by Bruce Thornton FrontPage At their retreat in Williamsburg a few weeks ago House Republicans continued the post-mortem of November’s debacle. A big topic was how to better market the Republican brand. A Domino’s Pizza executive gave “a well-received talk about selling a damaged brand to a modern audience,” asNational Review Online reported. Share This
Messengers, Messages, and Voters: Part 2 Read More »
by Bruce Thronton FrontPage Nearly 3 months after the presidential election the Republicans are still trying to fix what they think went wrong. A popular culprit is the Republicans’ alleged failure to communicate forcefully or persuasively a message that would move voters presumably receptive to conservative policies and principles. Share This
Not the Message, Not the Messenger, It’s the Voter: Part I Read More »
by Bruce Thornton Defining Ideas The biggest political problem the United States faces — runaway entitlement costs on track to bankrupt the treasury — is like the weather. Everybody talks about it, but no one does anything about it. Even talking about it can be politically dangerous, as the Republicans learned in November and during
Wards of the State Read More »
by Bruce Thronton Frontpage Magazine Looking back over 2012, one could be forgiven for thinking that if America goes on at this rate, the nation must be ruined. But as Adam Smith replied to a young man who said those same words about British losses during the American Revolution, “there is a great deal
A New Year in America: Will We Continue Down the Road to Decline? Read More »
by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine The on-going negotiations over avoiding the tax hikes and spending cuts we call the “fiscal cliff” are simply the latest act in a farce of self-serving political denial. For decades now both parties have overseen and nurtured the expansion of the entitlement state all the while ignoring the slow-motion economic
A Nation of Takers Hurtles Toward the Fiscal Abyss Read More »
by Bruce Thronton Frontpage Magazine The hope that democracy would bloom in Egypt following our collusion in removing Hosni Mubarak looks more and more delusional every day. Even our foreign policy wishful thinkers are no longer peddling the canard that the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood is “secular” and “moderate,” thus proving that Muslims devoted to the
Democracy Promotion or Islamist Promotion? Read More »
by Bruce Thornton Defining Ideas In Fisher vs. University of Texas, the Supreme Court heard legal challenges to the University of Texas’s admissions policies, which allow consideration of an applicant’s race in order to promote “diversity” among the school’s students. Such racial preferences are widespread in university admissions. In 80 percent of elite schools, they amount
The Rise of Faux Diversity Read More »
by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine The currently suspended missile duel between Israel and Hamas exposes yet again the surreal absurdity of the way the international community handles this conflict between a democratic state and a terrorist gang. Yesterday’s cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas is another example of the folly of treating a bunch of
The Absurdity of Treating a Terrorist Gang Like a State Read More »
by Bruce Thornton FrontPage Magazine The murder of four Americans in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11, and the subsequent attempts by the Obama administration to blame the attacks on a YouTube video critical of Islam, exposed the delusional assumptions of Obama’s foreign policy. This notion that Western bad behavior — whether colonialism, support for
The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism Read More »
by Bruce Thornton FrontPage Magazine The election postmortem has identified all manner of causes for the Republicans’ defeat, from the “woman problem” and the “Hispanic problem,” as Peggy Noonan put it, to Romney’s fat cat persona and his inept campaign. But there’s a simpler reason, one consistent with the critics of democracy starting in ancient
Explaining the Democrats’ Success Read More »