Jonah Goldberg stories, Page 5

On Saturday night, Mike Pence unleashed his anger at Donald Trump. “History will hold Donald Trump accountable for Jan. 6,” Pence declared at the Gridiron Dinner, a normally jovial event for prominent journalists. “Make no mistake about it: What happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to...

If you search for “safe space” on the Foxnews.com website you’ll get over 46,000 results. All of them aren’t about those woke snowflakes who need trigger warnings and cry rooms. But a whole lot of them are. For instance, in 2017, shortly after Donald Trump’s inauguration, Tucker Carlson grilled a...

The House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party held its first hearing this week. In interviews and joint statements Chair Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., have made it clear they are determined to make this committee a...

You hear it all the time, including from me: Our politics is too partisan, too polarized, too divided. Why can’t both parties work together for the common good? But it’s worth pointing out that sometimes bipartisan consensus is awful. The worst form of elite agreement is usually the product of...

Imagine a popular Republican governor from an important state. Despite intense criticism from the national media, he’s notched some huge policy wins that are simultaneously popular with donors, base voters and conservative intellectuals. His key theme is fighting the Washington establishment and the institutions of progressive power. Then, fresh off...

We are entering the 12th month of a “special military operation” that was supposed to be over in well under 12 days. The Kremlin even told Russian officers to pack dress uniforms and medals for the intended military parades in Kyiv a few days after the shooting started. Things turned...

There’s an understandable compulsion in the media and among Democrats to emphasize the differences between Joe Biden’s classified documents scandal and Donald Trump’s. The two cases are different in many important respects. The most significant is obviously that the former president refused to cooperate with the National Archives and Justice...

For several years now, I’ve been told that the old consensus of fiscal conservatism and limited government was dead. So, you might think I’m delighted by the sudden rebirth of Tea Party-style budget-cutting zeal on display in the GOP’s brinksmanship over the debt ceiling. Not so much. I’ll get to...

Kevin McCarthy’s epic struggle to become speaker of the House produced a lot of memorable images, but the most unforgettable was probably of Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., being physically restrained from opening a fresh can of whup-ass on Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., after Gaetz ensured McCarthy’s 14th failure to get...

It’s not exactly a blistering insight into how Washington works, but nothing will get you more praise and respect than being powerful and wielding that power effectively. So, it should be no surprise that Nancy Pelosi finished her tenure as speaker of the House to lavish applause. Many dubbed her...

“The tapes are the real man — mean, vindictive, panicky, striking first in anticipation of being struck, trying to lift his own friable self-esteem by shoving others down,” Gary Wills wrote of Richard Nixon in the 2017 preface to his book, “Nixon Agonistes.” Wills added, perhaps unfairly, that “Nixon’s real...

As 2022 draws to a close, it’s worth celebrating that this hasn’t been a good year for authoritarianism. This might seem Pollyannish. After all, just last month, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance issued a report concluding that democracy is in decline while authoritarianism is deepening. Freedom House...

At President Biden’s behest, the Democratic National Committee is poised to throw Iowa and New Hampshire under the bus. Assuming he gets his way, the new order will be South Carolina, followed by Nevada, New Hampshire, Georgia and Michigan. It’s fine with me. I like both Iowa and New Hampshire,...

Kevin McCarthy’s quest for the House speaker’s gavel is a near perfect inside-the-Beltway story because it’s about pure politics and personal ambition without many narrative-muddling concerns about principles, governing philosophy or policy considerations. McCarthy was never a policy wonk or doctrinaire conservative; he’s a dealmaker and glad-hander, which is why...

A lot has changed since the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, the country club resort and unofficial classified document storage facility where Donald Trump resides. Back in August, the search was denounced by many on the right as an unprecedented outrage befitting a banana republic that challenged the very legitimacy of the...

On election night, Donald Trump took to his post-truth social media platform, Truth Social, to spin the results. His first utterance was to celebrate Republican Joe O’Dea’s loss in the U.S. Senate race in Colorado. “Joe O’Dea lost BIG!” Trump crowed. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” O’Dea had distanced himself from...

There’s something tragically poetic about Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. There’s a whole subculture of lamentation about modern society that can be fairly well summed up in Peter Thiel’s roughly decade-old gripe that things such as Twitter were distracting us from greatness: “We wanted flying cars. Instead, we got 140...

Vladimir Putin is a murderer and tyrant. He’s also a hypocrite. “It is no coincidence that the West claims that it is its culture and worldview that should be universal,” Putin explained last week at a pro-Putin Moscow think tank, the Valdai Discussion Club. His remarks echoed previous statements of...

“The elites plunder this country and then blame us for it in the process,” J.D. Vance, Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, declared when he announced his bid for the seat from Ohio. Elsewhere, he’s insisted that America faces a stark choice. “We can have an American Republic or a...

Herschel Walker, the Republican former football star running for a Georgia Senate seat who supports a total ban on abortion, denies he pressured a former girlfriend to have an abortion, which he paid for. He’s almost certainly lying. The allegations are easy to believe, while his rambling, often contradictory denials...

It’s an article of various faiths — both secular and religious — that misunderstanding is the cause of conflict. This sort of insight is generally true for individuals, so it’s often considered equally true of nations. Hence vast amounts of antiwar activism and state-level diplomacy rest on the assumption that...

I’m a fan of ironic nicknames: big men named “Tiny,” bald dudes who go by “Curly,” etc. But, in politics, there’s no nickname more ironic than RINO, short for “Republican in Name Only.” Originally, it was supposed to describe Republicans who went along with Democrats for political expediency. In the...

When it comes to immigration, and especially at this moment in our politics, I’m a “bothsides-er.” These days, complaining about both sides — Democrats and Republicans — invites a lot of scorn and ridicule, usually from people on one side. On some issues, that scorn might be deserved. But on...

“Nobody knows anything,” William Goldman, the legendary screenwriter said. “Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out, it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.” I’m starting to think the same thing is true of foreign...

It’s one of the most enduring rules of thumb in American politics. Since 1862, the president’s party has lost seats in the House in every midterm election but three (1934, 1998 and 2002). Until very recently, it seemed like the 2022 midterms would provide one more data point to this...