Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Sunday, December 11, 2016
Taming the Bureaucratic Beast
The Herculean Task Ahead of President-Elect Donald Trump
Nobel Laureate of 2016 Revisited
There has been ferment among the literati since Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Many say that however well Dylan does what he does, it is not literature. Dylan did not go to Stockholm Saturday to collect his prize, which the Swedish Academy says was awarded “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”
Saturday, December 10, 2016
Atone Deaf: Libs Demand Apology From Trump Base
If there’s anything the liberal media despises more than typing “President-elect” before Donald Trump’s name, it’s having to acknowledge the political influence of evangelicals. There’s no hiding their impact now — not after they helped propel Trump to the biggest election upset in modern history. For years, the press has tried to fake a death certificate for the religious right, insisting right up to last month that the bloc was either extinct or too fractured by Trump to reverse America’s political and cultural backslide. Headlines like The Washington Post’s “This Is the Last Spastic Breath from the Religious Right before its Overdue Death” fed this false narrative right up to Election Day.
The American Divide
President-elect Donald Trump went to Ohio State University [Thursday] to comfort the victims of last week’s terror attack and to praise the hero police officer who brought Abdul Razak Ali Artan’s rampage to a swift end.
What Trump Got That Romney Didn’t
Ideology isn’t enough to provide the unity America needs.
What a Difference an Election Makes
I recently wondered if all those nations and individuals who have been filling the Clinton coffers for, lo, these many years, were now going to insist that all those humongous speaking fees and bribes masquerading as charitable donations be returned.
Texas AG: Stop Hating on Christmas
Christmas in the Lone Star state has no greater defender than Attorney General Ken Paxton. So when he read my column about a middle school in Killeen that tried to censor the true meaning of Christmas, he decided it was time to jingle somebody’s bells.
No More Obama Judges
With the Senate back from its election hiatus for a brief lame-duck session, there is one thing that Republicans must absolutely not do: confirm any of the remaining judicial nominations of President Barack Obama still pending in that chamber.
Friday, December 9, 2016
The Roots of the New Trump Order
Ronald Reagan won a convincing popular and electoral victory in 1980. Campaigning for income tax cuts, smaller government, and a resolute stand against communism, Reagan earned a mandate to carry out his conservative vision. Part of his victory was owed to millions of culturally conservative, blue collar, non-college educated voters in places like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and elsewhere experiencing the first wave of economic dislocation and insecurity brought on by recession and inflation. These Reagan Democrats were not traditional Republican voters and certainly not the country club, chamber of commerce, and educated suburbanites that made up the Republican Party.
Trump Right to Worry About AT&T-Time Warner Merger
On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary committee held a significant hearing on the proposed $84 billion merger between AT&T and Time Warner, which owns CNN. AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson testified, and faced tough questions from senators who seemed to understand allowing this merger will have important implications for a free press and American democracy for many years to come.
The Party of Workers
In the course of a couple of tweets, Donald Trump may have ended the image of the GOP as the party of corporate America.
The Collapse of the Political Left
It’s been a tough decade for the political left. Eight years ago, a Time magazine cover portrayed Barack Obama as Franklin Roosevelt, complete with a cigarette and holder and a cover line proclaiming, “The New New Deal.” A Newsweek cover announced, “We Are All Socialists Now.”
Did Democrats Learn Anything From Their Attack on the Filibuster?
I won’t lie. After reading the CNN piece titled “Senate Dems, powerless to stop Trump nominees, regret ‘nuclear option’ power play,” I experienced some deeply satisfying schadenfreude. Feel free keep President Barack Obama, Sen. Harry Reid and those who implored Senate Democrats to blow up the filibuster a few years ago in your thoughts as President-elect Donald Trump names his Cabinet and judges. But be sure to remember how recklessness begets recklessness in Washington, D.C.
Tweets and Theater Entertain, but Congress Is the Main Event
The most amusing part of the Trump transition has been watching its effortless confounding of the media, often in fewer than 140 characters. One morning, after a Fox News report on lefty nuttiness at some obscure New England college — a flag burning that led a more-contemptible-than-usual campus administration to take down the school’s own American flag — Donald Trump tweets that flag burners should go to jail or lose their citizenship.
Obama’s National Security Report Card — Unsatisfactory
In his speech at MacDill Air Force Base, President Obama bragged that he has made America safer while preserving America’s values. The incessant self-absorption is annoying enough, but the self-delusion puts it over the top. Whether he’s talking the economy or national security, he always paints a picture of his performance that contradicts reality.
Obesity, Fatty Foods, Death and Science
Something is killing us — beyond the fact that life itself is a terminal condition. This week brought news that the U.S. mortality rate overall has risen slightly since 2014. “It’s a definite milestone in the wrong direction, and the concern a lot of us have is that it reflects largely the approximately three-decade-long epidemic of obesity,” Stephen Sidney, a California research scientist, told The Wall Street Journal. Death rates rose for eight of the 10 leading causes, including heart disease, stroke, chronic respiratory disease, injuries (including drug overdoses), diabetes, kidney disease, Alzheimer’s disease and suicide. Cancer death rates continue to decline, and influenza deaths were unchanged. The uptick in deaths means that life expectancy rates for babies born today have dropped a bit.
Trump Presidency an Opportunity to Sell Liberals on Federalism
There’s a wonderful exchange in “A Man for All Seasons” in which Thomas More debates young idealist William Roper about the need for laws and giving the accused the benefit of the doubt.
Obama’s Fake News
There has been a big controversy in the media lately over “fake news.” Some pundits have blamed Hillary Clinton’s loss on social media and “fake news.” But the so-called “mainstream media” have completely lost the public’s trust and respect. So it is not surprising that people are turning to alternative media outlets.
Store Wars: Pro-lifers Strike Back
Shoppers can cross one company off their naughty list this Christmas: Macy’s! The department store is proving that it has some wise men of its own with the store’s recent decision to stop supporting Planned Parenthood. The news came as a huge victory — and relief — to pro-lifers who were paying careful attention to the list of the group’s biggest corporate backers.
Hollywood Ponders America’s Hatred of Muslims
On Dec. 4, the second Sunday of Advent on the Christian calendar, Fox’s “Family Guy” mocked two-thirds of the Holy Trinity as only Fox can. In atheist Seth MacFarlane’s gag, Jesus Christ had a human son who he mocked for being bullied at school, comparing that to the horror of the Crucifixion. When his son called him a “dick,” he suggested that God the Father was a bigger “dick” for sending him to his death.