by Victor Davis Hanson
NRO’s The Corner
The problem for Obama is not that his performance was disastrous, but rather that it was his normal workmanlike coasting. But this time, and for the first time, he was pitted against a skilled debater who had both the better argument and the better intellectual artillery to deliver it. Disengaged cool could not cut it. “My/I/me/mine” first-person overload was of no value. Continue reading “The Problem Last Night Was Not Just Obama”
by Victor Davis Hanson
Tribune Media Services
There was only one presidential debate in 1980 between challenger Ronald Reagan and President Jimmy Carter. Just two days before the Oct. 28 debate, Carter was eight points ahead in the Gallup poll. A week after the debate, he lost to Reagan by nearly ten percentage points. Continue reading “Election Could Mirror 1980 Race”
by Victor Davis Hanson
PJ Media
It All Failed?
By Fantasy House I do not mean — or rather only mean — Barack Obama’s La-La land in which Austrians speak Austrian, Hawaii is in Asia, Afghans speak Arabic, the Maldives lie off Argentina, there are seven additional states, servicemen are zombie corpse-men, and Kansas twisters kill 10,000 at a time. Continue reading “The Fantasy House”
by Victor Davis Hanson
PJ Media
When 40%, not 97%, Is Illiberal
One of the legacies of the Obama presidency is that “white male” as a term of embarrassment has now transcended the hothouse of the campus and gone mainstream. We are lectured by media figures, celebrities, and politicians ad nauseam that the November election is really about a new America of diverse minority groups, gays, feminists, and green pitted against a dying and shrinking number of old white guys. Sometimes that narrative requires absurd assumptions. Continue reading “Everyone’s a White Male–But Me”
by Bruce Thornton
Frontpage Magazine
The Democrats’ convention was the public coming-out bash for the party whose political clock stopped in 1972. Every speaker and speech celebrated the musty left-wing ideology and smug arrogance of those who idolize big government because it gives them the power to tell everybody else what to do and how to live — exactly what most Americans say they don’t like and don’t want. Then why are Obama’s poll numbers still so high? Continue reading “Why Is Obama Still Likable?”
by Victor Davis Hanson
Tribune Media Services
The 2012 race has turned into one of Aesop’s classic fables. After each new media blitz against the no-frills Mitt Romney, a far cooler President Obama races ahead three or four points in the polls — only to fall back to about even as the attention fades. Continue reading “Obama the Hare, Romney the Tortoise”
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
Starting in the 1930s and continuing after the war, the Democrats offered a liberal critique of, or perhaps enhancement to, the Republican vision of rugged individualism. A modern American state now had the capital and the moral ambition to smooth the rougher edges of capitalism by insisting on unemployment and disability insurance, a 40-hour week, overtime pay, and what we now associate with the social safety net. Such entitlements, along with a rapidly growing economy, redefined poverty — so much so that whereas in 1930 malnourishment was endemic among the poor, by 2000 obesity was far more injurious to the nation’s collective health. Continue reading “The New Reactionaries”
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
It could not last — the attendee of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s church sermonizing on tolerance; the practitioner of Chicago politics lecturing on civility; the most partisan voting record in the Senate as proof of a new promised bipartisanship; earlier books and speeches calling for hard-core progressivism as evidence of a no-more-red-state-blue-state conciliation. And in fact the disconnect did not last, and Barack Obama finds himself dealing with assorted chickens coming home to roost. Continue reading “Liberal Chickens”
by Victor Davis Hanson
NRO’s The Corner
Every now and then someone sends me an incoherent blog posting by someone named Conor Friedersdorf, who attacks a column I’ve written — usually in a way that reveals his inability to follow a simple argument. In the latest case of “‘White’ on the Brain,” he alleges that my piece was aimed at proving a new sort of racism against whites — something improbable, he thinks, given the insignificance (e.g., Mia Farrow) of those who employ boilerplate derogatory terms. Continue reading “‘White’ on the Brain–II”
by Bruce Thornton
Frontpage Magazine
We need to find a new label for the ideology espoused by leftist Democrats. “Liberal” doesn’t accurately describe the party of blinkered intolerance, fanatical certainty, and an eagerness to destroy freedom in order to achieve some dubious utopia. Continue reading “Time for ‘Liberals’ and ‘Progressives’ to Get New Labels”