… After more than two decades of tension within the GOP between a restive base and its traditional establishment, Trumpism, the archetypal grass-roots movement, is winning. With the 2018 primaries about to end, all but two of the 37 Republicans Mr. Trump has endorsed for House, Senate and governor during […] Read more »
John McCain’s 2000 Campaign and the Republican Road Not Taken
In 2000, John McCain’s “Straight Talk Express” barreled down what has become the road not taken for the Republican Party. McCain’s 2000 bid for the GOP presidential nomination is best remembered for his irreverence in the hours he spent happily jousting with reporters on the bus while his campaign strategists […] Read more »
The Problem With ‘Electability’
… Discussions of electability are often really about identity — and they tend to come down negatively on nonwhite and non-male candidates. Others have done empirical work on what qualities (such as gender, ideology and race) make a person more or less likely to win an election, and I will […] Read more »
When the Supreme Court Lurches Right
… Kavanaugh is a D.C. insider who has taken conservative positions as an appellate judge, and he has been a member of the Federalist Society since 1988, participating, for example, by hosting a dinner for admitted Yale law students in April. Barring a late-breaking surprise, the fifth and decisive brick […] Read more »
The Quiet Reinvention of Ted Cruz
It’s hardly unusual for an incumbent politician to kick off a re-election campaign by producing a television ad recalling a past crisis when he provided both personal comfort and—even more importantly—public resources to his constituents in their moment of need. But when that politician is better known for taking symbolic […] Read more »
Reclaiming Patriotism for the Left
The resurgence of blood-and-soil nationalism around the world seems to prove that appeals to nationhood are too racist, too tribal and too dangerous to be of value. Yet surrendering patriotism to champions of the ethno-state abdicates the fight for the soul and meaning of the American project. The American left, […] Read more »