Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, November 10, 2016
Make Religious Freedom Great Again
Donald Trump promised that he would make America great again. If he is to make good on that promise, he’ll need to start by robustly restoring our first freedom: the free exercise of religion.
Trump’s Chance to Change the Narrative
Donald Trump’s impressive victory in Tuesday’s election offers him a rare opportunity to change the narrative. Secular progressive policies at home and abroad are not working. The establishment has had its chance — multiple chances, in fact — to fix things, but it has failed, or didn’t try, under Republican and Democratic administrations. Voters are taking a big chance with Trump, but things have gotten so bad that the election shows many millions of Americans are willing to try something new.
A Blow to the Non-Elite Elite
There were a lot of losers in this election, well beyond Hillary Clinton and the smug, incompetent pollsters and know-it-all, groupthink pundits who embarrassed themselves. From hacked email troves we received a glimpse of the bankrupt values of Washington journalists, lawyers, politicians, lobbyists and wealthy donors. Despite their brand-name Ivy League degrees and 1 percenter resumes, dozens of the highly paid grandees who run our country and shape our news appear petty and spiteful — and clueless about the America that exists beyond their Beltway habitat.
There’s No Wizard Behind the Curtain
As this column was first being drafted, voters all across the United States were streaming to the polls to deliver their collective verdict on what has arguably been the most bizarre presidential campaign in modern U.S. history. According to their favorability — or, should we say, unfavorability — ratings, the choice between the major-party candidates couldn’t have been more unpalatable.
Well, It Is Over
Well, it is over! The most poisonous, slanderous, hate-filled American election of all time is now history, and the pity is that there is no historian living in this great Republic who is capable of doing it justice. At least, Donald Trump was entertaining and usually right. Moreover he has only been a practicing politician for a little over a year and a half. Hillary Clinton has been perpetrating politics for her entire adult life, and in the end we discover that she could not even properly maintain classified documents on her server.
Trump: I Hate to Say I Told You So — Actually, I Really Don’t Mind
The day after one of the greatest political upsets in world history, I dug out my July 2016 exchange with “David,” an Ohio left-wing retired law professor whom I once considered my best friend.
The Revolt of Blue Collar America
We will be pouring through exit poll data in the days ahead, but I want to give you just a few big picture observations of the tremendous political earthquake that took place [Tuesday] night. For veterans of the Reagan Revolution, it was deja vu all over again in many ways. What Donald Trump rode into office [Tuesday] was a tidal wave of heartland, blue collar families. For years they have been trying in every way they could to express their frustration at being left behind in this new world of open borders and globalism. No one would listen, including, sadly, many in the Republican establishment, which also fought Ronald Reagan tooth-and-nail.
Is Race Baiting Finished?
Donald Trump won the most shocking election victory in American history on Tuesday evening. He did so in the face of a media calling him racist, labeling his supporters “deplorables” and terming his victory a sign of “whitelash,” as Van Jones of CNN put it. He won a higher percentage of blacks and Hispanics than Mitt Romney in 2012; Hillary Clinton drew a far lower turnout among minorities than Barack Obama.
America to Trump: You’re Hired!
“Weeping may endure for the night,” the Psalmist David wrote, “but joy comes in the morning.” In the case of most Americans, those nights stretched into very long years — a nightmare from which the nation finally awoke last night with the astonishing news that voters rejected the continuation of the anti-faith, anti-family policies of Barack Obama. Instead, a nation spurned by almost a decade of a radical liberalism turned out with a vengeance — electing Donald Trump in perhaps the most stunning political upset of the modern age. In a year of surprises, the ultimate outsider delivered the biggest, tapping into the frustration that pollsters didn’t detect and liberal elites never took seriously.
Trump’s Great Challenge — and Opportunity
Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election was an historic upset that presents him and this nation with an historic opportunity. Our first president, George Washington, faced a great challenge. Trump, who will be our 45th, faces one, too. Washington took office in a new republic with an untested constitution. He was firmly committed to act only within its strict limits on federal power, to avoid amassing public debt, to engage in no unnecessary wars and to recognize that American freedom was ultimately rooted in the moral and religious convictions of the American people.
Wednesday, November 9, 2016
The Challenge for Republicans
My feelings this morning are so radically mixed that my brain resembles a Cuisinart. I cannot help but be glad that Hillary Clinton was defeated. I am shaking my head in amazement about the Senate, and accordingly about the Supreme Court. The election results feel like a gorgeous, gleaming new BMW in the driveway. But instead of a bow on the roof, there’s a vial of nitroglycerin. I wish president-elect Donald Trump nothing but good this morning. I pray for him and for the country, but fingers of fear still grip my heart. The glow of victory cannot obscure or perfume who the man is. Trump has demonstrated emotional unsteadiness, cruelty, and wild irresponsibility. He is most unhinged when his fragile ego is wounded. He is, in many ways, a spoiled child.
A Disruptive Yet Ruinous Triumph for the GOP
At dawn Tuesday in West Quoddy Head, Maine, America’s easternmost point, it was certain that by midnight in Cape Wrangell, Alaska, America’s westernmost fringe, there would be a loser who deserved to lose and a winner who did not deserve to win. The surprise is that Barack Obama must have immediately seen his legacy, a compound of stylistic and substantive arrogance, disappearing, as though written on water in ink of vapor.
Shocking, Yes. Looming Dictatorship? No.
At deadline, the presidential race hadn’t been definitively called for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, but it was clear that Trump had once again turned conventional wisdom on its head and smashed it. Heading into Election Day, Clinton had seemed poised to finally break what she kept calling that “highest, hardest glass ceiling.” By the wee hours of Wednesday morning, it had become even more likely that Trump was about to make history instead.
Deplorable Americans Decided to Drain the Swamp
Our long national nightmare is over and the Republic has been saved. I’m originally from the Deep South. My father, who passed away in 2006, was a blue-collar worker. We lived paycheck-to-paycheck. We went to church on Sunday. We lived a quiet life — just like many families in so-called flyover country. My father was a member of the Silent Majority and had he been alive he would’ve cast his vote for Donald J. Trump. I’ve lived in New York City for more than a decade now, and I’ve seen firsthand the contempt for country folks like my father — people from Rural America.
The People Have Spoken: Change Must Start Now
Last night, the American people soundly rejected the failed liberal policies of Hillary Clinton and the broken legacy of President Barack Obama. Instead, they elected a candidate who vowed to restore their jobs, protect their borders, strive for peace, respect the Constitution, and make their country great again. Early on in the campaign, Clinton chose to ignore policy and focus on personal attacks. Federal overspending, failing schools, tax hikes, illegal immigration, and other issues Americans care deeply about were thrown aside for a personality-driven campaign.
The Democrats Who Cried Wolf
The Republican nominee for president is a racist, sexist threat to American democracy — and this time, we really mean it. In a nutshell, this is the Democratic argument against Donald Trump. In a wild, topsy-turvy political year, it is the one exceedingly familiar piece of the political landscape — because it is a version of the argument the left makes against every Republican nominee. That this line of attack is so shopworn, just when Democrats think we need it most, has led to self-reflection and regret from one of the harshest commentators on the left. The HBO host Bill Maher said the other day that “liberals made a big mistake” when they attacked George W. Bush “like he was the end of the world,” and did the same thing to Mitt Romney and John McCain.
Identity Politics in America: A Post-Mortem
Here is what eight years of President Obama’s “post-racial” reign have wrought. The weekend before Election Day, Hillary Clinton grinned from ear to ear at a Cleveland rally while reciting a verse from Jay-Z’s remix of Young Jeezy’s “My President is Black.” As the rapper and his Black Lives Matter-promoting wife, Beyonce, beamed on stage nearby, pandersuit-clad Clinton twanged with a stilted accent: “Remember, Jay memorably said: ‘Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther could walk, and Martin Luther walked so Barack Obama could run, and Barack Obama ran so all the children could fly.’”
The Year of the Fact-Checker?
CNN’s Brian Stelter sent around an Election Day email declaring “This is the year of the fact-checker.” He joked, “Trump made fact-checking great again.” “It’s really remarkable to see how big news operations have come around to challenging false and deceitful claims directly. It’s about time,” said Brooks Jackson, the director emeritus of FactCheck.org. PolitiFact editor Angie Drobnic Holan said, “All of the media has embraced fact-checking because there was a story that really needed it.” She was singling out Trump: “(T)he level of inaccuracy is startling.” PolitiFact founder Bill Adair boasted: “Is this the post-truth election, as people have claimed? No. It’s actually the thank-goodness-there-are-fact-checkers election.”
It’s Over
Oh, no! *President* Hillary Clinton! For four years we must follow her bureaucrats’ edicts. It’s full employment time for trickster lawyers and other parasites who feed off complex government. Even The New York Times admits her taxes will make life more complicated. Useful people who actually produce things must kiss more bureaucrats’ rings begging for their approval.
What Happened to American Ideals?
A friend of mine told me a few months ago what he expected the headlines would read the day after the presidential election. “Lucifer beats Satan.” His point, of course, was that, as never before, the key idea that the USA is a free nation under God, has never been pushed further off the political stage. There was no pretense, no hint in this election, about the ideal of America aspiring to be a “shining city on a hill,” the phrase of Christian pilgrim John Winthrop, often referred to by President Reagan. If the discourse of this election reflects what is happening in our nation, we have lost touch with our principles and ideals.