Hillary Fails to Offer a Foreign-Policy Vision
The best thing you can say about Hillary Clinton’s performance at Wednesday night’s Commander in Chief Forum is this: Matt Lauer was worse. …
The Cowardice of Donald Trump
Crusaders against “political correctness” often portray themselves as brave. They deride others for knuckling under to left-wing orthodoxy, for being too afraid of African Americans, Latinos, feminists, and gays to speak the truth. They, on the other hand, speak their mind, come what may. No presidential candidate has used this conceit more effectively than Donald Trump. His supporters love his willingness to say things about ...
Tribalism Fuels Orthodox Jews’ Support for Trump
Last week, the firm GBA Strategies polled Jews in Florida about the presidential race. In a two-way contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Jews favored Clinton by 41 points. That’s not surprising. Jews have voted Democratic in every presidential election for close to a century, usually by large margins. …
How Colin Kaepernick’s Protest Misfired
I admire Colin Kaepernick. I admire his courage in doing what he thinks is right even though it could cost him money and perhaps his job. You don’t see that from public figures very often. I admire him for raising awareness about police brutality. I also admire the veterans who have defended him by arguing, correctly, that they are defending his right to sit or ...
Trump’s Immigration Policy Trap
The biggest political story of the last week has been Donald Trump’s flip-flop on deporting undocumented immigrants. This Sunday on CNN, Mike Pence filibustered his way through the subject for almost seven minutes before Jake Tapper finally declared, “You did not address the issue” and moved on. Chris Christie on ABC and Kellyanne Conway on CBS were no more coherent. The Daily Beast summed up ...
How Trump Betrayed Ann Coulter on Immigration
Donald Trump has just betrayed Ann Coulter. Which is a dangerous thing to do. This week, Coulter released her new book, In Trump We Trust. As the title suggests, it’s a defense of Trump. But more than that, it’s a defense of Trumpism. Most Trump surrogates contort themselves to defend whatever The Donald says, no matter its ideological content. They’re like communist party functionaries. They ...
How Democrats Become the Conservative Party
By any reasonable definition, Democrats are now the more conservative of America’s two parties. They are more interested than Republicans in conserving America’s international relationships, cultural norms, and political and economic institutions as they are. …
Why Jewish Conservatives Fear Donald Trump
George Will once wrote that Barry Goldwater actually won the 1964 presidential election. It just “took 16 years” — until the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 — “to count the votes.” It’s time to update that line. Pat Buchanan actually won the Republican nomination in 1996. It just took 20 years — until the nomination of Donald Trump — to count the votes. ...
‘Trumpism’ and the Rift Between Belief and Truth
The number of high-profile conservative commentators who enthusiastically support Donald Trump is relatively small. But the number of high-profile conservative commentators who enthusiastically support “Trumpism” is higher. Trumpism is the belief that Trump’s followers constitute the “real America” and that anyone who does not validate their grievances is an elitist who neither understands nor cares about ordinary folks. …
Why Are Some Conservative Thinkers Falling for Trump?
Logically, Donald Trump should have less support among intellectuals than he had a year ago. That’s because over the past year, he has made statements that expose him as both ignorant of public policy and contemptuous of liberal-democratic norms. He has proposed banning Muslims from entering the United States, incited violence against protesters at his rallies, responded to The Washington Post’s critical coverage by warning ...