Bipartisanship has become so rare in Washington that pundits risk forgetting how lousy it can be. In 1964, Democrats and Republicans came together to overwhelmingly pass the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which authorized Lyndon Johnson to use force in Vietnam. The Defense of Marriage Act, which in 1996 made gay marriage illegal under federal law, enjoyed broad bipartisan support too. …
Paul Ryan “thinks only he can help House Republicans maintain an independent brand if Trump is the nominee.” That’s what a Republican insider told me yesterday in an illuminating conversation about the GOP speaker’s announcement that he won’t accept his party’s presidential nomination. …
I often meet Jonathan Sacks, the former British chief rabbi, for lunch. He just doesn’t know it. I eat at my desk while watching one of his ten-minute lectures on the weekly Parsha on YouTube. Sacks’ erudition—not just about Jewish texts but also about Western history, philosophy and literature—is extraordinary. Once, sitting in a synagogue in London, I came across an essay in which he ...
Hillary Clinton will soon face the strangest general-election campaign in modern American history. In a conventional sense, it’s the easiest. That’s because her likely opponent, Donald Trump, is almost certainly too unpopular to win. A full two-thirds of Americans view him unfavorably. To be sure, Clinton’s unfavorability rating is high as well: It’s around 50 percent. The difference is that she retains the support of ...
Last week, the Regents of the University of California adopted a set of “principles against intolerance.” They declared that “opposition to Zionism often is expressed in ways that are not simply statements of disagreement over politics and policy, but also assertions of prejudice and intolerance toward Jewish people and culture.” That statement moderated an early one, from January, which declared outright that, “Anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and ...
When pundits claim Donald Trump can win the presidency, they often evoke a fabled political species: “Reagan Democrats.” “Are Reagan Democrats becoming Trump Democrats?” wondered CNN commentator Jeffrey Lord last fall in The American Spectator. “I think there’s a lot of Reagan Democrats waiting to vote for him,” declared MSNBC’s Chris Matthews in January. This almost certainly isn’t true. The more you examine it, the ...
Right after the attacks in Brussels on Tuesday, Donald Trump did something bizarre. He spoke the truth. Appearing on Fox and Friends, the GOP presidential frontrunner declared that, “This all happened because frankly there is no assimilation.” …
Thank you, Donald Trump. Unwittingly, you’ve done something important. You’ve exposed AIPAC’s indifference to the well being of the country in which it thrives. My country. The United States. …
Vassar, according to one conservative website, is among the ten most anti-Semitic colleges in America. Last month, an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal declared that, “Anti-Israel sentiment mixed with age-old anti-Semitism has reached a fever pitch” there. So it was with some anxiety that I travelled last week to the 155-year old former women’s college at the invitation of the local chapter of J ...
What will happen to American politics if, as now appears likely, the Republican Party nominates Donald Trump? Here’s one bet: It will get more violent. …