Jul
29
How’s that populist democracy working out for ya?
July 29, 2010 | 8 Comments
One of the recurring themes of this blog is that populist democracy is an affront to the republicanism of the Framers. Yeah, I know it’s not as sexy as ranting about the dangers of Calvinism, but it’s something. The problem with political theory, at least compared to the hard sciences, is that we generally lack [...]
Jul
16
Krauthammer and Goldberg – which one is right?
July 16, 2010 | 4 Comments
So does Charles Krauthammer hit the nail on the head when he suggests that President Obama can win by losing, and that he’s already significantly altered the political landscape in the leftists’ favor? Consider what he has already achieved. Obamacare alone makes his presidency historic. It has irrevocably changed one-sixth of the economy, put the [...]
Jun
10
The perils of the anti-Establishment
June 10, 2010 | 3 Comments
Ed Morrissey has a post on the groundswell of support for an insurgent candidate in the Florida gubernatorial GOP primary race. In the comments, there was some discussion about some of the recent insurgent, tea-party campaigns (ie. Sharron Angle in Nevada), and how unfortunately some of these candidates (not necessarily Angle) have turned out to [...]
Jan
28
The development of the State of the Union
January 28, 2010 | Comments Off
He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; That’s from the US Constitution – Article II, Section 3, and the “he” (damned sexist Framers!) refers to the President of the United States. [...]
Jan
26
Not quite
January 26, 2010 | 3 Comments
David Brooks is back, writing about his favorite topic. He actually makes some fair points, especially this: It’s easy to see why politicians would be drawn to the populist pose. First, it makes everything so simple. The economic crisis was caused by a complex web of factors, including global imbalances caused by the rise of [...]
Jan
5
The not so elite elite
January 5, 2010 | 3 Comments
David Brooks – BA in History from Chicago University – discusses the tea party movement and how it has galvanized itself against the “educated class.” The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year. The educated class believes [...]
Dec
4
Let’s get serious
December 4, 2009 | 2 Comments
Some stray thoughts related to my post the other day about the third party delusion. One of the problems that conservative activists (what an oxymoron) have in their quest to provoke the next American revolution is that they fail to take into account two intractable problems. Our quest to achieve change through party politics and [...]
Oct
6
Jonah on the lack of conservative intellectualism – “meh”
October 6, 2009 | 2 Comments
That about sums up my feelings as well. Jonah Goldberg has one of the definitive posts that tears down the growing meme that conservatives are suffering through a dearth of intellectual leadership. He first details some of the phony liberal reaction, noting how the left didn’t much care for the previous generation of conservative leaders [...]
Apr
17
Shhhhhhhhh
April 17, 2009 | 4 Comments
Frankly I am somewhat amazed that the reaction to the tea parties by some on the right seems to be “know your role and shut your mouth.” Ross Douthat, hopelessly worried that some moderate somewhere might be offended by conservatives expressing opposition to the administration above a whisper, clearly can’t smell what grassroots conservatives are [...]
Mar
17
Flailing about
March 17, 2009 | 10 Comments
I’m not one to oppose a little David Frum bashing, but as Ramesh Ponnuru notes, Jeffrey Kuhner’s op-ed in the Washington Times yesterday was pretty bad. Not only was it just poorly written and somewhat factually flawed, it attacks just about everyone who Kuhner believes even remotely veers away from traditional conservatism. Just as it [...]
Feb
27
Derbyshire misses the point, as usual
February 27, 2009 | 4 Comments
With perhaps the most radically left-wing President in the Nation’s history now into his second month of his first term, having just signed legislation that will put us a further trillion dollars in debt, while he is also getting ready to sign an unconstitutional act giving DC a voting representative in Congress, all the while [...]
Jan
12
Of hobbyhorses and men
January 12, 2009 | 6 Comments
Three days removed from writing a “eulogy” of Fr. Neuhaus that no doubt had Doug Kmiec wincing, one centered on one of his major hobbyhorses – the clerical abuse scandal – Rod Dreher is back today to pimp his other hobbyhorse, “right wing populism.” First, he gets a dig in at Sarah Palin. What would [...]
Oct
9
Populism (three different kinds)
October 9, 2008 | 4 Comments
Discussion in the comments section of my post on Brooks and Palin got me thinking a bit more about the issue of “populism.” That term keeps getting tossed about, and I think it’s important to define it more accurate in order to understand just what it is we’re talking about. I think there are (at [...]
Oct
8
David Brooks: Sarah Palin “represents a fatal cancer” to GOP
October 8, 2008 | 8 Comments
Does David Brooks even pretend to be a conservative anymore? Can we finally acknowledge that this man isn’t even remotely interested in what motivates outside the Beltway – or even inside the Beltway – conservatives? Here’s what Brooks had to say in a recent interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic: [Sarah Palin] represents a [...]
Oct
1
George Will on the bailout
October 1, 2008 | Comments Off
This is a good one. We are waist deep in evasions because one cannot talk sense about the cultural roots of the financial crisis without transgressing this cardinal principle of politics: Never shall be heard a discouraging word about the public. Concerning which, a timeless political trope is: Government should budget the way households supposedly [...]
Sep
17
Elitism and its discontents
September 17, 2008 | 1 Comment
David Brooks is not enamored of the Sarah Palin selection. What’s particularly painful to me is that he picks up on a theme near and dear to my heart – anti-populism. Sadly, he is wide of the mark on this one. Brooks starts off well enough with an excellent observation: Conservatism was once a frankly [...]
Jul
15
Grand new party, same old plan
July 15, 2008 | 1 Comment
I thought I would be more critical of Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam’s Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream, but it wasn’t quite the call for “big government” conservatism that I thought it would be. That said, I think some of the effusive praise for the [...]
Jun
16
Voice of the people be damned
June 16, 2008 | 3 Comments
By now most readers of this blog are aware of my deep aversion to populism. But if political leaders are going to insist on holding referrenda, then they are going to have to live with the results. But the technocrats on the other side of the pond evidently were “just kidding” about this whole referrendum [...]
Jun
13
Laura Ingraham is evidently engaged in a contract dispute and has been off the air for a couple of weeks. It’s a shame, because she really is one of the best conservative talkers out there. So it is her absence that has inspired me to rank the best and worst of the conservative talk show [...]
Jun
11
Ummm . . . no
June 11, 2008 | 5 Comments
Rich Lowry asks: I had a terrible thought: Wouldn’t Mike Huckabee be just the right Republican for this particular moment, when pocketbook concerns are looming so large? Tonally, he was always right on this stuff. Too bad he was so unserious and didn’t understand—or have any interest in understanding—economics. Lowry admits that Huckabee is an [...]