Donald Trump will be our very worst president, by a very wide margin, because Donald Trump is the apotheosis of the Tea Party, the culmination of Republican lawlessness—that is to say, an impatience and contempt for “rules” that eventually transforms itself into a delight in their violation—that has been growing stronger and stronger since the…
Search Results for: Tea Party
Finger-Pointing in the Dark: The Rout of Neo-Liberalism
It is, appropriately enough, gray and wet in Washington, DC this morning. Brilliant sunshine would be almost more irony than one could bear. Brexit was a stunner. Compared to Donald Trump, it was a popgun. It’s become overwhelmingly clear that the real cost of the Great Recession was not the cost of fighting our way…
Ragin’ Republicans: Rich Lowry explains why it’s wrong to criticize Republicans for supporting a moral idiot
It’s all the Establishment’s fault, Rich explains: “Few politicians in memory have so powerfully tapped into and expressed the conservative id, which has long yearned for a Republican politician willing to heap the verbal abuse on the Clintons and, especially, on the media that they so manifestly deserve. “Except on cable and talk radio, the…
Paul Ryan, The Policy Wonk That Wasn’t
Unless you’ve been living under a blanket, or have a life, you’re well aware that House Speaker Paul Ryan just had a meeting with Republican presidential nominee to be Donald Trump. Virtually everything about the Republican Party is a joke these days—most of them, of course, very unfunny. The biggest, and least funny is the…
Hey, George F. Will! Stop making sense!
Yes, much as I hate to admit it, George F. (“F as in FREEEEEEEEKY!!!!!”) Will, perhaps my all-time piñata/bête noire, has a point in his latest screed, “Scientific silencers on the left are trying to shut down climate skepticism”, because that’s exactly what’s happening. I’ve previously complained about the utterly meretricious suit brought by a…
Are We Germany Yet?
In 1932, the two top presidential vote getters in Germany were Adolph Hitler (Nazi) and Ernst Thälmann (Communist). Well, Donald Trump is no nazi, and Bernie Sanders no communist, but it says a lot about the state of America that the Donald and the Bern are the two hottest acts in America these days. Incomes…
Jonathan Rauch has words of wisdom
A couple of weeks ago I waxed witty at the expense of Washington author Jonathan Rauch in a snappy piece titled “Jonathan Rauch has words of wisdom. Or not.”. Well, that was then, that is, that was before House Speaker John Boehner fell on his sword out of sheer frustration with the Tea Party’s incessant…
Ross Douthat’s Obama Outrage O’ the Week
I’m in the habit of reading Ross Douthat’s blog “Evaluations” at the New York Times, which, when he is not ruminating about the reverberative, not to say rebarbarative, phallocentricity of John Melius, is largely devoted to Ross’s mostly honest account of “thoughtful” conservatives like Ross to craft a domestic policy for the Republican Party that…
The grand bargain that nobody wanted
Alec MacGillis has a nice piece in the New Republic about one of the most fatuous of the grand confabs that float about the French cuffs and poached salmon universe, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s “Fiscal Summit,” at which a variety of rich people moan about the fact that the gutless politicians in Washington won’t…
Double Down, Dude! Double Down!
Jim/Joe/Bob/Jimmy Joe Bob couldn’t believe it! Obama/Mitt/Newt/Attila the Hun wasn’t backing off! He was doubling down! Yes, people double down a lot in Double Down, the not so hot off the presses tome du jour from Mark Halperin and John Heilmann rehashing the 2012 presidential election. The book received mixed reviews when it was published…