Jonah Goldberg Columns category, Page 7
Jonah Goldberg: The paradox of Trump’s charisma
Donald Trump has a lot of charisma. Let me finish. I do not mean charisma in the colloquial sense of being charming, though he has charmed millions. I’m referring to a style of leadership famously described by the German sociologist Max Weber, who described three forms of authority or leadership:...
Jonah Goldberg: DOJ needs to clarify intentions in Trump search
On Monday, evening news broke that the FBI searched the Florida home of Donald Trump, the former president. Trump himself informed the world, calling it a “raid” and an “assault.” While both words are colloquially defensible, it wasn’t some Eliot Ness style breach with a battering ram or sledgehammer. The...
Jonah Goldberg: Is Inflation Reduction Act victory for Biden? Outraged GOP acts like it is.
In an era of ugly legislative gridlock, it’s easy to forget that progress isn’t necessarily pretty. Last week, Washington got blindsided by the unveiling of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. For Democrats, it was a moment of spontaneous joy, while Republicans reacted with instantaneous outrage. In brief, here’s what...
Jonah Goldberg: Was last week the beginning of the end for Trump?
“It’s not like in the movies,” is good advice for almost any field or endeavor, from war to Wall Street. But perhaps nowhere is it more true than in politics. At the end of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” Claude Raines admits he was the villain all along. Lonesome Rhodes,...
Jonah Goldberg: Progressive Democrats can’t stop criticizing the Joes (Manchin and Biden)
The wall-to-wall coverage of progressive carping about Joe Biden has been interrupted by reruns of progressive carping about West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. Last week, in the wake of horrible inflation numbers, Manchin said, in effect, “I’m out” on President Biden’s climate, energy and tax package. Because the Senate is...
Jonah Goldberg: Where did Biden go wrong?
President Biden is in deep trouble. A New York Times-Siena College poll released Monday is just the latest survey showing profound discontent with the president and the direction of the country. His job-approval rating is a mere 33%. More than 6 in 10 Democrats want someone else in their party...
Jonah Goldberg: The huge political mistake the Jan. 6 committee could easily avoid
Will the Jan. 6 committee issue a “criminal referral” to the Justice Department for Donald Trump? Committee members can’t give an interview without being asked that question. Pundits can’t stop talking about it, and cable TV anchors can’t stop asking legal experts for their predictions. It’s nothing less than a...
Jonah Goldberg: Overturning Roe also upended ‘three-legged stool’ of conservatism
In overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court delivered the right’s biggest single victory ever, and it may spell the end of the conservative movement as we’ve known it. It was Ronald Reagan who popularized the notion that the conservative movement rested on a fusionist “three-legged stool.” In theory, the...
Jonah Goldberg: The GOP may win in the midterms, but it can’t hang on to power
For congressional Republicans, the election can’t come soon enough. In the modern era, it’s hard to think of a time when the party out of power had more things going its way. Harry Enten, CNN’s political data analyst, recently noted that, going by the generic ballot, things haven’t looked this...
Jonah Goldberg: How I learned to stop worrying and love the Jan. 6 committee
We’re only two installments into the limited-run production of the Jan. 6 hearings, and so far, I think they’ve been great. But I also think they’ll leave almost everyone, except for me, unsatisfied. For many Democrats and Never Trumpers, the hope is — or was — that this would lead...
Jonah Goldberg: Jan. 6 committee a symptom of our democracy’s failure — and maybe a means of its salvation
On Thursday, the Jan. 6 committee will make its televised primetime debut, some 519 days after the event that gave the committee its name and purpose. For its ardent supporters, the committee’s mission is nothing less than an effort to save democracy. For its harshest critics, it’s both a waste...
Jonah Goldberg: Republican voters — not NRA — are driving GOP’s gun agenda
In 2020, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana was the top recipient of money from members of the “gun rights” industry. According to Open Secrets, his campaign received a total of $142,653 for the 2019-20 cycle. That put the so-called gun lobby at 33 on the list, far behind other industries...
Jonah Goldberg: Why do Democrats and Republicans agree on Ukraine aid?
During the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden was outspoken in his desire to “revive the spirit of bipartisanship in this country.” On May 15, Politico reported that, at the urging of many advisers, Biden had mostly given up on working with the GOP, which he purportedly now “views as an existential...
Jonah Goldberg: It’s not easy to predict U.S. politics in a post-Roe world
The late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a passionate advocate for abortion rights, but she was also one of Roe v. Wade’s most effective critics. “My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped the momentum on the side of change,” she said, explaining that abortion...
Jonah Goldberg: Twitter used to correct the narrative. Now it writes the narrative.
“What is the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull?” the president of the United States asked 10 years ago at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. “A pit bull is delicious.” Of course, to echo E.B. White: Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it...
Jonah Goldberg: The right-wing mob gets its pound of Mouse flesh from Disney — or does it?
“Freedom is awaking from its coma today because of a huge, huge, huge Supreme Court decision — huge,” Rush Limbaugh declared in 2010. “I cannot tell you how big this is.” What, pray tell, had roused freedom from its slumber? The Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision,...
Jonah Goldberg: Ukraine, Russia and the moral clarity of ‘good guys’ vs. ‘bad guys’
One of the silver linings of the very large dark cloud of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is the clarity it provides. This is, broadly speaking a contest between good guys and bad guys. A lot of people who fancy themselves foreign policy realists roll their eyes at talk about...
Jonah Goldberg: France’s election shows how political parties can fade away
Perhaps the most interesting thing about last weekend’s French election isn’t who won, but who lost — and what it might mean for America. French President Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen of the National Rally party won enough of the vote — 27.8% and 23.2% respectively — to head...
Jonah Goldberg: Could wedge issues be the cure for polarized politics?
Conan O’Brien recently tweeted: “Well, I’ve officially lived a long life because people are excited Germany is rearming.” I had a similar feeling recently listening to the 538 politics podcast that discussed “wedge issues.” The conversation between the host, Galen Druke, and two prominent political scientists was illuminating, but the...
Jonah Goldberg: Biden’s gaffes should not drive U.S. policies on Russia
An enormous amount of effort and planning went into crafting a single coherent message, and in one instant it was all for naught. I’m not talking about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock during Sunday night’s Oscars, but President Biden’s similarly unscripted call for regime change in Russia. In Warsaw on...
Jonah Goldberg: In today’s media, attacks from the left benefit its right-wing targets — and vice versa
You know who benefits the most from liberal media bias? Conservatives. I spent much of the last 25 years writing about liberal media bias. Heck, I grew up on the stuff. My father, a longtime editor, used to joke that he “worked behind enemy lines.” He’d often tutor me about...
Jonah Goldberg: Let’s not confuse the Cold War of the 1950s with what’s happening today
It’s hard to pick up a foreign policy journal or even turn on the TV without encountering someone predicting, recommending or lamenting a “new Cold War” with Russia, China or both. This is entirely understandable and even justifiable, if you mean a new period of strategic competition, pressure and geopolitical...
Jonah Goldberg: Trump’s power worship of Putin is repugnant — and predictable
“I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine, of Ukraine, Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful,” Trump explained on a radio show the day after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his unprovoked...
Jonah Goldberg: Putin has forced the West to change how it views its role in the world
In “The Sun Also Rises,” Ernest Hemingway famously answered the question “How did you go bankrupt?” “Two ways. … Gradually, then suddenly.” The last week suggests that getting out of bankruptcy works the same way. It’s difficult to exaggerate the suddenness and significance of the change in attitudes — and...
Jonah Goldberg: Putin’s wish and the consequences he can’t control
Vladimir Putin announced Monday that he had decided to recognize two regions in eastern Ukraine as independent breakaway “republics” and immediately ordered Russian troops into those territories to carry out “peacekeeping” functions. A better term would be “tornaway republics” since Putin has been waging war there for years. It remains...
