Author: Jonah Goldberg

Is Joe Scarborough having his Colonel Nicholson moment? That’s what I wondered Monday morning as I watched the host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” insist that Donald Trump’s inability and unwillingness to simply and plainly denounce the Ku Klux Klan in a Sunday CNN interview was “disqualifying.” For those who might not have seen “The Bridge […]

I’m not sure I’d ever heard of Jimmy Savile prior to revelations that he was a monster. A hugely popular DJ and TV personality in the United Kingdom for decades, Savile lived a double life as a child molester and rapist. He abused older victims as well. His victims, many of whom were patients in […]

As things stand, Donald Trump is the presumptive GOP nominee. That’s awful news, and depressing to contemplate. But terrible possibilities don’t become less terrible if we refuse to contemplate them. Rather, they become more likely. The GOP’s collective desire to look away has been a problem for months. Nearly everyone, including yours truly, believed that […]

We get it already. The Iraq war was a mistake. Indeed, on this point pretty much everyone agrees. Jeb Bush, the brother of the president who launched the war, has said so. So has Hillary Clinton, the only presidential candidate in either party to have actually voted to invade Iraq (though she refused to admit […]

In Springfield, Ill., last week, President Obama commemorated the ninth anniversary of his bid for the White House. He admitted that one of his “few regrets” was his inability “to reduce the polarization and the meanness in our politics.” To conservative ears, Obama’s comments fell somewhere between risible and infuriating. Obama has always done his […]

Welcome to Infomercial America, or, if you prefer, the United States of Spam. Whenever political conspiracy theories break out into the open, pundits and intellectuals name-check the brilliant but flawed essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” by Richard Hofstadter. Under President George W. Bush, the “9/11 Truthers” were the poster boys and girls of […]

Hillary Clinton is not a woman, and that’s a triumph for feminism and a problem for Hillary. Let me clarify. Yes, technically she is female. But when millions of Americans think of Hillary Clinton, they don’t think of her gender; they think of, well, Hillary Clinton. Some may think of her as a heroic liberal […]

“The Republican Obama.” That’s the new hot attack on Sen. Marco Rubio. Ted Cruz leveled the epithet at Rubio just days before the Iowa caucuses, which is a little ironic since Cruz has been called the same thing in the past. But the leader of the opposition to Rubio, at least when it comes to […]

Hillary Clinton’s asterisk-heavy victory in Iowa might have been the narrowest of wins for her, but it was arguably the worst of all possible outcomes for the Democratic Party.   As of this writing, the result was a statistical tie, 49.9 percent for Clinton and 49.6 percent for Bernie Sanders. The margin of victory in […]

The campaigns will be eager to tell you the meaning of Ted Cruz’s victory and the virtual tie between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in Iowa last night, but the larger significance of this election has been clear for months: The two major parties are paper tigers. My old boss, the late Ben Wattenberg, was […]

First, kill the Iowa caucuses. Please note: I didn’t say, “Kill the Iowans.” I like Iowans and I like Iowa. But we need to get Iowa’s boot off our neck. That may be misunderstood, as well. You see, we’re not under the heel of all Iowans. If we were, that’d actually be better because that […]

I’ve been hearing about the impending “conservative crackup” for nearly 25 years. The term was coined by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., the founder of the American Spectator. He meant that conservatism had lost its philosophical coherence. But the phrase almost instantly became a catchall for any prediction of the right’s imminent demise or dissolution. These […]

Jane Mayer of The New Yorker has a new book out: “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.” It’s mostly about those old devils the Koch brothers. Charles and David Koch are billionaires. They own a very big company. They also are very prominent philanthropists, giving hundreds […]

According to the Constitution, the legislature is the first and most powerful branch of government. And yet, many believe — on the left and the right — that the institution has atrophied. By all accounts, House Speaker Paul Ryan is eager to change that. He has his work cut out for him. At the Republican […]

Clearly the only explanation for Jeb Bush’s almost effortless stroll to the Republican nomination is the pernicious stranglehold of big money in politics. Oh, wait. Bush is in the low single digits in most national polls, despite his campaign and his super PAC raising more than $100 million. Perhaps that’s only because Donald Trump, the […]

According to conventional wisdom, the GOP nominates the guy whose turn it is, while the Democrats look for a savior. As Bill Clinton once said, “In every presidential election, Democrats want to fall in love. Republicans just fall in line.” George H.W. Bush came in second to Ronald Reagan in 1980. As the sitting vice […]

For partisan Democrats, when the word “Benghazi” comes up, the sophisticated thing to do is roll your eyes. If the name Charles Woods comes up, the normal thing to do is say, “Who?” So let’s talk about Cindy Sheehan for a moment instead. Remember her? For a while, she was the Joan of Arc of […]

There has been a lot of talk — almost all of it accurate — about how Barack Obama’s presidency has fueled the rise of Donald Trump. The president’s fans hate this talk, for understandable reasons. They see the president as dignified and cerebral. They see Trump as crude and bigoted, a “short-fingered vulgarian,” as Graydon […]

In interviews and on the stump, Sen. Ted Cruz likes to attack President Obama, Hillary Clinton and “some of the more aggressive Washington neocons” for their support of regime change in the Middle East. Every time we topple a dictator, Cruz argues, we end up helping terrorists or extremists. He has a point. But what […]

If you’re opposed to slavery, is it OK to still like “Star Wars”? It’s a question I’ve been wrestling with ever since Jonathan Last, a friend and writer at the Weekly Standard, pointed out to me that the “droids” in the “Star Wars” movies are slaves. Unlike a lot of the ridiculous “Star Wars” revisionism […]

Populism is typically born in places like Nebraska, Louisiana, Kansas and the other places given short shrift in that famous Saul Steinberg New Yorker cartoon showing the view of the world from 9th Avenue. It’s not supposed to hail from Brooklyn or Queens, never mind Burlington, Vermont, or midtown Manhattan. But that’s where the two […]

I don’t typically endorse candidates, but as 2015 draws to a close, I feel I must make an exception. I think it’s a safe bet that for most of us, the year-that-was was not the year we wanted it to be. Oh, sure, there’s got to be the stray story about how this was a […]

“We have people across this country who are scared to death,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie declared loudly at this week’s Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas. Virtually the entire debate was based upon this premise. Which is understandable. Since the bloody Islamist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, terrorism has shot up as the […]

In the wake of the San Bernardino attack, liberals are in a total panic over guns. The New York Times broke a 95-year precedent to editorialize about gun control on its front page. But the Times seems restrained compared with the full-on meltdown at the New York Daily News, which has taken to calling the […]

Dear New York Daily News, You’re doing it wrong. Long before the blood was mopped up, before police issued the all-clear, before the motives of the shooters were known and the names of the dead were released, before you had any idea how the murderers in San Bernardino obtained their guns — or their bombs […]

“No more baby parts.” As of this writing, that statement by Robert Lewis Dear is the only evidence that the “Planned Parenthood shooter” in Colorado Springs, Colo., was motivated by anti-abortion rhetoric. Dear’s comment came amid a rambling interview that left law enforcement officials unsure what his motivations were. That didn’t stop abortion-rights supporters, led […]

“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia … could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of […]

A little over a year ago, when Ben Carson was gearing up to run for president, I questioned in this space whether he was ready for what lay ahead. We now have our answer: No. Carson had a great number of things going for him: his amazing life story, charm, professional accomplishments, eloquence and courage. […]

“You’re all suckers.” That has to be what Barack Obama is thinking as the country falls for his head-fake. Let’s recap. George W. Bush’s surge reduced the Islamic State’s precursor, al-Qaida in Iraq, to a paltry 700 members, according to CIA Director John Brennan. Its membership has grown by something close to 4,000 percent. As […]

According to legend, if not actual historians, Harold Macmillan was once asked what he most feared could derail his agenda. The British prime minister allegedly said, “Events, my dear boy, events.” Macmillan may never have actually said it, but the quote endures because it gets at a fundamental truth of politics (and life). Facts on […]