Recorded about 18 hours after the polls closed in New Hampshire, Commentary Magazine Editor John Podhoretz and Assistant Online Editor Noah Rothman reflect on history being made before our eyes. A Socialist who wasn’t even a Democrat a year ago wins 61 percent. A billionaire reality-TV star who has never voted Republican is the clear frontrunner in the GOP. Can Hillary Clinton survive her own party’s doubts about her trustworthiness? Can the Republican Party survive its own cravenness in the face of Trumpism? Is America going the way of vaudeville and the Betamax?

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There are 10 comments.

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  1. Douglas Inactive
    Douglas
    @Douglas

    “…  A billionaire reality-TV star who has never voted Republican”

    Where are they getting that? Trump doesn’t often vote in primaries, but he’s voted in most general elections, and several times for Republican candidates.

    • #1
  2. SParker Member
    SParker
    @SParker

    I was so hoping that the title would be a joke and not the usual idiot-preferred mangling of “uncharted territory.”  Unless it was something to do with party platforms being like charters or just that my blinding rage concerning this phrase kept me from seeing the jest,  it would appear that hope is dead.  As are William Safire, E.B. White, and William Strunk, Jr.  Enjoyable podcast irregardless.

    • #2
  3. Blue Yeti Admin
    Blue Yeti
    @BlueYeti

    @SParker It was a typo and it is now fixed. Thanks for the catch.

    • #3
  4. GirlWithAPearl Inactive
    GirlWithAPearl
    @GirlWithAPearl

    Guys you dont have to worry about the gloom factor, you sound positively sunny compared to my reaction to current events.

    I keep looking in vain for signs of intelligent life but see very little to indicate the citizenry is willing or able to meet the tragedy of the last 8 years with anything other than farce.

    we live in an age of mindless rhetoric and emotionally f**kwitted melodrama. The reasonable person has no choice but to retreat and try to prepare for the fallout.

    We sold our souls for temporal gratification and now we live moment to moment, unable to recognize timeless truths, unwilling to examine our own contribution to the chaos, desperately seeking a man who will make everything okay by sheer force of will and a red hat so we can return to our regularly scheduled programming of NFL and streaming porn, but i repeat myself…

    • #4
  5. Tom Meyer, Ed. Member
    Tom Meyer, Ed.
    @tommeyer

    Ross Douthat had an excellent to the question Noah posed about Trump. Basically, stop trying to knock him off pedestals he’s not standing on, and focus on the ones he is:

    To attack him effectively, you have to go after the things that people like about him. You have to flip his brand.

    So don’t tell people that he doesn’t know the difference between Kurds and the Quds Force. (They don’t either!) Tell people that he isn’t the incredible self-made genius that he plays on TV. Tell them about all the money he inherited from his daddy. Tell them about the bailouts that saved him from ruin. Tell them about all his cratered companies. Then find people who suffered from those fiascos — workers laid off following his bankruptcies, homeowners who bought through Trump Mortgage, people who ponied up for sham degrees from Trump University.

    […]
    Except with Trump the trick is subtly different [than it was with Romney]. Mitt was a numbers guy, so he was caricatured as a cruel Scrooge. But Trump is a salesman: That’s been a big part of his campaign’s success. And how do you flip a salesman’s brand? You persuade people that he’s a con artist, and they’re his marks.

    • #5
  6. Benjamin Glaser Inactive
    Benjamin Glaser
    @BenjaminGlaser

    I do not get from the podcast that the participants are all that familiar with Ted Cruz’s foreign policy, if they are lumping him in with Trump.

    • #6
  7. Bkelley14 Inactive
    Bkelley14
    @Bkelley14

    Wow. I listened to the finance guys Kudlow and Pawlenty on their podcast almost giddily talking up the wonders of a possible Trump presidency, and then listened to John and Noah take the completely opposite view. Mind bending.

    • #7
  8. Hartmann von Aue Member
    Hartmann von Aue
    @HartmannvonAue

    “…. who will destroy the animating philosophy of the Republican party”, and who will also fail to do what he is promising those gullible enough to support him. Frankly, if he wins, Cruz or Rubio should run as a…fourth? Fifth-party candidate.

    “…which would be a spectacular war crime”- yup. And that’s part of Mr. T.’s alleged “positive message”. He’s a wanna-be war criminal.

    • #8
  9. Vespacon Inactive
    Vespacon
    @Vespacon

    First I picked up Andrew Klavan’s new show and now comes this one. I’m in podcast heaven as our nation heads the other way. Between the arrogant mogul leading the polls in a once-glorious party and the criminal leading in the other, we are surely doomed.  Keep it up guys. I need all the wise perspective I can get.

    • #9
  10. Hank Rhody Contributor
    Hank Rhody
    @HankRhody

    Why is taking the oil a war crime? Who decided that?

    The only non-criminal way to go to war is to do it for no possible national interest following rules of engagement that ensure it’s easier to kill your soldiers than theirs, and if you’re American you’ll still be branded war criminals even if you do.

    It’s not just the Status Quo of the party, it’s the Status Quo of the pundits too. The only opinions that can be expressed are the ones that haven’t been ruled out-of-bounds by the media for being “impolite”. Whether or not we agree with Trump politically there are those of us who welcome a disruption of that system.

    The rules have all been written to make sure that conservatism loses.

    • #10
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