Former President George W. Bush’s absence from this year’s Republican National Convention is a problem. It’s a problem not merely because it signifies GOP opposition to Donald Trump. More importantly, it’s a problem because it underscores the Trump campaign’s inability to define the word “again.” …
On Wednesday on CNN, Marco Rubio said the Islamic State, which Turkish officials believe carried out this week’s attack at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport, had two motivations. First, “they ultimately want them to be a part of the caliphate.” Sure, but “ultimately,” ISIS wants every place on earth to be part of its caliphate. That doesn’t explain why the organization struck Turkey now. Rubio’s second explanation ...
In October 1993, Leon Wieseltier wrote a “Diarist” in The New Republic magazine that I remember to this day. The trigger was his fury over the Clinton administration’s failure to intervene militarily in Bosnia. But his subject was America and Europe. He wrote that: “There is no such place as ‘the West.’ There is Europe and there is America and they are distinct chapters in ...
American commentators have spent the weekend pondering the similarities between Britain’s vote to leave the European Union and America’s impending vote on whether to take leave it of its senses by electing Donald Trump. The similarities have been well-rehearsed: The supporters of Brexit—like the supporters of Trump–are older, non-college educated, non-urban, distrustful of elites, xenophobic, and nostalgic. Moreover, many British commentators discounted polls showing that ...
In dangerous times, American Jews have a tradition of forming “Emergency Committees.” In 1939, fearing that World War II would imperil the activities of the London and Jerusalem-based World Zionist Organization, representatives of America’s major Zionist groups formed the Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs. Later renamed the American Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs and then the American Zionist Emergency Council, it operated until the establishment ...
There are three obvious downsides to Marco Rubio’s decision to run for reelection to the United States Senate. First, he’s flip-flopped: As recently as May, he promised not to enter the race. Second, even if he wins, he’ll spend the coming years taking votes that could cause him problems in a presidential campaign. Or, if he skips those votes, he’ll be slammed for his absenteeism, ...
Donald Trump’s ignorance makes him challenging to cover. It’s sometimes hard to know whether his falsehoods are the product of willful deceit or mere lack of information. Take his statement on Tuesday to evangelical leaders that “we don’t know anything about Hillary in terms of religion. Now, she’s been in the public eye for years and years, and yet there’s no—there’s nothing out there. There’s ...
When it comes to Latinos, Donald Trump has a muse: Ann Coulter. Last June, when Trump called Mexican immigrants “rapists” in his presidential-campaign announcement, the comment took many journalists by surprise. But that’s because many journalists hadn’t read Coulter’s work. Her book Adios, America: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole, which hit bookstores two weeks before Trump entered the ...
In his statement after the terrorist attack in Orlando, Donald Trump called on U.S. President Obama to resign and on Hillary Clinton to quit the presidential campaign. The reason: They “refused to even say the words ‘Radical Islam.’” (Clinton later uttered the phrase, so I guess she’s allowed to stay in the race.) …
Hillary Clinton has now secured the Democratic nomination for president. Because she was the front-runner, because she represents the establishment, because she has been around forever, we forget how remarkable a story that is. I’m not talking about her gender. In purely political terms, Clinton’s victory—after losing the Democratic nomination in 2008—constitutes the greatest comeback by a presidential candidate since Richard Nixon won the Republican ...