Posts By Author » Jonah Goldberg

Greatest generation the most entitled
7 Mar 2013 12:03 am

One thing nearly everybody agrees upon is that the “sequester” is a silly sideshow to the real challenge facing America: unsustainable spending on entitlements. Ironies abound. Democrats, with large support from young people, tend to believe that we must build on the legacy bequeathed to us by the New Deal and the Great Society. Republicans, who marshaled considerable support from older voters in their so-far losing battle against Obamacare, argue that we need to start fresh.
Perhaps it’s time for both sides to consider an underappreciated fact of American life: The …

It’s ‘I told you so’ on Obamacare
6 Mar 2013 12:04 am

“What we’ve learned through the course of this program is that this is really not a sensible way for the health care system to be run.”
That was Gary Cohen, director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight. He was talking about the apparently surprising need to halt enrollments in a program designed as a temporary bridge for people with pre-existing conditions who couldn’t wait to be covered by the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) when it fully kicks in next year. The …

CPAC unwise to snub Christie, gays
1 Mar 2013 12:04 am

What can you do with a man like Chris Christie?
The answer, according to many with the conservative movement: Throw him overboard. And while we’re at it, let’s toss the gays over the side too.
The popular governor of New Jersey has certainly angered many conservatives, including this humble scribe. During the crucial final days of the presidential election, Christie didn’t merely embrace President Obama, he all but endorsed him.
Then, during the congressional fight over the disaster-relief bill for victims of superstorm Sandy — a bill with more pork in it than …

A ruling on racial progress
27 Feb 2013 12:02 am

I can only hope that the scourge of racism is finally purged from Stewartstown and Pinkham’s Grant. These are two of 10 New Hampshire towns covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which requires local officials to get permission, or “preclearance,” on any changes to their election laws.
Stewartstown has just over a thousand souls in it and is 99 percent white. In 1970, when it was put under the authority of Section 5, the census listed two blacks out of its 1,008 residents. Pinkham’s Grant boasts …

Blame game rages on over looming sequester
22 Feb 2013 12:04 am

We are just days away from a cataclysm of biblical proportions. The cuts foretold in the Budget Control Act of 2011 are young as far as prophecies go, but apparently they are every bit as terrifying as rivers of blood and plagues of locusts. Any day now we can expect White House spokesman Jay Carney to take to the podium and read a prepared statement: “And when he opened the seventh seal, there was a small decrease in the rate of increase in federal spending.”
The great game in Washington is …

“We need to buy a movie studio.”
20 Feb 2013 12:02 am

Amid the umpteen conferences, panels, meetings and informal conversations in the wake of the presidential election, this idea has been a near constant among conservatives who feel like the country is slipping through their fingers. Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee combined raised just more than $1 billion, and all we got are these lousy T-shirts. Since conservatives are losing the culture, goes the argument, which in turn leads to losing at politics, maybe that money could be better spent on producing some cultural ammo of our own?
It’s a …

Operation Hubris
15 Feb 2013 12:04 am

One of the great things about American politics is its capacity for punishing hubris.
For the ancient Greeks, hubris didn’t merely describe god-like arrogance. It was a crime, usually defined as taking too much pleasure in the humiliation of your foes. In its modern usage it usually means the pride that comes before the fall.
In the wake of Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, both connotations seem at least a little apt. We are well into our fourth month of epidemic thumb-suckery over the question, “Are the Republicans doomed?” The …

A message to Obama, served cold
13 Feb 2013 12:03 am

In an earlier era, Dr. Benjamin Carson’s speech before the National Prayer Breakfast last week would have been a really big deal rather than mere fodder for a brief squall on Twitter and cable news.
Born in crushing poverty to an illiterate single mother dedicated to seeing her children succeed, Carson became the head of the department of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins medical institutions when he was 33. He’s been a black celebrity role model ever since.
Even if you didn’t like the substance of what Carson had to say at …

Two cheers for rebranding
8 Feb 2013 12:04 am

Ever since Mitt Romney lost the presidential election, there’s been a lot of talk about how the Republican Party needs to “rebrand” itself.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal wants, among other things, for the GOP to stop being “the stupid party.” Rep. Paul Ryan has concluded that the watchword for the Republican Party needs to be “prudence.” Sen. Marco Rubio is the front man for the most tangible aspect of the rebranding effort: getting on the right side of the immigration issue. In the process, he’s become something of the de facto …

Education spending that isn’t smart
6 Feb 2013 12:04 am

Not long after President Obama proclaimed in his second inaugural that “an economic recovery has begun,” we learned that the U.S. economy actually shrank in the last quarter. Many economists believe this is a temporary setback. This recovery may be the weakest in American history, but the economy isn’t cratering either.
Still, you can bet that if the economy continues to contract, Obama will propose the same remedy he always has: more “investments” in education, infrastructure and various industries of the future. It seems that whatever the ailment, Dr. Obama always …

Can GOP’s local success translate to federal level?
1 Feb 2013 12:04 am

The Republicans are doomed. Conservatism is over. President Obama is conducting a mop-up operation at this point.
That’s the basic consensus in places like New York City, Washington, D.C., and other citadels of blue America.
And let’s be fair, liberals have every reason to gloat — a little. The GOP has its troubles. Long-term demographic trends; often-irrational animosity from Hollywood, the media and academia; a thumbless grasp of the culture on the part of many Republicans: All of these things create a headwind for the party and the broader conservative movement.
But here’s …

Soldier girl blues
30 Jan 2013 12:03 am

What if, during the presidential campaign, Mitt Romney had accused President Obama of wanting to let servicewomen serve in combat? After all, Obama had hinted as much in 2008. What would Obama’s response have been?
My hunch is that he would have accused Romney of practicing the “politics of division” or some such and denied it.
In any case, wouldn’t an open debate have been better than putting women into combat by fiat? You’d think the folks who are always clamoring for a “national conversation” on this, that and the other thing …

Hillary Clinton’s dodgy testimony
25 Jan 2013 12:04 am

A lot of people in Washington apparently forgot how good Hillary Clinton is at not telling the truth.
Wednesday, in her testimony before both the Senate and, later, the House, Clinton brilliantly fudged, dodged and filibustered. Of course, she’s a pro. Clinton was slow-walking depositions, lawyering up and shifting blame when many of her questioners were still civilians down on the farm.
Aided by a ridiculous format, she outfoxed most of the Republicans with ease.
Meanwhile, the Democrats, almost uniformly, seemed singularly interested in celebrating Mrs. Clinton as a global diva who somehow …

Wake up, socially liberal fiscal conservatives
18 Jan 2013 12:08 am

Dear Socially Liberal Fiscal Conservative Friend,
That’s pretty toothy, so I’m going to call you Bob.
But whatever specific name you go by, Bob, you know who you are. You’re the sort of person who says to his conservative friends or co-workers something like, “I would totally vote for Republicans if they could just give up on these crazy social issues.”
When you explain your votes for Barack Obama, you talk about how Republicans used to be much more moderate and focused on important things such as low taxes, fiscal discipline and balanced …

Time to grow up, GOP
16 Jan 2013 12:01 am

It’s hard for a lot of people, particularly on the right, to recognize that the conservative movement’s problems are mostly problems of success. The Republican Party’s problems are much more recognizable as the problems of failure, including the failure to recognize the limits of that movement’s success.
American conservatism began as a kind of intellectual hobbyist’s group with little hope of changing the broader society. Albert Jay Nock, the cape-wearing libertarian intellectual — he called himself a “philosophical anarchist” — who inspired a very young William F. Buckley Jr., argued that …

Biden’s faulty lifeguard logic
11 Jan 2013 12:04 am

“As the president said, if your actions result in only saving one life, they’re worth taking,” Vice President Joe Biden declared on Wednesday as he previewed what his commission on gun violence might actually do.
“There are executive orders, there’s executive action that can be taken. We haven’t decided what that is yet. But we’re compiling it all with the help of the attorney general and the rest of the Cabinet members as well as legislative action that we believe is required.”
Biden insisted that it is a moral imperative for the …

A petty decision by Obama
9 Jan 2013 12:03 am

It’s official. President Obama has named former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) as his nominee for secretary of defense. Hence, we may be in store for the worst defense secretary nomination fight since George H.W. Bush’s failed appointment of Sen. John Tower (R-Texas) more than 20 years ago.
The interesting question is, why? Why waste the political capital? Why pass over more qualified candidates who would sail through confirmation, including Michele Flournoy — who’d be the first female defense secretary?
The most ridiculous answer is among the mainstream media’s favorites: bipartisanship. According to …

Winning ugly: Obama and the fiscal cliff
4 Jan 2013 12:10 am

By all accounts, President Obama won the fiscal cliff showdown. Why anyone would take much pride in this kind of “win” is beyond me. It’s a bit like being the least filthy toddler in the mud pit.
One of the main reasons Obama won, according not only to Obama but an at times cheering press, is that he had a mandate. He ran on the need for the wealthy to “pay their fair share.”
To his credit, Obama never said raising taxes on the “rich” will solve all of our problems. What …

Don’t tread on six-toed cats
28 Dec 2012 12:04 am

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to work harder to persuade ideological friends and foes alike that the way to reduce partisanship and maximize happiness in America is to embrace federalism — the view that we should push as many decisions as possible to the lowest local level feasible.
Federalism reduces partisanship by shrinking the importance of the federal government. It increases happiness by maximizing the number of people who get to live the way they want to live.
Unfortunately, proponents of federalism tend to start the conversation with the really …

Liberal obsession with race is growing old
21 Dec 2012 12:04 am

When will liberals stop living in the past? Specifically, when will they accept that they aren’t all that stands between a wonderful, tolerant America and Jim Crow?
I was in the room when, during the Democratic convention, civil rights hero John Lewis suggested that Republicans wanted to “go back” to the days when black men like him could be beaten in the street by the enforcers of Jim Crow. I thought it an outrageous and disgusting bit of demagoguery. The audience of Democratic delegates cheered in a riot of self-congratulation.
It’s bizarre. …

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