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Red Reckoning
Thanks to recent events, cogitation about the future of the Republican Party is now a growth industry bursting at the seams. How Trumpy will the party remain now that the Trump brand wafts the stench of insurrection? What political price will be paid by the stop-the-steal dead-enders in Congress who even after the mayhem of […]
Column: Go home, Lamar.
Culminating 18 years of distinguished mediocrity in the halls of power, Lamar Alexander took to the Senate floor last week to give what was billed as his (capital F capital S) Farewell Speech. As public address it was comically self-delusional, projecting an inflated sense of accomplishment and self-satisfaction that in normal times we might easily […]
The End of Stupid?
President Toddler’s post-election tantrum slash adventure—a third-rate legal team flooding the courts with fourth-rate filings, with a few feeble attempts to intimidate local election officials tossed in for effect—is going nowhere fast. Or it would be going nowhere fast if it was fast, but almost three weeks after the election it’s more accurate to say […]
Commentary: Losing my religion
Public officials doing the people’s business are entitled to govern with religiosity as a defining personal attribute, if that’s their bag. If the governor wants to praise Jesus fifty times in his state-of-the-state address it would be odd, but he’s welcome to have at it and let voters decide at the next election if he’s […]
Commentary: Survey says?
This is where I reassure panicky Democrats and assorted anti-Trumpers that it’s all going to be okay. With under a month to go, the polls paint a reasonably optimistic picture of 2020’s electoral landscape. At this point in the column, readers are urged to refrain from having a glance at my then-seemingly-spot-on August 2004 piece […]
To Hell With Absentee Ballots
With the bluster and propaganda of the political conventions in the rear view mirror we can turn our attention back to the things that really matter in life: fretting over operational details of the U.S. Postal Service, spiffing up our yards so they look nice when MS-13 members show up for the open house next […]
Show Me The Democracy
What do you do when your elected representatives ignore the people’s wants and decline to do the people’s business? I’m talking here about simple and direct refusal to enact measures that clear majorities of the voting public want. The good people of the great state of Missouri showed me an excellent answer just last week: […]
Column: Inbox Assault
With campaigns so thoroughly filtered through polls, press, pundits, and other words starting with p that will come to me eventually, sometimes it’s worth taking a step back, turning it all off, and looking at what candidates have to say directly to their supporters. In that spirit, then, comes the experiment in political self-harm I […]
Commentary: Home invasion
We can think of what Donald Trump has done to the Republican Party over the last four years as a perverse sort of home invasion: He kicked in the door, forced his way in, tied up the occupants, grabbed the silver, and busted up the place. Did the victims summon assistance? Did they call 911? […]
Commentary: When cult meets crisis
The cult of Trump is something that many of us have been trying to make sense of for the better part of the last four years. Conventional wisdom has it that around a third of the electorate harbors unbridled and unconditional political lust for Dear Leader, with another tenth pretty consistently disposed to like him […]
Commentary: Future Shlock
To judge by recent polls, Tennesseans are generally satisfied with how their leaders have handled the coronavirus pandemic, though marks are a lot higher for Nashville’s response than for the state’s. It is to be expected that political leaders will find their approval ratings juiced in times of crisis as long as they keep a […]
Commentary: Let it Bleed
Since the 2016 campaign, MAGAheads at Trump rallies have been regaled with the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” as Dear Leader’s post-bloviation anthem (over the Stones’ objections, but that’s how it goes). Whatever the song’s merits as a musical coda for the assembled agitations of red-capped masses, it turns out to […]