Columnist.
Humans have been using euphemisms ever since Adam first "knew" Eve. In politics especially, obfuscating and twisting the meaning of words has been going on forever. But today's debates aren't only littered with rhetorical distortions; in some ways, many of Democrats' most potent arguments are built on corrupt language. One word that's really getting a workout this cycle is "loophole." Basically, all of life is a giant loophole until Democrats come up with a way to regulate or tax it. In its economic usage, "loophole" — probably more of a dysphemism — creates the false impression that people are getting away with breaking the law. It's a way to skip the entire debate portion of the conversation and get right to the accusation.
Secretary of State John Kerry toured the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum in Japan this week, a month before he and President Obama will meet foreign ministers at the G-7 Summit. Reuters reported that he witnessed "haunting displays [of] photographs of badly burned victims, the tattered and stained clothes they wore and statues depicting them with flesh melting from their limbs." "It is a stunning display. It is a gut-wrenching display," explained Kerry. "It is a reminder of the depth of the obligation every one of us in public life carries ... to create and pursue a world free from nuclear weapons." Iran would exempt itself, of course.
Whether you believe House Speaker Paul Ryan is a squishy Republican unworthy of the nomination, or you think he's the sort of rational conservative voice that could save the GOP from doom, there's one thing he most certainly isn't: Donald Trump. Then again, the idea that "Donald Trump is just Paul Ryan on steroids," as Matt O'Brien wrote in The Washington Post's Wonkblog, and others assert, is the kind of predictably lazy attack we should get used to for the foreseeable future. Every Republican is going to be like Trump. And this will be Trump's short-term legacy.
For now, we live in a nation with a well-assimilated, diverse and patriotic Muslim population, but the situation could always change. Like Europe, we could embrace immigrants from places teeming with radicalism. We could disincentivize assimilation. We could dismiss anyone who has legitimate concerns about these threats as bigots. After every terrorist attack, much of the media predictably cautions Americans about the impending wave of Islamophobia — one of the most vacuous and misleading terms in political discourse. Even before the bodies had been cleared off the streets in Brussels, where attacks claimed at least 34 lives with scores of others wounded, the usual suspects were warning about hurt feelings and the big backlash that never comes.
Donald Trump booster and radio talk show host Laura Ingraham recently urged the GOP's remaining candidates to avoid a "bloodbath" at the Republican National Convention. "I don't see what the point of all this is," she explained. Well that is a great point, actually: taking the nomination away from Trump. Sen. Ted Cruz could still conceivably win. But there's no soft landing in this scenario. No rapprochement. No team-building exercise is going to fix the 2016 iteration of the Republican Party. There is only going to be a crackup, no matter who captures the nomination. If that's true, and if it means one side has to prevail, why not save your party from a hostile takeover that could potentially cost it both the Senate and the House?
As I was listening to Donald Trump's performance art/news conference the other night, I wondered whether it was even worth writing another column about the assorted lies and myths he peddles on trade. I don't think so. Trump promises to bring Third World jobs back to an advanced economy, and millions of voters — left and right — find this emotionally satisfying and politically reasonable. Many of these people just want to find work, so it's understandable. And when the economy is stagnant, you're not going to allay working-class anxiety by pointing out that capital account surpluses matter more than trade deficits or that productivity, not foreigners, is realigning the workforce — even if it's all true.
There's still time to turn it around, of course. But now that many conservatives are moving from the bargaining phase to the depression phase of the Kubler-Ross model, we can begin to grapple with the prospective reality of a Trump-vs-Hillary general election. Whether you're an ideological conservative, a proponent of limited government or someone who believes that the president has too much power already, you shouldn't think of this matchup as a contest between horrifying candidates. Rather, you should ask yourself which scenario would be more damaging? I'm pretty sure you'd find that Donald Trump is the form of the Destructor.
Republicans need to ask themselves a couple of questions before they battle over Barack Obama's eventual nominee to replace Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. Is there any good reason to allow this president to change the ideological composition the Supreme Court radically? What is the political downside of denying him? For one thing, despite the some wishful thinking in the media, Republicans don't need to freak out about the potential political blowback over "obstructionism." We've been hearing that the GOP would pay a steep price for its failure to rubber-stamp progressive reforms since the beginning of Obama's first term. Obamacare. Gun registration. Cap and trade. There would be hell to pay, they said, even as Democrats were losing the House, the Senate, more than 900 state legislator seats and plenty of governorships.
Did one robotic moment in a single debate really bring down Marco Rubio in New Hampshire, probably finishing him off nationally? Unlikely. It's difficult to believe that voters would turn on a candidate over one gaffe — yet, somehow, it can also make perfect sense in this cycle. Either way, let's stop pretending 2016 voters are concerned about authenticity. What they're really asking of politicians is for better acting while delivering canned lines. Because they're all canned lines.
For eight years now, the president has reprimanded the American people for their attitudes about Islam. And Barack Obama's big speech to the Islamic Society of Baltimore — granted, filled with many harmless platitudes — was no different, leaving little room for any honest dialogue about ideology or faith. Many of the president's ideas about "tolerance," in fact, are antithetical to the American experience, not something to celebrate.
There are many potential outcomes to a Donald Trump GOP nomination. And every one of them is a disaster for conservatives. Fact is, Trump fans will not be placated. Not if they lose, and definitely not if they win. Unless unforeseen events alter the dynamics of American politics, it's difficult to imagine conventional Republicans and Trump fans inhabiting the same space after this is all done. Me? I look forward to loathing three major political parties. Now, if Trump prevails in the primaries, principled small-government conservatives (however many are left) will be faced with a distasteful choice: They can either back the nominee, picked fairly by the rank-and-file of the party, or they can disregard party politics and actively try and sink him.
As many conservatives grapple with the growing prospect of a Donald Trump presidential nomination, I've started to hear them asking one another the once unthinkable: "Would you vote for Trump?" Mostly, the answer is "of course not." He's a fascistic clown. He's a clandestine liberal (not really that cagey about it, to be honest) who'd be a disaster for the country, not to mention destroy the Republican Party for generations, perhaps forever. Which is exactly the point, right?
"It's one of the few regrets of my presidency — that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better," President Barack Obama lamented in a State of the Union speech packed with rancor and suspicion about his political opposition. What the president probably meant — as most of those who claim to want less "partisanship" — is that he regrets so many Americans remain stubbornly attached to their own ideas about the world.
"[T]he temptation to use the Obama model of legislating through the executive branch will become increasingly attractive."
Over the winter break, I finally got around to binge-watching "Parks and Recreation." In case you missed the show's seven-year run, it's about a fascistic small-town councilwoman who believes it's a politician's job to impose her notions of morality, safety and decency on everyone, no matter what voters want or what the system dictates. She is justifiably recalled by the people of her town after attempting to regulate portion sizes at fast-food restaurants but ends up running a federal office where she can do big things without the consent of the people.
This incessant clamoring by voters and punditry for better "leaders" and more "leadership" is one of the most unsavory, dangerous and un-American tendencies in political discourse. When Donald Trump was asked last week by Joe Scarborough what he made of an endorsement from Vladimir Putin — a thug who's probably murdered journalists and political opponents and more — the GOP presidential front-runner responded, "He's running his country, and at least he's a leader, unlike what we have in this country." Then he offered an incredibly dumb moral equivalency about how the United States also does "plenty of killing."
After the latest Republican presidential debate, The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin argued that Ted Cruz had undone himself "courting" the "Trumpkin base," sinking "further into the far-right brew of isolationism and xenophobia." And to prove this contention, Rubin grabbed hold of two words Cruz used, "America" and "first," to claim that the senator from Texas was signaling support for 1930s/'40s-style isolationism.
"Is this what Germany looked like in 1933?" Joe Scarborough asked on "Morning Joe" this week. No. Not at all. Though many in my family were exterminated during the Holocaust — including one of my grandfathers, who died trying to make his way home from Mauthausen after years of forced labor — I'm not completely offended by an occasional gratuitous Nazi analogy. But as much as I hate to intrude on our week of national indignation, Donald Trump's idiotic, undoable and probably unconstitutional immigration proposal (if we can call it that) is not comparable to the genocide of 6 million Jews. Trump is not comparable to Adolf Hitler.
What do you call it when elites fly their private jets to an international climate change conference to forge a deal with despots that caps American prosperity without our consent? You call it progressivism. It's estimated that 50,000 carbon-spewing humans participated in the Paris climate conference. But while President Barack Obama was taking his working dinner at the three-Michelin-star L'Ambroisie, public protesters were banned from protesting in the aftermath of the Islamic terror attacks. Liberté? Not so much.
President Barack Obama was in the Philippines this week getting worked up about the only thing that really grinds his gears, the GOP. "I cannot think of a more potent recruitment tool for (the Islamic State group) than some of the rhetoric that's been coming out of here," he said of Republicans, who were demanding a pause in the influx of Syrian refugees.
