What he said: President Obama’s interventions in this debate have been gifts to the Republican party–but it may be that what Republicans should do now is take the gift to the bank. In other words, make your point and move back to talking about the economy, the health-care law, and the size of government. A…
Search Results for: Ramesh Ponnuru
Ponnuru doubles to left
Or right. Or center. Whatever. Supply your own metaphor. While others seem too polite to speak, my sometime pal Ramesh lays the wood to Judy Shelton, one of President Trump’s two new picks for the Federal Reserve, to wit: “Trump’s choice for the Fed Board is now disavowing some of her terrible economic ideas. It’s…
Ramesh and Yuval, less than generous, less than ingenuous
Ramesh Ponnuru and Yuval Levin have a heavy rap on how to replace Obamacare over at the National Review, a piece that occasioned less than reverent comment on the left, to which Ponnuru and Levin respond, rather tartly, here. The piece has drawn some critical responses in the past few days — from Ezra Klein,…
How’s that “Party of Death” thing working out for you, Ramesh?
Over at the National Review, Ramesh Ponnuru has gotten a lot of well-deserved praise for his truth-telling regarding the latest Republican debacle, pointing out that, among other things, the Republicans have lost the popular vote in the past five of six presidential elections (after winning five of six in the post-Vietnam era), that they would…
The Republican Party: Now with 6% fewer murders!
Back in 2006, right-wing Republican panjandrum Ramesh Ponnuru published The Party of Death, a book aggressively attacking the Democratic Party for its embrace of “abortion rights”, or, as Ramesh, and the Republican Party, described it, murder! For if, as the Republican platform claims, every human fetus, from the moment of conception, is, or should be,…
Yo, America! Donald Trump’s epistemology isn’t Wittgensteinian! It’s Schopenhauerian!
The world is everything that is the case? No way, Johann, says El Donaldo. The world is my will! There is a great deal of debate these days about Donald Trump’s “state of mind” during the events both leading up and occurring on January 6, 2021—and, what the hell, a few occurring in the aftermath:…
Shorter Paul Krugman: Herbert Hoover was right. Businessmen are too goddamn greedy!
Goddamn right they are. Uncle Paul tells it like it is, unlike the many times I’ve bitched or sneered at him (though mixed in, to be sure, with occasional gestures of praise). As Paul points out, all the supposedly “responsible” businessfolk, in favor of “sound” principles, have no problem with a single house of Congress,…
The Republicans: WTF Happened to this Party? Part II Part 2: Matthew Continetti and The Right
A few years ago, I wrote an extended piece bearing the title The Republicans: WTF Happened to this Party?. Recently, in response to a couple of engaging (relatively) meas culpas—Matthew Continetti’s The Right The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism and Tim Miller’s Why We Did It—I began preparing an update. I originally planned to…
Is Ron DeSantis inevitable? Well, maybe.
The National Review can’t get enough of Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and it’s easy to see why: DeSantis drooler in chief Rich Lowry’s review of DeSantis’ bad boy with a Harvard sheen swagger bears the following subhead: “A glimpse at what Trumpism without Trump can look like.” Okay, to some of us that can…
The Benedict Strategy, Spinoza Edition
I don’t know if you’re up on Rod Dreher, who moans and groans with varying degrees of accuracy regarding the woke folks over at the American Conservative. Rod, a floridly passionate Christian, seems to have undergone several denominational makeovers, rejecting the Catholic Church to settle, I think, somewhere in the fields of Eastern Orthodoxy. Awhile…