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Insurgents And The Establishment

Scott Rasmussen writes that Republican Washington leaders are trying to find ways to prevent primary challenges - and especially the kinds of primary challenges where the insurgent winner blows winnable Senate races. Several thoughts: 1. Sometimes insurgent primary challenger are a really good . . . . Continue Reading »

A Center-Right Approach To Solidarity

Yesterday I wrote that a politics of raising taxes on lower earners and cutting taxes on higher earners was, in the minds of many of its supporters, a politics of solidarity. Low earners have a responsibility to show more solidarity with the job creating high earners by paying more taxes and . . . . Continue Reading »

No More Grand Bargains?

Ross Douthat thinks they might be a thing of the past.   For all the talk of Republican intransigence, I think that Paul Ryan and Alice Rivlin could get together to craft a left/right compromise - even one that includes higher taxes than anything Ryan has proposed.  The problem is that . . . . Continue Reading »

Yes To The Right Kind Of Debt Ceiling Fight

Ramesh Ponnuru makes the case for a GOP debt limit fight about as well as it is going to be made by anyone. One way of looking at it is that refusing to unconditionally raise the debt ceiling in order to pay for already authorized spending is irresponsible. As Ponnuru points out, this assumes that . . . . Continue Reading »

Scattered Thoughts

1. A couple of days ago I wrote about how some younger strongly Obama-approving voters had inclinations that overlap with the center-right. I’d like to add that I don’t think any statistically significant number of these voters are going to come around to a center-right political . . . . Continue Reading »

Towards A Conservative Vernacular

Over at Commentary, Jonah Goldberg writes: The vernacular of conservatism derives from a time when the country was churched and defined liberty as personal sovereignty. It needs to change to engage a country that is increasingly unchurched and incorrectly thinks liberty can and should be . . . . Continue Reading »

A Partial Republican Middle-Class Agenda

Peter Lawler very astutely described the problems of some of the self-employed. Some of those observations also apply to much of the working and middle-classes, and especially families with minor children. The problems of these groups are much more pressing (as a matter of both policy and politics) . . . . Continue Reading »

False Neutrality

It’s Even Worse than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein Basic Books, 226 pages, $26 Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein just don’t seem to understand—or they just choose to ignore—that . . . . Continue Reading »

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