Jonah Goldberg stories, Page 5
Jonah Goldberg: Nikki Haley keeps losing — and revealing something important about Trump and Republicans
Celebrating his victory in the South Carolina primary Saturday, Donald Trump declared, “I have never seen the Republican Party so unified as it is right now.” It was an indisputable victory for Trump, particularly given that it was in the home state of his last remaining rival for the nomination,...
Jonah Goldberg: No, Donald Trump does not equal Alexei Navalny
Alexei Navalny didn’t simply die. He wasn’t just murdered. He was tortured to death. It didn’t happen on the rack or mid-beating, but Vladimir Putin — who had tried to eliminate him earlier — slowly killed Navalny all the same. Vladimir Putin sent the Russian dissident and anti-corruption activist to...
Jonah Goldberg: Biden’s job approval rating is abysmal. Here’s why he might beat Trump anyway
There’s bad news and good news for those who want to see Joe Biden win in 2024 (or who really just want to see Donald Trump lose). The bad news is that, in the era of modern polling, no president has ever won reelection with approval ratings as low at...
Jonah Goldberg: Trump’s rants about NATO making U.S. weaker
On Sept. 12, 2001, 24 hours after the 9/11 attacks, representatives of the then-19-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization convened to invoke Article 5 of the NATO charter, which holds that an “armed attack” on one member “shall be considered an attack against them all.” This was the first and only...
Jonah Goldberg: Vague laws hand extreme power to courts and bureaucrats. Where’s Congress?
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week in a case about fishing boats, and it could spell the end of government as we know it. I hope it does. The legal questions might not be all that fascinating. What is fascinating, however, is how the legal issues help explain...
Jonah Goldberg: Biden is late but right to strike against Yemen’s Houthis
With the possible exception of fights over the national debt and Supreme Court nominations, there is no topic that arouses more partisan hypocrisy than presidential use of military force. And, globally, there is no issue that arouses more hypocrisy than Israel. Put them together, and you have a perfect storm...
Jonah Goldberg: Will Mike Johnson get away with betraying MAGA House members with his proposed budget?
The House Freedom Caucus is largely right about debt and deficits. Some members might be staggering hypocrites, given that they had little problem with Donald Trump’s spending when he was president. They’re also right that the budget deal worked out between Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer...
Jonah Goldberg: Nikki Haley’s slavery gaffe is a rare misstep for a good politician
Nikki Haley gave a bad answer to an easy question: What caused the Civil War? She replied with a word-salad on freedom and the role of government while failing to mention the word “slavery” at all. We don’t need to dwell on why it was a bad answer. The Civil...
Jonah Goldberg: 2023 was the year I started believing in the horseshoe theory of politics
This is the season for columnists to offer some new idea that encapsulates the year that was. I got nothing. But 2023 was the year I finally abandoned my opposition to an old idea — the horseshoe theory of political ideologies. The term is often attributed to French author Jean-Pierre...
Jonah Goldberg: The right’s antisemitism problem is well known. What about the left’s?
The good news is the bad news is wrong. The bad news? Harvard-Harris poll which found that 67% of 18 to 24-year-olds believe that “Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors.” One piece of good news: The poll is pretty lousy, as Ilya Somin, author...
Jonah Goldberg: Trump’s ‘Day One’ dictator comment is a sad symptom of populist politics
Everyone knows that politics involves more truth-stretching than most professions. As the line (often misattributed to Mark Twain) goes, “Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.” It’s also a well-established truism that populist politicians lie even more than conventional politicians. This is in part because...
Jonah Goldberg: George Santos hasn’t been convicted of a crime. Congress was still right to kick him out.
George Santos, the infamous fabulist, got the boot from Congress last week. The first member to be expelled in over 20 years and one of only three members to be kicked out for something other than fighting for the Confederacy, Santos was the only representative since the Civil War to...
Jonah Goldberg: Has the Democratic Party been led astray by progressive activists?
According to a recent poll conducted by the Democratic firm Blueprint, only 5% of Americans say that Joe Biden is “far more conservative than me.” Ask yourself, what percentage of Democratic activists, liberal TV hosts, White House staffers, liberal think tankers and donors believe that Biden is “far more conservative”...
Jonah Goldberg: On Thanksgiving, step away from the outrage industry
One of the remarkable things about our political and cultural battles is how many of them are fought on behalf of other people. For instance, there are plenty of Americans with deeply personal investments in the plight of Israelis or Palestinians, due to familial or historic ties. But millions of...
Jonah Goldberg: After a week of mostly bad reelection news, Biden has only 1 choice
One of Joe Biden’s favorite campaign lines is “don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.” In the wake of a series of polls earlier this month, Democrats were thrown into a panic because voters in key battleground states did exactly that and chose Donald Trump as...
Jonah Goldberg: China has a role in making the whole world talk about Israel
While the whole world is talking about Israel, let’s take a moment to talk about China. Why? Well for starters, one of the reasons the whole world is talking about Israel, is that’s the way China wants it. In the wake of Hamas’ barbaric anti-Jewish pogrom on Oct. 7, anti-Jewish...
Jonah Goldberg: Will the media get coverage of the crisis in Israel and Gaza right? It all depends on the editors
If you ask most people, including most journalists, what the job of the press is, they will reasonably respond with a number of high-minded cliches: “report the news,” “hold the powerful accountable,” “inform the public,” etc. That’s all well and good. But you almost never hear anyone say the job...
Jonah Goldberg: House Republicans need a sudden onset of political maturity. What are the chances?
Israeli diplomat Abba Eban famously said that the Palestinians “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” Watching events in the Middle East over the last two weeks, that quote might seem newly relevant. But it seems even more fitting for the House GOP. At a time of international and...
Jonah Goldberg: Israel and Ukraine? Americans should remember it’s the same war on two fronts
In normal times domestic political fights over foreign policy breakdown more or less along a conventional left-right divide. These are not normal times. The right is largely united around the need to support Israel in its war with Hamas, but increasingly divided about backing Ukraine in its war with Russia....
Jonah Goldberg: Who’s to blame for Hamas attack on Israel — debate already off the rails
Within hours of the slaughter in Israel, the question of Israel’s “massive intelligence failure” — as many have called it — came to dominate a lot of the media coverage and conversation. On one level, this is entirely defensible. Israeli officials acknowledge the obvious fact that it was, with the...
Jonah Goldberg: What the Republicans forcing a government shutdown have in common with 1960s radicals
This week, yet another government shutdown appears inevitable because a sizable chunk of the House Freedom Caucus believes, in the words of Otter in “Animal House,” that “this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.” What situation? Before we get to that, it’s...
Jonah Goldberg: Why the Republicans’ impeachment of Biden may be stupid enough to work
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s decision to move ahead with impeachment proceedings — and the Democrats’ response — reminded me of something Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser reportedly once said: “The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves, which make us wonder...
Jonah Goldberg: Mike Pence is railing against populism among Republicans. But he’s late to the game
Last week Mike Pence gave a speech at Saint Anselm College that, depending on your view of the man, was either courageous or desperate — or both. Titled “Populism vs. Conservatism: Republicans’ Time for Choosing,” the speech was an homage to his hero, Ronald Reagan, who in 1964 gave a...
Jonah Goldberg: Biden’s age poses a big issue he can’t get around
In December 1998, Rep. Bob Livingston, Republican of Louisiana, was set to succeed Rep. Newt Gingrich as speaker of the House. Gingrich had announced his resignation from Congress and the speakership in the wake of a disastrous midterm election for Republicans as well as revelations that he’d been having an...
Jonah Goldberg: China’s faltering economy is a result of state-directed planning. Now comes the global fallout
“China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man,” scoffed then-presidential candidate Joe Biden in 2019. Two years later, now-President Biden declared: “The Chinese are eating our lunch. They’re eating our lunch, economically. They’re investing hundreds of billions of dollars in research and development. … We got to compete.”...
