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Quote of the Day: Farewell, TWS
In honor of the departed Weekly Standard, I wanted to share a favorite quote from one of their finest writers, Matt Labash. He wrote this during the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary.
“As one who was never terribly enamored of Hillary Clinton’s personality to start with, I grudgingly admit to enjoying her recent near-tears transformation. Plenty of critics concede her rarely seen emotion was heartfelt, but also that it was due to the 20-hour-day rigors of the campaign trail, making her perhaps the only candidate ever to win the New Hampshire primary because she needed a nap. Still, it was refreshing to watch her punch through the icy crust of her own phoniness, so that the molten core of artificiality could gush forth.”
Every magazine of any persuasion should be in a bidding war for his prose.
Published in General
“Conservatives” don’t do anything creative about spending. They don’t finish wars. Very few of them get how dysfunctional so much centralized government is. They aren’t creative about any of this. Trump is not some gigantic horror in this sense. He got elected, fair and square.
Hi Brian,
While The Greatest President of the Twentieth Century is deceased, his conservative policies live and are still relevant to the current day. What is missing is that Reagan was optimistic, inclusive, generous, and honest to a fault, contrary to Trump. Members of Congress have been bent to Trump’s will. But there are a number of Republican Governors who have kept Reagan’s spirit live, such as Arizona’s Doug Ducey, Nevada’s Brian Sandoval, Massachusetts’s Charlie Baker, and Maryland’s Larry Hogan.
Gary
Government Is How We Steal From Each Other™
Mark?
I have thought for some time now that we remain always engaged in conflict in the Middle East, Iran and Afghanistan as well as engaged as a member of NATO in threats of conflict with Russia so that all the pieces of the economy related to such will remain strong market players. Somehow this has become associated with ‘conservative’ politics, not sure why. I also think since Trump is POTUS, that he recognizes that the war or conflict we need to fight is an economic war involving United States players’ intellectual property and trade where the principal foe is China so that is where he is focused.
I’m watching Steve Scalise on Mark Levin’s TV show right now.
You can’t stop over spending. It’s a joke.
Medicare will go broke in eight years. We’ve been robbing from the future since 1965. There was a bipartisan recognition in 1973 that Medicare was “a raid on the treasury.”
But Trump is a menace to The Republic.
This all should’ve been fixed after the Soviet Union fell. Why didn’t they? Because they want to be reelected, that’s why.
I’ve been a Weekly Standard (and NR) subscriber for several years. Since I still have 9 months on my subscription to TWS, I imagine I will be receiving The Washington Examiner beginning in January. Although I’ll try to be fair and give them an honest audition, I may cancel the automatic renewal should the new magazine not meet my expectations. If not, I’ll check out Commentary.
Fortunately, in some venue, we will see the likes of Matt Labash, Andrew Ferguson, Stephen Hayes, Jonathan Last, Noemie Emery, and the younger writers like Alice B Lloyd, Michael Warren, Andrew Egger, and John McCormack. Talent like this has to surface somewhere.
You are more generous than I am. If the Washington Examiner had allowed the Weekly Standard to go, then I would give the Weekly Washington Examiner a chance. But since the Washington Examiner decided to kill the Weekly Standard, I am not so forgiving.
I trust that you are accurate about this.
Dennis Miller used to have Bill Kristol on his radio show all the time. Dennis would often say that The Weekly Standard was his favorite magazine or at least his favorite political magazine. He liked the artwork and everything. I think he might have said that his Kajagoogoo model wife thought Bill Kristol was quite dashing or maybe that was Netanyahu.
…
“(Trump) turned Bill Kristol into Salieri. …He got so far into his kitchen, he blew his mind.” — Dennis Miller, December 11, 2018 in an interview with Victor Davis Hanson
For what it’s worth, this guy is the only sort of popular person in the media that criticizes Trump appropriately. He’s a guest host on the Salem Station in Chicago. You never hear any drivel where he’s defending people like John McCain or 43. He gets that the primary problem is the Fed. Listen to a few of his podcasts. There isn’t one person anywhere in the Republican Party that even comes close to talking like this guy. Maybe representative Massey in Kentucky.
One Trump hater’s views
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WHO was conservative and WHEN?
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It probably never entered the thinking of the rebellious colonists and the founders of the United States that the federal political scene would become lifetime pursuits by elected officials (my goodness, why do we have these elections every 2 years). Anyone who is a career federal politician is a tyrant.
People have got to be realistic about the fact that we have too much centralized power in this country. There are far too many nonpublic goods produced at the federal level. It is unmanageable.In effect, all they do is lie about social security and Medicare etc.
They push everything around. They steal for some but not for others.
One way or another you have to be realistic about that.
Ok, but who are the enablers of [the law’s] erosion and violation? Those who are attempting to remove a duly elected president with fraudulent legal theories, false portfolios, sex scandals, and process charges?
What crime do you think Trump is guilty of?
It is in the Constitution?
Do you think that it was an error for Nixon to be forced out of office?
Gary, don’t you think you are going a little far when you use the term “forced”? Many people do think that Nixon was guilty of Obstruction of Justice. And, remember, it never even got to impeachment, much less conviction. He resigned.
I don’t think so. Nixon was impeached, but he certainly wasn’t happy about resigning. His resignation was clearly “forced” after Goldwater and the Congressional leaders told him that he would not only be impeached, but would be removed against his will. Can you think of a better verb than “forced”?
The Muller investigation did not specify a crime. They aren’t supposed to do that. The purpose of the Mueller investigation is to produce a report that helps them impeach Trump. Stalinist.
The more I learn of the Nixon era Watergate scandal, the more I think Nixon was the victim of a political hit job. I have no doubt that’s what’s happening to Trump. He was not supposed to win. The Deep State cannot let this stand.
Stalinist.
Good point, but I’d say it’s even more than that. It’s one thing to lose the rule of law, and it’s another to have nearly forty years of Republican (and up until this year I self-idxentified as a Republican) representatives blow smoke only to find out that when they really can do the job, because they have both the house, the senate and the presidency, they do nothing!
This is what makes @garyrobbins theme, of a Republican Party with some kind of unified principles moving an agenda forward, not realistic. Trump is doing some of the things that should have been addressed by Republicans when they had power but he is doing it on his own. We need to recognize that most of these Party politicians are in this for their careers. I think we would have been better off with term limits on House members, Senators without the 17th Amendment, and maybe no limit on POTUS term but observe the intended limits on the range of federal government.
Sounds good. What I think the Robbinses and all the other never-trumpers of the world don’t understand is that Trump is now leading the republicans — only because of their own default of leadership.
What does it mean to be “conservative” in the last 30 years?
Nixon was terrible before Reagan.
Support Trump or be libertarian.
That’s what I think.
Klavan talks about this. Trump isn’t driving our politics. He’s the result of it.
off the top of my head, I can think of “coaxed”. Forced just sounds too conspiratorial. Of course he wasn’t happy to resign; who would be? I just like to be as precise as I can, and by saying forced, it is my judgement that someone who wasn’t aware of the situation (it was almost 45 years ago) might conclude that there was skulduggery involved.
And speaking of preciseness: Impeachment particulers did pass the committee, but he was never formally impeached by the House. I think being able to say exactly what happened is important for history.
Correct. Only Johnson I believe and Clinton were ever impeached.