Author: Jonah Goldberg

Newtzilla is back. Six weeks ago, during the last Newt Gingrich surge, I wrote here that “conventional weapons are useless against Newtzilla. … Everything bad about Gingrich — the flip-flops, the wives, the ego — is known. Once voters have convinced themselves they can overlook that stuff, it’s hard to change their minds simply by […]

“In the Treasury we do not speak of tons of silver. Our unit is the troy ounce.” That was the response from some bureaucrat when Leslie Groves, the man who oversaw the Manhattan Project, sought thousands of tons of silver to be turned into electrical wires. Groves got his silver. Why? Because completing the Manhattan […]

“Corporations are people, my friend,” Mitt Romney declared in a testy back-and-forth with hecklers last summer in Iowa. It was among the first of what appears to be a growing list of gaffes Democrats will use to hang around Romney’s neck in the less than certain but more than likely eventuality that he is the […]

One thing is clear: At best, Mitt Romney is a work in progress. Romney is under attack for being a hugely successful private equity banker at Bain Capital. Bain identified distressed companies and found value in them for shareholders, investors and, ultimately, consumers. When things worked right, Romney and his team streamlined firms and injected […]

Mitt Romney is the most improbable of presidential candidates: a weak juggernaut. He is poised to sweep every primary contest — a first for a non-incumbent. And yet, in Republican ranks there’s an abiding sense that he should be beatable — and beaten. It’s not that Romney doesn’t have fans. His events in New Hampshire […]

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a man whose political success is largely attributable to the aura of befuddled incompetence he uses to disarm his adversaries, was a failed Watergate baby. In 1974, a slew of often sanctimonious and very liberal Democratic politicians rode the tide of understandable national disgust with Richard Nixon to Congress. Then […]

You’ll recall that 2011 began with the oafish actor celebrating his own narcotic and sexual crapulence like a victorious gladiator working the crowds. He was egged on by a media with as much decency as the cons on the top tiers of the prison who chant “fresh fish” as the new inmates walk into general […]

I’ve made a disturbing discovery: I am a member of the conservative “establishment.” I feel like Michael Douglas at the end of “Falling Down”: “I’m the bad guy?” Largely in response to the real and perceived excesses of the Bush years and the overreach of the Obama administration, the base has become more populist. In […]

As a non-Christian with a deep affection for Christmastime, I’ve always felt a little left out around this time of year, but not in the way you might think. I’ve always felt a bit out of place with the venerable conservative tradition of denouncing the “war on Christmas.” I should offer some background. When I […]

So now it’s Ron Paul’s turn. The diminutive Texas libertarian is poised in the latest polls to win the Iowa caucuses. Obviously, this would be rough news for Newt Gingrich — who’s in third place and falling — and very good news for Mitt Romney, who has used Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and […]

Wedge issues are back. What are wedge issues? Well, a lot depends on whom you ask. Political consultants usually define them as issues that unite the base but split the opposition. The most familiar examples are guns, God and gays. But they can include everything from the Pledge of Allegiance to crime. Traditionally, conservatives are […]

“How do we stop Newt?” I’ve now been asked that question by a lot of conservatives. It’s not that I’m the go-to guy for that sort of question. Rather, one gets the sense that many “establishment” conservatives are asking everybody that question — in staff meetings, at the chiropodist, even at the McDonald’s drive-thru. (“I’ll […]

In 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama insisted that the coming presidential primary and general election campaigns “shouldn’t be about making each other look bad, they should be about figuring out how we can all do some good for this precious country of ours. That’s our mission.” “And in this mission,” he continued, “our rivals won’t be […]

In 2008, the Democrats were blessed with two candidates the party’s rank-and-file admired almost as much as the press corps did. Ultimately Barack Obama, the hope-and-change guy, was more popular than Hillary Clinton if for no other reason than that the former first lady came with so much baggage — mostly in the form of […]

Newt Gingrich wants to pay poor kids to clean toilets. And all of the right people are horrified. The Nation says Gingrich is running on “a platform that seems to have been written by the unreformed Ebenezer Scrooge.” The editors of the Newark Star-Ledger proclaim Gingrich wants to “bring back the days of Oliver Twist.” […]

In 2008, I wrote a book called “Liberal Fascism.” That title came from H.G. Wells, one of the most important socialist writers in the English language. He believed, as did his fellow Fabian socialists, that Western democratic capitalism had outlived its usefulness. What was needed was a new, bold, forward-thinking system run by experts with […]

Earlier this month, the left-wing magazine The Nation highlighted Joe Therrien as a symbol of the Occupy Wall Street movement. A New York City public-school drama teacher, Therrien was frustrated with the shortcomings of the school system. So he quit his job and “set off to the University of Connecticut to get an MFA in […]

I’ve long thought the notion of a prison-industrial complex to be laughable left-wing nonsense peddled by Marxist goofballs and other passengers in the clown car of academic identity politics. For those who don’t know, the phrase “prison-industrial complex,” or PIC, is a play on the military-industrial complex. The theory behind PIC is that there are […]

Whether the matchup between Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney is the final bout on the GOP primary card is impossible to know. The whole season has been more like professional wrestling than boxing, with weird characters sporting implausible hair appearing out of nowhere to talk smack and explain why they are the greatest in the […]

Congratulations, average American! It’s your turn to be blamed for President Obama’s — and America’s — problems. This is the biggest honor you’ve won since Time magazine named “you” the Person of the Year. Being the root cause of our dire national predicament puts you in some very august company indeed. You are joining the […]

He’s baaack! Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is back in the saddle after falling off his horse at the starting line. At least according to one poll (Public Policy Polling), Gingrich is actually the GOP front-runner. Many say it’s simply Gingrich’s turn to be the not-Mitt contender, now that Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry […]

“Of course we’re going to riot,” Paul Howard, a 24 year-old aerospace engineering student at Penn State University, told The New York Times. “What do they expect when they tell us at 10 o’clock that they fired our football coach?” The coach in question, as we all know, is Joe Paterno, the decades-long patriarch of […]

You know who I blame for the terrible tone in American politics? Tom Brokaw. No, not the man himself, but what he represents. Since Dan Rather famously beclowned himself, Brokaw stands as the last of the respected “voice of God” news anchors (CBS News executive Don Hewitt’s phrase). These were the oracles who simply declared […]

Up to 40 million Chinese people still live in caves. That’s more than the populations of Texas and Illinois, combined. In fairness, a fraction of these caves are apparently pretty nice, complete with electricity and well-compacted dirt floors. But that’s grading on a curve because, well, they’re still caves. Meanwhile, 21 million Chinese live below […]

Looking back on the events of 2011, who do you think has more regrets for his bad decisions, Hosni Mubarak or former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty? I guess you have to give it to Mubarak. After all, the guy gave up a cushy gig ruling Egypt just so he could be (justifiably) prosecuted from a […]

There’s only one way the Occupy Wall Street movement can become like the tea parties, and that’s for Barack Obama to lose in 2012. Why? Because Obama is the most divisive figure in American politics today. I suspect that sentence reads funny to some people because in the mainstream press, “divisive” is usually a term […]

And so it ends. The United States is leaving Iraq. I’m solidly in the camp that sees this as a strategic blunder. Iraqi democracy is fragile and Iran’s desire to undermine it is strong. Also, announcing our withdrawal is a weird way to respond to a foiled Iranian plot to commit an act of war […]