Jonah Goldberg Columns category, Page 6
Jonah Goldberg: How the U.S. can turn China from a foe into a friendly competitor
The House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party held its first hearing this week. In interviews and joint statements Chair Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., have made it clear they are determined to make this committee a...
Jonah Goldberg: ‘Buy American’ might sound good, but it’s bipartisan folly
You hear it all the time, including from me: Our politics is too partisan, too polarized, too divided. Why can’t both parties work together for the common good? But it’s worth pointing out that sometimes bipartisan consensus is awful. The worst form of elite agreement is usually the product of...
Jonah Goldberg: Ron DeSantis may be the one Republican voters want now. Can he make that last?
Imagine a popular Republican governor from an important state. Despite intense criticism from the national media, he’s notched some huge policy wins that are simultaneously popular with donors, base voters and conservative intellectuals. His key theme is fighting the Washington establishment and the institutions of progressive power. Then, fresh off...
Jonah Goldberg: Ukraine’s fight benefits U.S. national security. House GOP is on wrong side
We are entering the 12th month of a “special military operation” that was supposed to be over in well under 12 days. The Kremlin even told Russian officers to pack dress uniforms and medals for the intended military parades in Kyiv a few days after the shooting started. Things turned...
Jonah Goldberg: Biden should admit to mistakes in his classified documents scandal
There’s an understandable compulsion in the media and among Democrats to emphasize the differences between Joe Biden’s classified documents scandal and Donald Trump’s. The two cases are different in many important respects. The most significant is obviously that the former president refused to cooperate with the National Archives and Justice...
Jonah Goldberg: GOP’s deficit reduction is a cynical performative gesture
For several years now, I’ve been told that the old consensus of fiscal conservatism and limited government was dead. So, you might think I’m delighted by the sudden rebirth of Tea Party-style budget-cutting zeal on display in the GOP’s brinksmanship over the debt ceiling. Not so much. I’ll get to...
Jonah Goldberg: Fight over Kevin McCarthy was never about conservative ideology
Kevin McCarthy’s epic struggle to become speaker of the House produced a lot of memorable images, but the most unforgettable was probably of Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., being physically restrained from opening a fresh can of whup-ass on Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., after Gaetz ensured McCarthy’s 14th failure to get...
Jonah Goldberg: So Congress is a mess. It’s supposed to be messy.
It’s not exactly a blistering insight into how Washington works, but nothing will get you more praise and respect than being powerful and wielding that power effectively. So, it should be no surprise that Nancy Pelosi finished her tenure as speaker of the House to lavish applause. Many dubbed her...
Jonah Goldberg: Trump has supplanted Nixon as the saddest figure in post-presidential politics
“The tapes are the real man — mean, vindictive, panicky, striking first in anticipation of being struck, trying to lift his own friable self-esteem by shoving others down,” Gary Wills wrote of Richard Nixon in the 2017 preface to his book, “Nixon Agonistes.” Wills added, perhaps unfairly, that “Nixon’s real...
Jonah Goldberg: It was a bad year for authoritarianism
As 2022 draws to a close, it’s worth celebrating that this hasn’t been a good year for authoritarianism. This might seem Pollyannish. After all, just last month, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance issued a report concluding that democracy is in decline while authoritarianism is deepening. Freedom House...
Peter Morici: Extremists from the left are a threat to democracy, too
The midterm elections, as expected, delivered the House to the Republicans, but our democracy still stands. Congressional candidates who won the most votes will come to Washington to confront and compromise and do some good and some bad, owing earnest intentions and poor judgment. Either we accept human frailties or...
Jonah Goldberg: Sorry, Iowa and New Hampshire. Having voters choose candidates is bad for democracy
At President Biden’s behest, the Democratic National Committee is poised to throw Iowa and New Hampshire under the bus. Assuming he gets his way, the new order will be South Carolina, followed by Nevada, New Hampshire, Georgia and Michigan. It’s fine with me. I like both Iowa and New Hampshire,...
Jonah Goldberg: McCarthy may win House speakership, but he can’t control the clown caucus
Kevin McCarthy’s quest for the House speaker’s gavel is a near perfect inside-the-Beltway story because it’s about pure politics and personal ambition without many narrative-muddling concerns about principles, governing philosophy or policy considerations. McCarthy was never a policy wonk or doctrinaire conservative; he’s a dealmaker and glad-hander, which is why...
Jonah Goldberg: Republicans want to win — and Trump’s now a loser
A lot has changed since the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, the country club resort and unofficial classified document storage facility where Donald Trump resides. Back in August, the search was denounced by many on the right as an unprecedented outrage befitting a banana republic that challenged the very legitimacy of the...
Jonah Goldberg: Will the GOP finally do something about its Trump problem?
On election night, Donald Trump took to his post-truth social media platform, Truth Social, to spin the results. His first utterance was to celebrate Republican Joe O’Dea’s loss in the U.S. Senate race in Colorado. “Joe O’Dea lost BIG!” Trump crowed. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” O’Dea had distanced himself from...
Jonah Goldberg: Elon Musk mistook Twitter for the real world
There’s something tragically poetic about Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. There’s a whole subculture of lamentation about modern society that can be fairly well summed up in Peter Thiel’s roughly decade-old gripe that things such as Twitter were distracting us from greatness: “We wanted flying cars. Instead, we got 140...
Jonah Goldberg: If democracy is a corrupt ‘Western’ concept, why does Putin pretend his actions in Ukraine are democratic?
Vladimir Putin is a murderer and tyrant. He’s also a hypocrite. “It is no coincidence that the West claims that it is its culture and worldview that should be universal,” Putin explained last week at a pro-Putin Moscow think tank, the Valdai Discussion Club. His remarks echoed previous statements of...
Jonah Goldberg: The ‘elites’ attacking the ‘elites’
“The elites plunder this country and then blame us for it in the process,” J.D. Vance, Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, declared when he announced his bid for the seat from Ohio. Elsewhere, he’s insisted that America faces a stark choice. “We can have an American Republic or a...
Jonah Goldberg: Herschel Walker may be lying about an ex-girlfriend’s abortion. Does it matter?
Herschel Walker, the Republican former football star running for a Georgia Senate seat who supports a total ban on abortion, denies he pressured a former girlfriend to have an abortion, which he paid for. He’s almost certainly lying. The allegations are easy to believe, while his rambling, often contradictory denials...
Jonah Goldberg: Russia-Ukraine war not result of failure of dialogue
It’s an article of various faiths — both secular and religious — that misunderstanding is the cause of conflict. This sort of insight is generally true for individuals, so it’s often considered equally true of nations. Hence vast amounts of antiwar activism and state-level diplomacy rest on the assumption that...
Jonah Goldberg: Why ‘RINOs’ would fare better in the Senate midterms than Trump’s MAGA candidates
I’m a fan of ironic nicknames: big men named “Tiny,” bald dudes who go by “Curly,” etc. But, in politics, there’s no nickname more ironic than RINO, short for “Republican in Name Only.” Originally, it was supposed to describe Republicans who went along with Democrats for political expediency. In the...
Jonah Goldberg: Surprised by Ukraine’s recent victories? You shouldn’t be.
“Nobody knows anything,” William Goldman, the legendary screenwriter said. “Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out, it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.” I’m starting to think the same thing is true of foreign...
Jonah Goldberg: Sure enough, Trump is sucking the air out of the GOP’s midterm momentum
It’s one of the most enduring rules of thumb in American politics. Since 1862, the president’s party has lost seats in the House in every midterm election but three (1934, 1998 and 2002). Until very recently, it seemed like the 2022 midterms would provide one more data point to this...
Jonah Goldberg: Biden’s plan to cancel student loan debt is anything but progressive
President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel billions in federal student loan debt is like a pinata: You can attack it from any angle and find some reward. In short, people making less than $125,000 will get $10,000 of their debt forgiven, no strings attached. Recipients of needs-based Pell Grants will...
Jonah Goldberg: A GOP that can’t grow with Trump, but also can’t grow without him
Well, I was wrong again. For much of the summer, I’d been writing that Donald Trump’s hold on the GOP was shrinking. I thought I was right at the time. But the times changed. Right now, his hold appears to be growing. That’s at least in part because it is...
