Newsweek/The Daily Beast editor Tina Brown has hired David Frum, the pundit who exiled himself from conservatism, to join her magazine-web mini-empire. Frum, who was a speechwriter for George W. Bush most closely associated with the phrase "axis of evil," has been a bit of a media nomad since he noisily left the National Review in just after the Republican drubbing in the 2008 election. He told The New York Times at the time, "The answers to the Republican dilemma are not obvious and we need a vibrant discussion,” he said. “I think a little more distance can help everybody do a better job of keeping their temper.” Two years later that distance got a little further as he departed conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute shortly after pronouncing the passage of health care reform as "the most crushing legislative defeat" for the GOP since the 1960s. He set up shop on his own for a while at FrumForum.com, but now he has permanent home in Brown's growing collection of wayward conservatives. Andrew Sullivan, who supported George W. Bush in the 2000 election but went on to become one his fiercest critics, departed The Atlantic for The Daily Beast early last year. And Brown was a big booster of Meghan McCain, who first found her pundit traction on The Daily Beast after the 2008 election by criticizing the Republican Party, especially on gay marriage. Frum writes of his new boss, "Tina Brown is one of the great media visionaries of our time."

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