Why Trump Won
by Victor Davis Hanson// Defining Ideas Throughout the course of the 2016 election, the conventional groupthink was that the renegade Donald Trump had irrevocably torn apart the Republican Party. His base populism supposedly sandbagged more experienced and electable Republican candidates, who were bewildered that a “conservative” would dare to pander to hoi polloi by […]
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The Angry Phone-caller “Are you Mr. Hanson? F**k you! F**k Trump!” Dear (anonymous) Angry Phone-caller, I did not get a chance to say a word in answer to either your question or exclamations. But I’m always amazed about the ingenuity of people who can find one’s cell phone number—from retailers to ad men to lost […]
Braver New World — for Now
The Corner The one and only. By Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Given the status of the post-election state legislatures and executive offices, the Republican-controlled House and Senate, a Republican president, and a Supreme Court that will not go leftward for a generation, it is hard to see how conservatives could be anything other than […]
Surprise, surprise, the disconnected plutocrat lost
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton concedes her defeat to Republican Donald Trump in New York on Nov. 9, 2016. (Andrew Harnik/Associated Press) by Victor Davis Hanson// Los Angeles Times Donald Trump’s victory confounded elite pollsters, journalists, politicians, academic experts and captains of industry. They all wrote him off as a fading gasbag. By every conventional […]
A Blow to the Non-Elite Elite
By Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Biased and incompetent elites polluted the 2016 election, and they are getting what they deserved. There were a lot of losers in this election, well beyond Hillary Clinton and the smug, incompetent pollsters and know-it-all, groupthink pundits who embarrassed themselves. From hacked e-mail troves we received a glimpse of […]
The Election Fables of 2016
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Clear choices on the issues in 2016 have been far more distinct than in 1960, 1968, or 1992. Most of what we read about the election of 2016 was untrue. Here are the most glaring of the election fables. Hillary would have been better off politically to come […]
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From an Angry Reader: COULD THESE REALLY BE YOUR WORDS? “When Trump shoots off his blunderbuss, is it always proof of laziness and ignorance, or is it sometimes generally aimed in the right direction to prompt anxiety and eventual necessary reconsideration?” ITS IGNORANCE AND YOU KNOW IT. HAS HE ONCE DESCRIBED DETAILS OF HOW IS […]
The Unenviable Next President
by Victor Davis Hanson// Defining Ideas After a strange and divisive election season, November 8 is almost here—and it couldn’t have come soon enough. Whoever wins will be in an unenviable position. The nation is in free-fall: current foreign policy, the economy, health care, and federal borrowing are not sustainable. Yet the needed chemotherapy, […]
Has Clinton topped Nixon?
By Victor Davis Hanson// Town Hall | Another day, another Hillary Clinton bombshell disclosure. This time the scandal comes from disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner’s laptop computer, bringing more suggestions of Clinton’s sloppy attitude about U.S. intelligence law. Meanwhile, seemingly every day WikiLeaks produces more evidence of the Clinton Foundation leveraging the Clinton State Department […]
Never Trump Republicans: Spoilers or Saviors?
By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review If enough of them decide that Hillary’s corruption is too much to take, she could be finished, at last. Will there be an eleventh-hour Never/Against/No Trump Reconsideration? The question gains new relevance as a Hillary Clinton landslide, widely predicted until recently, now seems unlikely. We are back to […]
No reason to assume Hillary’s troubles are behind her
By Victor Davis Hanson // The Sumter Item Hillary Clinton was resting, running out the clock, sitting on a supposed large lead and hoping that the election was sooner than later. Now after the latest Weiner disclosures, she is crisscrossing the country, terrified of collapsing polls, and wishing that she had three more weeks […]
The Strange Silence of Bernie Sanders
The Corner The one and only. by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review The core of Bernie Sanders’s maverick campaign was “not business as usual.” For a year he offered a comprehensive critique both of status quo Democratic politics and the corrupt culture of elite Washington in uncompromising fashion. In an era of Never Trump publicity, […]
The Clintons — At the End of All Things
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Epic greed, power, and pride: Where’s the bottom? With Bill and Hillary, there’s no telling. What was the Clinton telos? The end point, the aim of all their lying, cheating, criminality, dishonor, and degradation? Given the latest Weiner scandals coming on top of the latest WikiLeaks scandals, we […]
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?
The Corner The one and only. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review In the “you can’t believe this” category, Washington, D.C. lawyer, former Clinton official, and self-described Hillary Clinton supporter Jamie Gorelick goes to the pages of the Washington Post to complain that James Comey’s FBI reinvestigation is a peril to democracy. That is […]
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Comment from an Angry Reader: You’re a civil guy, and it is appreciated. It would be a waste of time, however, for us to engage in colloquy. I can only hope that you are not spared the results of your short-sightedness, and cheerleading for Donald Trump—the word is apt, despite your ‘preference’ in the primaries—that […]
The Alienated American
by Victor Davis Hanson// Defining Ideas Many Americans increasingly seem psychologically, if not materially, disengaged from their own country. A few vote with their feet and move to quieter enclaves in the American rural West or to no-income-tax states in the South and hinterlands. More withdraw with their minds, by shutting out most of […]
Lessons From the Highway of Death
By Victor Davis Hanson // Town Hall California State Route 99 is the north-south highway that cuts through the great Central Valley. And it has changed little since the mid-1960s. A half-century ago, when the state population was about 18 million — not nearly 40 million as it is today — the 99 used to […]
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Comment from an Angry Reader: Dear Sir, Maybe if Trump wins, you can be one of his pet intellectuals, whom he will despise and humiliate. Sincerely, Kurt Lipschutz Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply: Dear Angry Reader Lipschutz, I voted against Trump in the primaries and am on record that he was not among the 5-10 […]
Sanctimony, Inc.
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Time was, leftists complained of rigged elections, the media paid attention to dirty tricks, and conservatives cared more about results than rhetoric. Donald Trump, in characteristically muddled and haphazard fashion, said he thought the election might end up “rigged” (if he lost). Therefore, he would not endorse the […]
Comment from an Angry Reader: Donald Trump’s campaign statements have consisted of proposals including, but not limited to: Violation of the NATO treaty by threatening to withhold assistance from allies based on alleged financial discrepancies; Ordering the US Military to commit first-degree murder of non-combatant civilians (“take out the families” of suspected terrorists) — a […]