Jonah Goldberg stories, Page 13
Jonah Goldberg: Trump aside, Hispanic vote is not a given for Democrats
As ambivalent as I am about a Donald Trump victory — or, for that matter, a Joe Biden one — there is one scenario I would enjoy: What if Trump was reelected thanks to support from Hispanics? Now, I should say this is only a remote possibility. There’s zero indication...
Jonah Goldberg: Despite author’s claims, there’s no defense for looting
Vicky Osterweil, the author of “In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action,” is getting her 15 minutes of fame thanks to a segment on NPR in which she said some really mind-bogglingly dumb, indefensibly evil and fascinatingly reactionary things. We’ll come back to her in a moment....
Jonah Goldberg: Democrats can’t afford to let far left hijack the party
Last month, a mob of white protesters swarmed a white woman eating dinner in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Video of the bullies demanding that patrons raise their fists in solidarity with the movement went viral. Many pro-Trump and right-wing media personalities were quick to insist this verbal...
Jonah Goldberg: Party conventions as we once knew them are over
The party conventions are over — and I don’t just mean the 2020 conventions. In one sense, the conventions have been over for a very long time. They were created primarily to do two things: pick presidential nominees and craft party platforms. A convention hasn’t actually picked a nominee since...
Jonah Goldberg: Trump campaign shouldn’t take solace from Bush-Dukakis race
In July 1988, Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis enjoyed a 17-point lead against Vice President George H.W. Bush in a Gallup poll. But Bush went on to crush Dukakis, taking 40 states and winning by seven percentage points. He did so by running an aggressive — critics would say demagogic...
Jonah Goldberg: It’s not always as easy as asking, ‘Why not?’
In George Bernard Shaw’s “Back to Methuselah,” the serpent says to Eve in the Garden of Eden: “You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?’” What’s funny is that a version of this quote is often ascribed to Robert...
Jonah Goldberg: Birtherism makes unwelcome return in 2020 race
The Birtherism 2.0 brouhaha began the way so many do. A Trump sycophant, in this case Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis, handed the president a hot-take opinion piece as if it was breaking news. Mere hours later at a press conference, he acted as if that op-ed was a settled...
Jonah Goldberg: If mail-in voting will be disaster, why isn’t Trump trying to prevent that?
President Trump’s delay-the-election trial balloon on Twitter last week was resoundingly denounced, and rightly so. Indeed, so thorough was the repudiation, including from top Republicans, that the president backtracked a little. “I don’t want to delay,” Trump explained in a press conference to discuss the pandemic. “I want to have...
Jonah Goldberg: Trump’s delay-the-election tweet was just a distraction
On Thursday morning, the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that the U.S. GDP had the biggest drop in a single quarter in U.S. history. From April through June, the economy contracted by 9.5 percent, with GDP falling at an annualized rate of 32.9 percent. President Trump, who tweets about many...
Jonah Goldberg: There’s idiocy on all sides in ‘law and order’ road show
As the Trump administration takes its “law and order” show on the road after a dress rehearsal at Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., and a soft opening in Portland, Ore., let me just say I’m disgusted with almost everybody involved. Let’s start with the Portland demonstrators. Contrary to heroic PR...
Jonah Goldberg: Trump’s questioning of Biden’s mental acuity is risky
President Trump’s interview with Chris Wallace, which aired on “Fox News Sunday,” was remarkable in more ways than there is room to recount here. But let’s start with what should be the lead story: The president of the United States told Wallace that the mental competence test he recently took...
Jonah Goldberg: The Republican Party now belongs to Roger Stone
Roger Stone is an infamously execrable force in American politics. Perhaps his only saving grace is that he’s not a hypocrite about it. Stone is a proud “dirty trickster.” The GOP kept him on a leash lest his amorality be too closely associated with the Republican brand. Part of his...
Jonah Goldberg: Would we be better off with a President Pence in these turbulent times?
What would a President Pence do? It’s a question no one is asking, so I guess it falls to me. In January 2020 it was almost as if God, the universe or our Lizard People overlords were giving the Republicans one last chance to separate their fate from Trump’s. The...
Jonah Goldberg: Abolishing police departments would make things so much worse
In these trying times, it’s difficult to find something to smile about. But I’ve found some modicum of mirth watching very sympathetic liberals go the extra mile to help hone the message of activists calling to “defund the police.” For instance, Katy Tur, an MSNBC anchor, had Isaac Bryan, the...
Jonah Goldberg: Biden faces marketing decision on his running mate
The first thing to remember about vice presidential picks is that they are marketing decisions. That is, once a candidate has been deemed qualified to be president, the only thing that matters is what the choice says about the person at the top of the ticket. It wasn’t always this...
Jonah Goldberg: Face coverings aren’t a symbol of tyranny
One of the things I love about America — and there are many — is her deeply ingrained rebelliousness. When the government tells us to do something, we instinctively question it. Of course, all principles can be taken too far. It’s good to question authority, but if a sign says,...
Jonah Goldberg: History not always written by winners
Attorney General William Barr ignited yet another firestorm last week by dismissing all charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Then Barr threw more gas on the fire when Catherine Herridge of CBS asked him, “When history looks back on this decision, how do you think it will be...
Jonah Goldberg: Burden of proof on Joe Biden to deflect Tara Reade accusations
One of the problems with politics these days is that it’s increasingly difficult to hold a single line of argument without veering out of that lane and ramming into something else. The pundits and politicians fighting over Tara Reade’s accusations against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden often careen around...
Jonah Goldberg: A modest proposal to counter Chinese pressure on Hollywood
During the filming of the 1939 movie “Jesse James,” a stuntman and his horse went over a cliff and fell 70 feet into a river. The stuntman was fine; the horse died. This incident is what gave rise to that line at the end of many movies: “No animals were...
Jonah Goldberg: Quarantine protesters no heroes of civil disobedience
Our culture has a wonderful way of taking controversial or partisan figures and weaving them into the broader story of America. When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, for example, his secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, purportedly said, “Now he belongs to the ages,” which was a way of saying that the...
Jonah Goldberg: Impeachment not a valid excuse for slow coronavirus response
A reporter asked President Trump last week what he thought of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s claim that impeachment distracted Trump from tackling the coronavirus epidemic earlier. The president gave a rambling answer but ultimately settled on a firm no. “I don’t think I would have done better had I...
Jonah Goldberg: Trump’s daily briefings shine light on his inadequacy
On Sunday, President Trump, absent any hard evidence, suggested that large numbers of masks were being stolen from New York hospitals, citing an unnamed facility he said had seen a huge surge in mask usage. “How do you go from 10 to 20 (thousand masks being used), to 300,000?” Trump...
Jonah Goldberg: Coronavirus crisis sure to spawn new political realities
The social and political response to major catastrophes often proceeds in stages. Stage 1 is denial. Thankfully, this stage is largely over for the coronavirus crisis. Not counting a few poltroons and conspiracy theorists, nobody is saying it’s all hype or no big deal. Now we’re transitioning, in fits and...
Jonah Goldberg: Coronavirus more fodder for Chinese propaganda campaign
If there’s one thing worth knowing about China — in terms of geopolitics and American national security at least — it’s that its rulers are almost as afraid of the people as the people are afraid of them. Think about it. Why would a government place secret cameras everywhere? Censor...
Jonah Goldberg: Debating virus terminology waste of energy
Amid all of the well-placed urgency and occasionally misplaced panic of the covid-19 pandemic, many have decided there’s a pressing need to debate whether terms such as “Wuhan virus” or “Chinese coronavirus” are racist. On one side is a broad coalition that includes liberal pundits, Democratic politicians, the World Health...
