Yes, NYT-approved conservatives Ross Douthat, who has, on occasion, received a hearty thumb’s up from me, and Trump-hatin’ Bret Stephens, whom I’ve basically ignored, have both been actin’ conservative and actin’ out in recent days. First up, and the more dispensable, is Ross, who’s actin’ all Catholic and accusatory, heading off a recent column on…
Tag: Ross Douthat
Ross Douthat, Lee Drutman, and Karen Handel explain it all for you
Scatter much? The Democrats sure don’t, if you can read the fine print of this graph, appearing in a report, Political Divisions in 2016 and Beyond, prepared by the folks at “Voterstudygroup” and written by Lee Drutman, linked to by the not always to be ridiculed and scorned by me Ross Douthat. As Ross points…
Ross Douthat (yes, that Ross Douthat) explains it all for you
I have been perhaps overly hard on Ross Douthat over the years, though I can say with some pride that I haven’t called him “Ross Dumbfuck” since 2012. But, well, that was then and this is now. Ross more or less hits it out of the park with his latest column, “House Republicans Go Off…
If you’re reading this, that proves Trump isn’t so bad
You aren’t dead yet, are you? So what are you bitching about? That’s the gist of the latest posts from right-wing double-domes Eli Lake and Ross Douthat, who sound pathetically grateful that they haven’t yet suffered personal beatdowns from the Donald. “If we’re nice he probably won’t hit us.” No president has ever told as…
Explaining the Trump “Boom”
Ross Douthat and Tyler Cowen have a question for Trump-loathers like me: If Trump is so bad, why is there no evidence that (as Tyler puts it) “America’s intellectual and media mandarins have been busy liquidating their long positions and buying puts over the past two months”? Okay, I guess I don’t really qualify as…
Ross Douthat, shocked to see Democrats doing to Republicans what Republicans did to Democrats
Ross Douthat, waxing witty, as is his wont, professes to be amused by “the most predictable of spectacles: a liberal holy war against Betsy DeVos, just confirmed as the new secretary of education by Mike Pence’s tiebreaking vote.” What’s the fuss, asks Ross: “the bulk of DeVos’s school-choice work places her only somewhat to the…
George Will would rather write about the Black Death than Donald Trump
Well, you can hardly blame the man, can you? The Donald’s current reign of t/error is a lot less palatable than the centuries-old horror that reduced Europe’s population by a solid 25% back in the fourteenth century. But after you get past Georgie’s first paragraph, his current think piece becomes less a history lesson than…
Vanneman praises Friedman; Heavens sway, just a little
Yes, it’s true. Thomas Friedman—the guy who said we should invade Iraq “because we can”—has written a brilliant column, “Bibi Netanyahu Makes Trump His Chump”, whose first two paragraphs read as follows: “For those of you confused over the latest fight between President Obama and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel, let me make it…
Ted Cruz, the current ninny and future king
In two recent postings, here and here, Ross Douthat concludes that the Republican Party as we know it will soon no longer exist. “There is now no possibility that the Republican Party will survive its rendezvous with Donald Trump unbroken.” Which means that on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017, there will be two Democratic presidents…
John Podhoretz, half right on Trump—okay, make that a quarter
Over at Commentary, definitely not one of my fave rave’s, Editor John Podhoretz has “A New Theory of Trump”, taking another crack at explaining the Donald. Podhoretz’s argument is stated rather elliptically—or perhaps obliquely—but what he’s getting at, basically, is that George W. Bush got a lot of things wrong, but Republicans were so obsessed…