If you read our twice-weekly “Evangelical Roundup” feature, you have heard about conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza’s “Big Lie” movie titled 2000 Mules. The movie premiered at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Over at the conservative website The Bulwark, Amanda Carpenter offers a […]
Trumpism
“He rose to prominence as an ambitious plodder — as someone difficult for his colleagues to attack because he never had anything remotely interesting to say”
Read more about what Washington Post columnist and Michael Gerson had to say about House majority leader Kevin McCarthy: Let’s take a moment from the lightning pace of the news cycle to reflect on a disturbing fact of American life: […]
The Big Lie and tribalism
Over at The Atlantic, Sarah Longwell writes: “For many of Trump’s voters, the belief that the election was stolen is not a fully formed thought. It’s more of an attitude, or a tribal pose.” Here is a taste of her […]
“Dr. Oz is the most normal Republican” running for office in Pennsylvania
Amanda Carpenter nails it: LOL, if you thought Donald Trump’s endorsement of Dr. Mehmet Oz for Senate was the worst development in Pennsylvania’s 2022 GOP primaries, wait until you hear about the Republicans running for governor. Pennsylvania Republicans will nominate a […]
The GOP as Trump Steaks
Tim Miller writes for the conservative online magazine The Bulwark. He was the communications director for the 2016 Jeb Bush campaign and spokesperson for the Republican National Committee. Here is a taste of his piece “The Republican Party Is Trump […]
Charlie Kirk: “Huckster. Snake oil salesman. Charlatan”
Charlie Kirk, the pro-Trump pundit who spends most of his time rallying college students to a combative form of conservative populism, regularly appears on the weekends at evangelical megachurches. He is currently visiting churches as part of his “Saving America […]
This woman is not alone
She probably represents a small part of the population, but people like this are out there. Watch:
America’s four-party system
Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon Jr. identifies four political factions functioning within our two-party system: The Trump Party (Trump, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, Fox News and other conservative cable outlets, conservative talk radio). The GOP Old Guard (Mitch McConnell, Mitt […]
Putin is rarely mentioned at CPAC
The speakers at the pro-Trump Conservative Political Action Conference this week are in a tough spot. I am sure many of them condemn the Putin invasion of Ukraine, but they can’t do that publicly without invoking the ire of their […]
Trump’s new social media site is a disaster
Here is Drew Harwell at The Washington Post: Former president Donald Trump, a longtime critic of how Democrats debuted Healthcare.gov, is facing a bungled website launch of his own. His long-promised social network, Truth Social, has been almost entirely inaccessible in […]
“‘Crazy’ has become a church-growth strategy”
Are you a pastor who wants your church to grow? There is a new church-growth formula out there. If you are a pro-Trump, anti-critical race theory, anti-mask, and anti-vaccine pastor your church will grow. It will not grow through evangelism, […]
Anti-Trump Republicans will gather for the “Principles First” summit
They will meet this weekend at the National Press Club. Speakers include Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Denver Riggleman, Geoff Duncan, Brad Raffensperger, Alexander Vindman, Joe Walsh, Barbara Comstock, Bill Kristol, Charlie Sykes, Tom Nichols, Peter Wehner, and Harry Dunn. Meanwhile, […]
Trump needs to face the facts. He lost.
Recently Fox News host Brian Kilmeade, a Trump supporter, said that the former president needs to stop wasting our time with claims that he won the 2020 election. But Trump won’t let it go. As Peter Wehner writes in The […]
The collapse of Charlie Kirk’s “America-first” academy
Pro-Trump pundit Charlie Kirk, the president of the right-wing Turning Point USA, wanted to start an academy to educate K-12 students in “America first” principles. But its major funder abandoned ship after it got a look at the curriculum. Apparently […]
“Legitimate political discourse”
Yesterday was a big day in American politics. The Republican National Committee censured Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the two members of the GOP who sit on the House committee investigating the insurrection of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, […]
Shifting power in the Republican Party
Prior to 2016, the following organizations and people held the power in the GOP: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce The NRA The Koch network Heritage Action The Drudge Report National Review Conservative movement groups such as Tea Party Express, FreedomWorks, […]
Why did Jonah Goldberg leave Fox News?
Goldberg recently talked to The New York Times about his departure from Fox News: The former Fox commentator Jonah Goldberg — who has been called a “Fox defector” — says that Tucker Carlson’s latest documentary series was “the anvil that […]
Kinzinger calls for an “uneasy alliance” among Republicans, Democrats, and independents to fight Trump’s influence
He is one of the few honest Republicans in the House of Representatives. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (IL), who is not running for reelection in 2022, is asking Democrats and independents to help him save his party from Trumpism. Here is […]
The GOP’s main job right now is to break with Trump
Conservative columnist Gary Abernathy calls for a break-up. Here is a taste of his piece at The Washington Post: So, “What are Republicans for?” Fair question. But before the Republican Party can redefine itself, it must first divorce itself from […]
The bridge from Reaganism to Trumpism
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 […]