In the last few presidential elections, the strategy of the Republican presidential candidate has been to only talk about abortion when asked. The intention seems to be to signal pro-life views while not alienating voters for whom abortion is a low priority issue. This strategy is about mobilizing . . . . Continue Reading »
Karl Rove says that his new group is designed to produce “fewer Christine O’Donnells and more Rand Pauls.” I’m not sold on Rand Paul, but I agree that the Christine O’Donnell nomination was a bad, bad idea. So how did it happen? Was O’Donnell’s . . . . Continue Reading »
Via Ben Boychuk, I have this article out of Washington State about proposed gun control legislation there. Responding to the Newtown school massacre, the bill would ban the sale of semi-automatic weapons that use detachable ammunition magazines. Clips that contain more than 10 rounds would be . . . . Continue Reading »
Ross Douthat writes about the decline of “the Catholic vision of the good society — more egalitarian than American conservatism and more moralistic than American liberalism.” Everything he says is true as far as I can tell, and yet I think there is plenty of room for a politics . . . . Continue Reading »
In this thread, Peter Lawler wonders if maybe Obama’s “progressivism isn’t rhetorical (like Wilson wanted) but stealthy.” Now any attempt to abstract a person is going to be of limited utility, but I let’s try this point of view: maybe Obama is, on domestic policy, a . . . . Continue Reading »
1. Rubio’s speech was fine. It had the correct populist working-class and middle-class focus. Rubio’s speech compares favorably with Romney’s Republican convention speech despite Rubio having a tougher environment. 2. This isn’t a criticism of the speech, but Rubio’s . . . . Continue Reading »
Yuval Levin argues that Obama’s lack of major proposals represents (in part) the “exhaustion of liberalism in our time.” I agree with Levin that Obama’s SOTU was mostly defensive, but I take that as more scary than anything else. I think Obama is betting that, in the . . . . Continue Reading »
1. Obama’s speech yesterday was almost unbearably boring. It is tough to imagine anybody keeping focused on the whole speech who wasn’t being paid to do so. But boring doesn’t mean ineffective. Pete Hegseth got it about right. The purpose of last night’s speech was to make . . . . Continue Reading »
Jamelle Bouie has a (gleefully) pessimistic take on the ability of Republicans to win over Latino voters. He also rightly points out that Republicans are doing even worse among Asian-American voters. I am a little more optimistic about Republican chances to make gains among nonwhites. Or at least I . . . . Continue Reading »
This line from Sam Tanenhaus’s article on the “original sin” of conservatism jumped out at me: Calhoun’s innovation was to develop a radical theory of minority-interest democracy based on his mastery of the Constitution’s quirky arithmetic, which often subordinated the . . . . Continue Reading »
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