The Senate Republican health-care bill has been repeatedly crushed in a slow-motion collision between the party’s historic ideology and the interests of its modern electoral coalition. Yet congressional Republicans appear determined to plow right through the wreckage. … Both the House and Senate legislation seemed hatched in a time warp. In […] Read more »
The Demise of the Health Care Bill Shows That Policy Still Matters
Over the past few years, it’s become fashionable among many political experts to deny that policy substance plays much of a role in motivating the electoral choices of the American public. The dominant picture of citizen behavior in contemporary accounts is that of a crude tribalism, in which individuals’ salient […] Read more »
Liberals can win again if they stop being so annoying and fix their ‘hamburger problem’
… As I see it, Democrats’ problem isn’t that they’re on the wrong side of policy issues. It’s that they’re too ready to bother too many ordinary people about too many of their personal choices, all the way down to the hamburgers they eat. They don’t always want to prohibit […] Read more »
No One Cares About Russia in the World Breitbart Made
… So far, there’s little sign that the president’s approval rating with Republicans is in danger of eroding. … A number of factors have been put forward to explain President Trump’s unexpected resilience. One line of argument is that he’s being buoyed by Republican lawmakers who could abandon him if […] Read more »
The Closing of the Republican Mind
The election of President Trump has coincided with a reaction among Republican voters against open-mindedness, open borders and an open society in general — not to mention a growing hostility to cognitive elites. … Countless analyses have demonstrated that Trump won the election by combining support from traditional Republican voters […] Read more »
Breaking: The Democratic Party is different now than it was in 1995
Donald Trump’s emergence in American politics reinforces two lessons that everyone who pays even the slightest bit of attention should have learned a long time ago. First, that partisanship evolves over time as politicians seek out new constituencies. Second, that top-down attempts to get voters in line are not likely […] Read more »