immigration, as well as discussing his regrets for supporting the Iraq war in 2003 – three topics that were exploited by Donald Trump in the Republican primaries in 2016. Frum has nonetheless emerged as a scathing critic of not only Trump, but of the party and the institutional context that made him possible. In a few months, his latest book, Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic, will be on the book shelves.