Columnist.
In 1964, Senator Barry Goldwater lost the presidential election to Lyndon Johnson. Since then, Barry Goldwater's loss has become a talking point about why conservatives cannot win. Even now, both the media and Republican establishment are saying the most conservative candidates in the 2016 field cannot win because of Barry Goldwater's example.
Nine years ago this past week my wife was given six months to live. On the same day that we received that diagnosis, I lost my job. I spent the afternoon exhausted, sitting in mud, cradling my one year old in the rain, while I cried. Having left the hospital to get my child from day care, I was too exhausted to get up and go inside. It was a Christmas to remember.
Ted Cruz should have an uphill battle for the Republican nomination. Many of the leading pundits, personalities, and legislative leaders identified with the right do not like Ted Cruz. They think Cruz rocks the boat, picks too many fights, is more show horse than workhorse, and is not likable. Luckily for Ted Cruz, the base of the Republican Party has as much disdain for those pundits, personalities, and legislative leaders as those pundits, personalities, and leaders have for Cruz. The feeling is very mutual. As the thinkers and elites of the GOP pile on Ted Cruz, more and more conservatives rally to Cruz. Right now, a Cruz Super PAC is running ads in support of Cruz that use an unflattering quote by John Boehner as an endorsement of Cruz. It will help Cruz.
I have a history with Donald Trump. Having rescinded an invitation from him to a gathering in August after his comments on Megyn Kelly, I watched as Trump supporters descended on social media, my radio program, my phone number, and my mailbox to express their outrage. It was weeks before my children could check the mailbox again. I still get random and assorted hate mail over the incident.
Two weeks ago, a man began firing shots in a parking lot in Colorado Springs. He moved into a Planned Parenthood facility. Eventually captured, it turns out the man is a lunatic. He lived in a trailer with no running water or electricity. He had a history of violent behavior and crazy theories about the world. But according to the American political left, the man was clearly a Christian pro-life activist.
Much of the media and Democratic Party obsess about narratives. It is not enough for reporters to report facts, data, and events. They must all be shaped into story-telling elements to tell a larger story or narrative. This approach has become common among both the press and politicians. The Obama administration, in particular, has become obsessed with narratives at the expense of our national security.
The "hashtag" is the pound, or number, sign on a keyboard. Many on social medial place the symbol before words, allowing those words to be tracked as keywords on social media. Listeners to my radio show, for example, often tweet with #EERS at the end for "Erick Erickson Radio Show," making it easy for listeners to see each other's tweets.
Students at Yale University, a bastion of wealth and privilege, are angry because an employee at the university dared suggest that if white children want to dress up as the Disney character Mulan for Halloween, it would not be inappropriate but instead would be children dressing up as a favorite character.
I seemingly must rewrite this every election season. As Ben Carson rises and the media is confronted by some mysterious something called a "Seventh Day Adventist," it is time again to explain American Protestantism to the press. It is amazing how the American mainstream media continues to write about American Christianity with complete ignorance regarding its basic terms, history, and beliefs.
The attack came with the reluctance of a good man knowing he must do something he does not want to do. At the CNBC debate in Boulder, CO, the pretentious moderators asked Marco Rubio about missing votes in the Senate. For perspective, Rubio has missed far less votes than Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or John Kerry when they ran for President from the Senate.
Much of what the American press covers in political campaigns is the daily horse race of polling and — every three months — the campaign finance numbers. Many of the people in the press who shape the coverage of American politics have never actually worked on political campaigns, run for office, held office or even worked for elected officials. There is more to politics than the polling and money.
This past week we returned to the 1980s. A group of elderly rich white liberals stood on a stage in Las Vegas, Nevada, and told the nation they intended to tax more, give more free stuff and surrender our national security. They disagreed on very little issues of substance, largely just racing to outdo each other's promises of more free stuff.
Last Thursday, as Americans were still coming to grips with the tragic rampage in Oregon, President Obama addressed the American people. An hour before the president spoke, news outlets were confirming that the shooter in Oregon had targeted his victims based on their religion.
Barack Obama has made the American political left comfortable with human rights abuses. See a despot engaged in genocide in Obama's America, blame George W. Bush and move on. In Afghanistan, American soldiers are being driven out of the military for taking action to stop Afghan soldiers from raping boys. Rape is a war crime. It is a war crime to turn a blind eye to soldiers, including allies, engaging in war crimes. Just over two weeks ago, The New York Times reported that American soldiers are being told to ignore sexual abuse of boys in Afghanistan.
In Irving, Texas, a few days after the anniversary of September 11, a 14-year-old boy named Ahmed Mohamed took a clock to school that he had assembled inside a pencil case. He claimed he wanted to show it to his science teacher. Afterward, the clock started beeping in another class, and Ahmed got in trouble. We know he was arrested for disrupting school. We know he was not very cooperative. But beyond that, we do not know much more than the public relations spin his family and the Council on American Islamic Relations have put out.
It was a long debate. "The Sound of Music" with Julie Andrews clocked in at three hours. The CNN debate in Simi Valley, Calif., ran longer than that. It became an endurance contest between a lot of politicians used to East Coast time. By the time they were done, it was after 11 p.m. What we learned along the way was that Carly Fiorina is ready for prime time. In Ohio, Fiorina sat at the kids' table debate. CNN actually shifted its polling requirements a bit to accommodate for the rise of Fiorina after that first debate. It was to the network's credit that they did so.
Kim Davis is the clerk of Rowan County, Ky. After Anthony Kennedy and four other justices of the United States Supreme Court decided that they know better than the more than 50 percent of Americans who either oppose gay marriage or think the states should have decided things, Davis decided to stop issuing marriage licenses in Rowan County. Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, now running for governor of Kentucky, had refused to represent Kentucky in federal court in the gay marriage case. He needed to consolidate the political left to his side. Defending Kentucky's constitutional provision in support of real marriage would have cost him political support. So he sat on his hands.
