Author: CK MacLeod
Ross Douthat: Goodbye, Bushism – The New York Times
Politically it was by no means a crazy strategy. For all his blunders, George W. Bush is still the only Republican candidate for president to win the popular vote in the last 25 years,...
Matthew Yglesias: I can’t be contrarian about Donald Trump anymore: He’s terrifying – Vox
I was a liberal Donald Trump apologist. Not a liberal enjoying the chaos Trump was sowing in the Republican Party, but someone who welcomed his ideological heterodoxy as a step away from the cliff of endless polarization that offered a more moderate substantive agenda than Marco Rubio’s. I held on to that conviction through Friday’s protest violence and Saturday’s torrent of “enough is enough” takes.
I was wrong.
Jeffrey Goldberg: The Obama Doctrine – The Atlantic
If you are a supporter of the president, his strategy makes eminent sense: Double down in those parts of the world where success is plausible, and limit America’s exposure to the rest. His critics believe, however, that problems like those presented by the Middle East don’t solve themselves—that, without American intervention, they metastasize.
A Post-Trump Landscape — The Buckley Club
So while the motivations of some might be financial, and others may be of principle, still others will be tyrannical and rooted in the worst natures of man. It’s a melting pot. There’s not...
James Traub: Do Americans Really Want a Wall? – Foreign Policy
Leadership, of course, means persuading citizens to go where they would rather not. A President Clinton would have to find the language to convince Americans that a deep and ongoing engagement with the world, even...
Open Letter on Trump from GOP National Security Leaders – WOTR
Mr. Trump’s own statements lead us to conclude that as president, he would use the authority of his office to act in ways that make America less safe, and which would diminish our standing...
Robert Kagan: To Republicans afraid to take a stand against Donald Trump: Grow up – The Washington Post
You sometimes get the feeling that if Mussolini himself were about to win the nomination, Republicans would still be talking about Clinton’s email server. This is nonsense. Republican voters and the party leaders who...
Chemi Shalev: Trump’s Triumphs Demolish Netanyahu’s Fortress GOP Strategy – Haaretz
In the outgoing dogmatic GOP, Trump’s equivocations would have earned him a place in the all-time rogues gallery of Enemies of the Jewish People, somewhere between Obama and Father Coughlin. Today, Evangelicals shrug them...
Thomas B Edsall: Why Trump Now? – The New York Times
The tragedy of the 2016 campaign is that Trump has mobilized a constituency with legitimate grievances on a fool’s errand.
The Latest Front In Twitter’s War On Harassment: Weird Twitter – BuzzFeed News
Over the past year and a half, in response to bad press brought about by torrents of abuse often associated with Gamergate and the alt-right counterculture, Twitter has stepped up its effort to fight...
Philip Klein: Trump has clearest path, but here’s how he can still lose – Washington Examiner
Trump has led polls in Ohio and Florida. If Trump beats Rubio and and Kasich there, not only does he win the state’s 165 delegates, but he likely knocks both candidates out of the...
Ritualized behavior? Chimps all throw rocks at the same tree – Ars Technica
“Whether it really represents ritualistic behavior is up for debate,” said Kalan.
The League vs Trump – Super Doomsday Open Thread and Twitter List
If we need a clearer definition of our mission – as I think we do – we could do worse for a starting point than “Negation of Trump,” but that thought also implies that it’s significantly our fault that Trumpism is on the verge of taking over the universe…
Melissa Harris-Perry Walks Off Her MSNBC Show After Pre-Emptions – The New York Times
“I will not be used as a tool for their purposes,” she wrote. “I am not a token, mammy or little brown bobble head. I am not owned by Lack, Griffin or MSNBC. I...
Brent Budowsky: Did Christie just spark ‘draft Romney’ move? – TheHill
Fasten your seat belts and stay tuned. The next week will be one of the most dramatic weeks in the modern history of presidential politics. Either Rubio will have a very big day next...
Jeff Greenfield: Stopping Trump: The Nuclear Option – Politico
Today, the response would have to be at a whole other order of magnitude—an unprecedented shock to the system that would force those all but most Trump’s impassioned supporters to rethink the consequences of...
Sow They Say – Final Debate Before the Deluge OT OT and Tweet-List
As we approach the last Republican Debate before Super Tuesday, it’s “reap just what you sow” day from the Left across the Center and all points beyond the movement conservative right.
Charles CW Cooke: Donald Trump’s 2016 Campaign Must Be Stopped – NRO
For the first time in years, the Right’s defenses would be completely destroyed, perhaps never to be rebuilt. Swiftly, the courts would be packed with ideologues; immediately, Congress would run through the remaining items on the Obama-Clinton laundry list; before the voters had a chance to stop them, the White House would usher in an irreversible amnesty; and, Trump having been turned into a pariah by a hostile press, his “anti-PC” attitude would be rendered toxic in perpetuity. The likely result of Trump’s selection as the Republican nominee, in other words, would be the entrenchment of all that his supporters claim vehemently to hate. That thrill that his acolytes would feel when they saw Trump named the winner of the primaries? It’d be gone in a matter of minutes.
Dan Drezner: My very peculiar and speculative theory of why the GOP has not stopped Trump – Washington Post
Just as sabermetrics led to a change in how umpires called the game, political science led to a change in how party elites intervened in the campaign. Because the smart people said he had...
