Here is a taste of Jonathan Chait’s New York Magazine piece, “New Gingrich Invented Donald Trump’s Lock-Them-Up Politics”: A popular belief, especially among political centrists, holds that Trump is the antithesis of the old Republican ethos. On one side of...
Ronald Reagan
Is Biden’s presidency doomed? Some historical perspective.
Princeton’s Julian Zelizer offers some historical context at CNN: Those who are worried should find some solace in the fact that contemporary presidents have been able to come back from difficult moments like these. Challenging first terms don’t inevitably put...
Should Joe Biden run again?
Over at The New York Times, Bret Stephens thinks Biden will be too old (86 at the end of his second term) to serve a second term. I really don’t have a strong opinion about this, but I do hope...
Episode 26: “Evangelicals Remember Ronald Reagan”
Former president Ronald Reagan died on June 5, 2004. Evangelicals were eager to reflect on the role he played in the rise of the Christian Right. Episode 26: “Evangelicals Remember Ronald Reagan” dropped last night. Subscribers to Current at the Longshore level...
Paul Ryan: “If the conservative cause depends on the populist appeal of one personality…then we’re not going anywhere.”
Tonight the former Speaker of the House will give a speech at the Reagan Library in California. John McCormick of The Wall Street Journal reports: “Once again, we conservatives find ourselves at a crossroads,” Mr. Ryan will say, according to...
Ronald Reagan in 1975: “Why don’t we try reverse psychology and make it harder to vote?”
I am reading Rick Perlstein’s Reaganland and was struck by this passage (p.93-94): Look what happened after President Carter, on March 22, sent a letter to Congress recommending a package of electoral reforms. The president was concerned that America ranked...
On fighting “a guerilla battle at the grassroots of a generation of lower-middle-class people who feel betrayed and exploited”
Here is Rick Perlstein in Reaganland on the rise of the New Right in the 1970s: That notion–conservatism as an ideology for working people–was another New Right theme. [Richard] Viguerie’s father had been a construction worker; his mother toiled in...
God $ Green
If you want to know how American evangelicals have come to reject climate change watch “God $ Green: An Unholy Alliance,” a video from the University of Virginia’s Religion, Race & Democracy Lab. It includes commentary from American historian Darren...
Brooks: “This moment is like 1981, the dawn of the Reagan Revolution, except in reverse”
New York Times columnist David Brooks on Biden’s COVID-19 relief package: The Covid-19 relief law that was just enacted is one of the most important pieces of legislation of our lifetimes. As Eric Levitz writes in New York magazine, the poorest fifth...