 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
The idea is that India and the United States are natural allies. But some are skeptical that India is ready to assume the mantle of responsible world power. Closer ties with an ever more authoritarian Russia don’t bode well. ~Michael Goldfarb
I don’t assume India and America are “natural” allies, since I don’t think any such […]
9 Comments »
Filed under: politics, foreign policy
I’m hearing you guys [House GOP] don’t care what people think. That’s what I’m hearing, and that’s what got us the minority, and that’s what’ll keep us there, but I hope you’ll come back and talk with me again. ~Hugh Hewitt
Er, well, actually it was the Iraq war that put Republicans in the minority, as any […]
1 Comment »
Filed under: politics, foreign policy
Two senators _ a Republican and a Democrat _ leading separate efforts to put Congress on record against President Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq joined forces Wednesday, agreeing on a nonbinding resolution that would oppose the plan and potentially embarrass the White House.
Sens. John Warner, R-Va., and Carl Levin, D-Mich., had been sponsoring competing measures […]
No Comments »
Filed under: politics
The Old Right is back, and in Hagel it has, perhaps, found a formidable and eminently electable candidate. ~Justin Raimondo
Put a lot of emphasis on that perhaps. First, there are some definitional problems: Hagel is not an antiwar Republican. How do I know? Because he never says he is against the war. There’s a mighty […]
1 Comment »
Filed under: politics, foreign policy
He has been trying to build his campaign on the idea of protecting human life from womb to death, and across the globe. That agenda cannot advance by retreating from the field on which the most pivotal of the current battles is being waged. Perhaps Senator Brownback will also recognize that in the days ahead […]
No Comments »
Filed under: politics, foreign policy
Okay, I am not on hiatus yet, and Sullivan offers such an easy, fun target:
It was much more significant in the 2006 elections than the white evangelical vote. In 2006, a full 36 percent of self-described libertarians voted Democrat - easily the biggest share of that vote that the Dems have had in recent times. […]
No Comments »
Filed under: politics
Ross and Reihan have been selfishly guarding their well-kept secrets and hoarding their witty insights for a month now (on the lame pretexts of “having work to do” and “employment”), so it will soon be time for them to come back and share the wealth. Sen. Webb would approve.
This will be good news for many, […]
10 Comments »
Filed under: miscellaneous
Poor Mitt just can’t buy a break these days. Now he’s being hit for a veto of funding that would have gone to reimbursing nursing homes so that they could provide kosher meals to elderly Jews on Medicaid:
Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom told The Politico that the governor vetoed the legislation to cut spending.
“The state was in a […]
3 Comments »
Filed under: politics
The author pretends to argue that hostility to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state is the defining characteristic of the “new” anti-semitism, which is fairly ridiculous on its own terms, but as you read through the examples that’s clearly not what he’s saying. Rather, his view is that some people make what he […]
5 Comments »
Filed under: politics, foreign policy
You’d have to be pretty thick not to realize that del Toro intends the fairyland narrative — heavy with arbitrary commands, underground abattoirs, and intimations of blood sacrifice — as a commentary on the politics at work in the real-world storyline, and this realization has sent many critics into raptures over the film’s supposed political […]
6 Comments »
Filed under: politics, film
The folks at the Prospect must be slipping. Compare Amy Sullivan’s meaty, well-researched Washington Monthly article on Romney’s evangelical problem with Sarah Posner’s “What Evangelical Problem?” to see a significant difference in substance. Nonetheless, Posner’s article is interesting, and it highlights some of our favourite Romneyites at Evangelicals for Mitt. The article also does do us […]
No Comments »
Filed under: politics
And the “larger” question I’ve been pondering of late is this: Why have some elements of the right attacked Governor Romney so viciously? Especially since many of these same people (like the guiding force behind MassResistance) not only don’t support an alternative candidate, they even voted for the Governor in past campaigns when he advanced […]
No Comments »
Filed under: politics
I’m employed by a large pro-life organization and I can tell you that pro-lifers have been very receptive to Romney’s conversion story. Your advice that he “would probably be better off not talking about it all” is off the mark. If he doesn’t address why he’s pro-life after years of being mildly pro-choice, voters won’t […]
2 Comments »
Filed under: politics
These moves may get him closer to the Republican nomination, but whether they reflect deep principles or merely a venture capitalist’s professional sense of what’s required to achieve his goal is already the defining question of the Romney campaign. ~Peter Canellos
Query: If Romney is the great venture capitalist who has a keen grasp of an […]
No Comments »
Filed under: politics
The Congressional Republicans’ demand for “benchmarks” is becoming the GOP’s equivalent of Al Gore’s demand years ago for ”lockboxes,” –an empty term originally intended to convey seriousness of purpose while disguising empty policy prescriptions, but which, by the sheer implausibility of the pose, became a term attracting deserved disdain.
Republican resolutions calling for “benchmarks” are being understood by people serious about […]
No Comments »
Filed under: politics, foreign policy
In many ways, I find Romney an appealing, moderate Republican: competent, reformist, articulate. And then he tried to run as Hewitt-theocon. ~Andrew Sullivan
Which is the worse thing you can say about Romney? That Andrew Sullivan would have supported him, or that Hugh Hewitt does support him? This is a very difficult question. It will probably have […]
No Comments »
Filed under: politics
Brownback has some cross-over appeal. Anti-war, big government Christianism has a real constituency. ~Andrew Sullivan
Brownback may or may not have crossover appeal. He is a U.S. Senator, after all, which does require, even in deepest Kansas of paranoid liberal myth-making, some support from people beyond his core partisan supporters. But whatever crossover appeal he does have, be it on his […]
No Comments »
Filed under: politics, foreign policy
We dirty Christians and Jews only have holidays. Shiites have holy days, so they must be on a higher moral plane, I guess. ~NRO Reader
Now I have no love for the Times, whose story about the Ashura bombings prompted this bit of hysteria, but even I find this sort of reading-pro-Muslim-bias-between-the-lines to be absurd and risible. […]
1 Comment »
Filed under: politics
As GOPers debate ideological comfort, Dems argue over experience. But much like Romney, Obama’s survival will depend more on how he performs, than the attacks he draws from opponents. ~Hotline
This is true. Not having much of a record worth mentioning on the social issues he now claims to champion, Romney has to be able to win over […]
No Comments »
Filed under: politics
We need to recast the geo-strategic reference points of our Iraq policy. Some commentators have compared the Bush plan to a “Hail Mary” pass in football — a desperate heave deep down the field by a losing team at the end of the game. Actually, a far better analogy for the Bush plan is a […]
No Comments »
Filed under: politics, foreign policy
To answer Spencer “Democrat Party” is a slur just because it’s wrong. ~Matt Yglesias
This is about as “inside baseball” as blogging can get, and will therefore probably be of interest to all of twelve people, but let me make a few remarks. As you will have noticed, Republicans nowadays like to refer to the Democratic Party […]
No Comments »
Filed under: miscellaneous
The way forward requires abandoning that conviction in favor of a fundamentally different course. A sound Middle East strategy will restore American freedom of action by ending our dependence on Persian Gulf oil. It will husband our power by using American soldiers to defend America rather than searching abroad for dragons to destroy. A sound […]
No Comments »
Filed under: politics, foreign policy
What can we say of this proposal? Simply this: to imagine that 170,000 troops will accomplish what 140,000 troops failed to do in nearly four years or that marching a handful of additional combat brigades into the maw of Baghdad will snatch victory from the jaws of defeat qualifies as pure fantasy. Kagan’s “surge” is […]
No Comments »
Filed under: politics, foreign policy
The true purpose of bipartisanship is to protect the interests of the Washington Party, the conglomeration of politicians, hustlers, and bureaucrats who benefit from the concentration of wealth and power in the federal city. A “bipartisan” solution to any problem is one that produces marginal change while preserving or restoring the underlying status quo. ~Andrew […]
No Comments »
Filed under: politics, foreign policy
Dan McCarthy has a smart and interesting article in the new TAC, now online:
More plausible than either liberaltarianism or a revival of 1990s-style paleo-libertarianism, however, is a gradual reconfiguration of conservatism, liberalism, and libertarianism alike under the pressures of the War on Terror. Lindsey may have been more right than he realized when he wrote, […]
No Comments »
Filed under: politics