Pete Spiliakos

With all the furor and dishonesty over the Supreme Court’s decisions on contraception and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, it’s a good moment to think about what kinds of structural weaknesses the center-right has in public debate and what can be done to address some of those weaknesses. The truth is we don’t speak to nearly enough people often enough. Come election time, millions of Americans are not prepared to listen to conservatives—and the fault lies not with those Americans, but with the right. Continue Reading »

Conservatives have a chance to make the country more productive and work-friendly. But they can also throw this chance away by marinating in a politics of high-earner self-interest that ignores or openly resents the rest of the population—which wouldn’t be anything new for them. Continue Reading »

Ross Douthat has rightly argued that the Democratic political coalition is vulnerable, but he’s wrong to suggest Hillary Clinton is the only one who can hold it together. The success of the Democratic coalition will be determined by events that are out of the easy control of any elected official, namely the ability of center-left political elites to work together effectively, and the ability of the center-right to adjust to the realities of present-day America (to say nothing of the course of the economy and developments in foreign countries). Continue Reading »

What will the legacy of the Tea Party be? A few Senate wins and government shutdowns? Or a whole new trajectory for our politics? We don’t know yet, but we do know this: If Tea Party activists can refashion their movement to appeal to a wider fraction of the American electorate, they might have a chance of expanding the Tea Party’s influence beyond its current limits. The alternative is for the Tea Party to remain a conservative faction subordinate to the Republican party establishment. Continue Reading »

Why it is that conservatives (as distinct from libertarians) are seen as “trying to dismantle the welfare state and remove all economic regulations” when this obviously is not the case? So asks Greg Forster. He’s right that this is one of the many lines of attack from the left, but I don’t think that the biggest problem conservatives face is the sense from the public that conservatives want to get rid of the welfare state. I think that the real problem for conservatives is the idea that they are pro-rich and either ignorant or contemptuous of the priorities of the non-rich. Continue Reading »

Timothy Carney argues that Republicans could make 2014 a referendum on corporate welfare. That is fine as far as it goes, but I don’t think it gets at the core of the right’s political problems. It is fine to portray the center-left as wanting to take taxes with one hand and give out . . . . Continue Reading »

It has been several months since I saw HBO’s first season of True Detective, but something about the series has stuck with me. Detectives Rust Cohle and Marty Hart investigate a series of bizarre ritualistic killings, but to be honest, I didn’t care much about that. What stuck with me was Rust’s pain and, even more, Marty’s domestic failures. Each man tries to explain and explain away his actions, but neither man is able to live according to his professed philosophy. Both men talk about and talk around the burden of living as beings that matter in a world of other beings that matter. Continue Reading »

While reading The Party Decides by Marty Cohen and David Karol, it struck me that over the last thirty years we have seen a new kind of presidential candidacy that has no hope of actually winning the presidency. We have gone from favorite son candidates to identity politics candidacy. Continue Reading »

Mitt Romney is a good guy. He just doesn’t want you to know it. He tithes. He helps the less fortunate. And, Rick Santorum reports, while volunteering at a homeless shelter, Romney acknowledged that the people there “are used to being ignored. Mostly by people like me.” Continue Reading »

Great article by Sabrina Schaeffer in Forbes.  The most important lines are:A central tenet of political behavior research is that public opinion can be massively influenced by elite discourse, especially if elite opinion is all coming from one side . . . huge shift in opinion, across the . . . . Continue Reading »