Jonah Goldberg stories, Page 14
Jonah Goldberg: Calif. primary shows why early voting bad idea
Now will someone listen? Early voting is stupid. Under California’s new election protocols, as many as 40% of California voters voted early, either by mail or at voting centers, for the March 3 primary. And what about those who cast ballots for Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Mike Bloomberg...
Jonah Goldberg: Bernie gives too much credit to authoritarianism
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president, is praised by his admirers for being consistent. He’s been saying the same things for 40 years, they explain — as if this is an obvious compliment. I think that’s kind of weird. But I also like it...
Jonah Goldberg: Why aren’t Democrats issuing a Sanders alert?
In “Jaws 2,” Roy Scheider reprises his role as police Chief Brody, the landlubber lawman forced to battle a great white shark. He’s convinced there’s another beast out there, but he can’t persuade anyone who matters. “Look at this. That’s a shark,” says Brody, waving a grainy underwater photo at...
Jonah Goldberg: Bernie Sanders too often sees only what he wants to see
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who did not have a great performance in Wednesday’s Democratic debate, nevertheless said something interesting. “We’re not going to throw out capitalism,” Bloomberg said. “We tried. Other countries tried that. It was called communism, and it just didn’t work.” I’m unclear on when...
Jonah Goldberg: Democrat-Republican role reversal
For most of my life the rule of thumb was that the GOP was the ideological party and the Democratic Party was the coalitional party. This always was an overgeneralization. Democrats had an ideological perspective, and Republicans had coalitional interests. But from the New Deal to around the end of...
Jonah Goldberg: Iowa’s big bungle & dismantling of political parties
One of my favorite running jokes on the internet is, “You had one job.” It’s a staple of Twitter and YouTube, with images of signs reading, “Turn Left” with an arrow pointing right, or supermarket shelves demarcating where you can buy “Poop Tarts.” Well, the Iowa Democratic Party rolled out...
Jonah Goldberg: Age of impeachment & death of shame
As the impeachment trial fizzled out, I’m left wondering if the GOP has lost its mind, because the only other choice is that I have. I’m not referring to the Republican senators’ collective decision not to remove the president from office. I’ve always argued that this was a question reasonable...
Jonah Goldberg: Dershowitz’s central argument for Trump must be rejected
Dear Republican senators, I will not try to convince you how to vote in the impeachment trial of President Trump. I won’t even lecture you about the need for witnesses, in part because by the time you see this it will probably be too late. My request is far more...
Jonah Goldberg: Discrediting Bolton won’t be easy for Team Trump
“I’m with the Bush-Cheney team, and I’m here to stop the count.” Those words were bellowed by John Bolton in a Tallahassee library in December 2000, when he was part of a team of Republican lawyers trying to stop the Florida recount of votes cast in the presidential race between...
Jonah Goldberg: Our nation is paying for Trump’s refusal to be presidential
I’ve long argued that Donald Trump’s presidency will end poorly because he’s a person of bad character. I still think that’s true, though I very much doubt the impeachment trial now underway will result in his removal. Regardless of its outcome, his impeachment illustrates the damage bad character can do...
Jonah Goldberg: Democratic battle reminiscent of 2004 Kerry-Dean race
As of this writing, the Democratic presidential contest looks very fluid, with four candidates bunched up in Iowa and New Hampshire. But the sudden relevance of foreign policy, thanks to the confrontation with Iran, has made it look more and more like a two-person race between former Vice President Joe...
Jonah Goldberg: Inconvenient evidence puts GOP senators on spot
President Donald J. Trump was impeached on Thursday. I know that he was technically impeached when the House voted to do so in December. But the truth is, as a political and historical matter, Thursday was the day. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s strategy — brilliant to fans, incomprehensible to foes...
Jonah Goldberg: As with everything else, Trump is following his gut on Iran
President Trump often talks about leaving the Middle East, getting out of “endless wars” and spending our resources here at home under a policy of “America First.” So it was quite a moment when he threatened to impose “very big sanctions” on Iraq if the Iraqi parliament follows through on...
Jonah Goldberg: Will EU’s genetic flaw lead to its demise?
Since I am in Europe — Spain, to be precise — I shall do as the Europeans do and fret over the future of the European Union. As my tepid opening sentence suggests, I don’t really care much about the future of the EU. In this, I’m a lot like...
Jonah Goldberg: Get ready for a nasty presidential campaign
Here’s a fun New Year’s prediction for you: The 2020 presidential campaign will be even uglier than the 2016 contest. In part, that’s due to President Trump’s incumbency. In 2016, Trump almost surely did not think he’d win. Throughout his campaign, he would drop hints about an “exit strategy.” Exiles...
Jonah Goldberg: If this has been super-decade, why are we still so angry?
There is a strong case to be made that things are getting better. In 2010, Matt Ridley made the case in “The Rational Optimist” that things were better than they appeared. Writing in The Spectator, on the cusp of 2020, Ridley offers an update: We’re finishing the best decade in...
Jonah Goldberg: We have 2 moon parties, no sun party
Here’s a theory for why our politics are so confusing these days: Neither party wants to be a majority party. From an ideological perspective, majority parties are, by nature, weird. For instance, the long-dominant FDR coalition included a strange mix of blacks and segregationists, corrupt city machines and the reformers...
Jonah Goldberg: Diversity panic hits Democratic field
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. An Asian guy, two black guys, three white women (one of whom spent much of her life claiming to be Native American), a Pacific Islander woman, a gay guy, a Hispanic guy, two elderly Caucasian Jews (one a billionaire, the other a...
Jonah Goldberg: Trump defenders continue to push Ukraine conspiracy theories
Contrary to heated rhetoric from Democrats, most Republicans understand that Russia was responsible for the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s server in 2016 and other efforts to sow mischief in the electoral process. They’ll even admit it when pressed. The problem is they want everyone to believe that Ukraine...
Jonah Goldberg: Nostalgia is the ace up Biden’s sleeve
I like the word malarkey, consarn it. It’s the bee’s knees. Sure, the youngsters might say, “OK, Boomer” on hearing Joe Biden utter the word, but if you think he’s all wet for using it, you can take your phonus bolonus and tell it to Sweeney. Biden has never really...
Jonah Goldberg: ‘Deep state’ contagion has spread beyond impeachment
The deep state is the right’s new bogeyman. I’d wager that until fairly recently, few people had ever heard the phrase. I’d also bet that roughly 99% of those who fling the term around have no idea that it’s borrowed from Turkish politics. The idea of a deep state, or...
Jonah Goldberg: Opponents of ‘unfettered capitalism’ are fighting a phantom
Enemies of unfettered capitalism, unite! For as long as I can remember, people on the left have complained about “unfettered capitalism.” Moderate liberals do it, and of course flat-out Marxists do it. In his new book, “A Bit of Everything: Power, People, Profits and Progressive Capitalism for an Age of...
Jonah Goldberg: The stupidity, and genius, of Republicans’ impeachment strategy
Maybe you’re a fan of Jackson Pollock’s paint-splatter stuff. That’s cool. My only point is that when you flick paint at a canvas, nobody expects the result to look like a tree, a person or a bowl of fruit. Similarly, in politics, when you throw everything against the wall to...
Jonah Goldberg: Shaking down the rich is bad for democracy
Forget whether the math works. (It doesn’t.) Expecting billionaires to pay for all the nice things is bad for democracy. One of the more exhausting rituals of presidential campaign season is the effort to make every new proposal “add up.” Sure, it’s better that politicians try to come up with...
Jonah Goldberg: Warren, Trump may have a lot in common
Culturally, Elizabeth Warren is a lot more like Donald Trump than you might think. Hold on. I know: Going by their personal lives, their demeanors and their ideological agendas, they’re apples and oranges. But apples and oranges actually have a lot in common: They’re both fruits, they’re round, and they...
