Columns ‹ Opinion
A Kinder, Gentler Era Didn’t Have All the Advantages
The sad passing of an early star of right wing talk radio highlights some of the profound changes in news broadcasting and the conservative movement in general. Those transformations may seem lamentable in this season of Republican self-flagellation but actually demonstrate an improved ability for right-of-center arguments to play a significant role in the...
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How to Run Ahead of the Ticket
If Republicans hope to break their wretched streak of disappointing presidential campaigns – losing the popular vote in five of the last six White House contests – they should learn crucial lessons from the only candidate in that dismal span who proved notably more popular than his party’s national brand: John McCain.
Indignant conservatives may...
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On Cleveland Sports and the House GOP
As a lifelong and long-suffering Cleveland sports fan, I know what happens next to the House GOP: a demoralizing loss, followed by a pledge of rebuilding and perhaps a coaching/managerial change.
Indeed, that is what is underway with both of the clubs I have followed for 50 years. Terry Francona has arrived in the Indians’ dugout and the front office has just...
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Delivering Real Help, Not Hurt, for the Holidays
As this joyous holiday season builds toward its annual climax, nearly all decent people feel a powerful urge to serve the hopeless and the homeless who huddle in the shadows of every major city. But what if our instinct to demonstrate compassion results in more harm than help?
That question arises with special force this year after international publicity for...
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The Tax-the-Rich Fairy Tale
The Obama administration and its allies are so eager to portray tax hikes on the rich as the solution to all our problems that they desperately desire to persuade the public that tax cuts for the rich caused all those problems in the first place.
Perhaps the most outrageous expression of this argument comes in a controversial new video from the California...
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The Conservative Losing Streak: In Perspective
Conservatives feel understandably discouraged by the dismal results of November’s elections, but we ought to put our recent presidential losing streak in perspective.
It’s true that Republicans lost the popular vote in five of the last six contests for the White House, but in the previous six elections – 1968 through 1988 –they won five out of six....
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The Taxman Meets the Taxidermist
Only once in a great while will a single story simultaneously illuminate the embarrassing excesses of both low politics and high culture, but the troubling true tale of the tax man and the taxidermist, the stuffed bird and the feathered federal nest, nicely captures the demented nature of recent trends in both Washington and Manhattan.
The New York...
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Hugh Hewitt: Rescuing Defense from the fiscal hostage crisis
Concern for national security has defined the GOP since Ike, but that priority has been missing from the “fiscal cliff” negotiations.
The House Republicans could easily pass and send to the Senate a bill exempting the Department of Defense from the sequester and thus removing our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines from the impact of the looming...
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The Many Loves of FDR
The new movie HYDE PARK ON HUDSON, with Bill Murray playing Franklin Roosevelt, is a flawed, frustrating melodrama but it raises important questions about historical perspective.
The movie dramatizes a 1939 visit by Britain’s King and Queen to FDR’s country estate while the wheelchair-bound president juggled demands of his wife, mother, and two adoring...
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Attack Policies, Not Intentions
After stinging electoral defeat and in the midst of stalled budget negotiations, some leading conservatives impute dark motives to Barack Obama. According to these arguments, the president will go over the fiscal cliff to wreck the economy, destroy capitalism, and transform America.
This notion ignores the fact that economic catastrophe undermines a...
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Defending Defense: How the GOP Can Escape the Budget Box Canyon
Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio wowed the Beltway conservatives last night, which is a little bit like the British cheering a successful evacuation from Dunkirk. The GOP indeed lives to fight another day, and that day will be here quickly as 2014’s candidates are already declaring –Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito for the United States Senate in West Virginia...
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No Denying the GOP’s Aging Edge
Does ideology shape life experience, or does life experience determine ideology? The future direction of American politics depends on our response.
In response to the disappointing results of November’s elections, I have argued that conservatives should take heart from the undeniable aging of the electorate, which will tilt future contests toward...
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Agree on Goals, Guys
The biggest obstacle to a bi-partisan deal for avoiding the fiscal cliff involves an inability to agree on specific, common goals. The underlying aim for Democrats is to close gaps between rich and poor by raising taxes on the wealthy; the deepest goal for Republicans is to slow the growth of government by cutting spending.
Both sides, however, already...
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The Perils of Tax Rate Nostalgia
Americans have always reveled in nostalgia about the music, fashion or favorite foods of bygone eras, but a sudden yearning for the high tax rates of yesteryear represents a startling new development. While some opinion leaders pine openly for the tax system that once claimed a big majority of income from top earners, their cozy, communitarian vision offers a...
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“The Unanswered Question”—On Taxes and Spending
In the debate on our fiscal crisis, one crucial question is never answered or even asked: if we’re supposed to go back to Clinton-era tax rates because they were good for America, why don’t we simultaneously return to that era’s spending rates?
In other words, what is government doing so much better today than it was then to justify vastly increased...
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“Not A Moment To Be Lost”: Ayotte, Cruz, Kyl and Capito Show The Way
The only thing worse than losing in politics is quitting after a loss since the vast and great American sport of politics never stops, and increasingly doesn’t even pause for the holidays.
Which is why I am grateful for Kelly Ayotte, Ted Cruz, Jon Kyl and Shelley Moore Capito.
In the weeks since the election, New Hampshire Senator Ayotte could have gone to...
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