David Frum has an interesting essay over at Foreign Affairs trying to help the magazine’s readership understand the genus Republicanus. While Frum’s analysis is earnest, and he has some solid points, I think that the magazine’s readership would be led astray in several ways. Today, let us look at the Republican donor class. The GOP donors are problematic in multiple ways, but they aren’t the problem in several areas that Frum identifies.

1. Frum places Republican insistence on tighter monetary policy under the category “radical rich”. You could find individual rich guys calling for more contractionary monetary policy, gold standards, etc. But focusing too much on those loud (and sometimes obnoxious) voices is misleading. Romney was the candidate of the donor class and he was the candidate who was the least critical of Bernanke and the Federal Reserve. It was Romney’s underfunded Tea Party-branded rivals who were falling all over themselves to make nonsensical statements like calling Bernanke the most inflationary Federal Reserve Chairman ever. To the extent that there was monetary sanity in the 2012 Republican presidential primaries, that sanity was found In the candidate of the donor class.

2. The same thing is true about the relationship between the Republican donor class and taxes. The original Romney tax plan involved some cosmetic middle-class tax cuts (basically cutting taxes on investment income most middle-class people didn’t have much of) combined with a modest cut to the corporate income tax. It was only later in the campaign, after Romney faced a challenge from Santorum, that Romney proposed bringing down the top marginal income tax rate as part of an across-the board income tax cut.

Romney didn’t do this because he needed the support of the donor class. He already had the support of the donor class and, by the time Romney proposed his revised tax plan, the only viable alternative was Santorum. There was no way on Earth the donor class was going to ditch Romney to back Santorum. Romney’s revised tax plan was designed to show rank-and-file- conservative primary votes that he was conservative – was Reagany – enough for them. See? I’m for a Son of Kemp-Roth tax plan. Isn’t that what you people like?

The Republican donor class has a lot to answer for, but they were not the cause of the 2012 GOP’s problems on monetary policy, and they were not the reason Romney adopted his plans to cut the top marginal income tax rate.