A proposal for rejuvenating the Republican Party American conservatism is in disarray. Democrats won decisively in the 2006 midterm and 2008 presidential elections. Once reliably conservative constituencies like married couples and regular churchgoers are shrinking in size, and young voters voted overwhelmingly Democratic. Conservatism is out of power and out of steam. With both the White House and Capitol Hill ... Read More
Anticipating the next pandemic In 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the American Gulf Coast, killing thousands and destroying the region’s economy. Such natural disasters cannot be prevented, only prepared for, in hopes of diminishing their impact. Yet the threat posed by a hurricane pales in comparison to that of an influenza pandemic, the outbreak of an especially virulent flu strain with ... Read More
I don’t know how many of you saw this interesting article in Politico yesterday about Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. For those who didn’t, the crucial paragraph is this: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) and his deputy, Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D.-Ill.) were called to Pelosi’s office late Thursday night and ultimately prevailed in their argument that Democrats should ... Read More
Crucial crossroad, or more of the same? Every election cycle, we are told that the future of the Supreme Court, and particularly the future of abortion jurisprudence, is at stake. This election-centric view infects the mainstream media, which routinely publish October headlines like “This time, Roe v. Wade really could hang in the balance,” as the Los Angeles Times declared ... Read More
Social issues move off center stage At the 1992 Republican National Convention, conservative media personality Pat Buchanan fired the opening salvos of the ongoing national culture war, declaring, “There is a religious war going on in our country…it is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself.” ... Read More
Roberts, Kennedy, and Collegiality on the Supreme Court During the summer of 2006, Chief Justice John Roberts spoke publicly about the need for greater unity on the nation’s highest court. In a commencement address at Georgetown Law School, he urged that “unanimity, or near-unanimity” would yield “clarity and guidance” for lawyers and lower courts trying to understand the Supreme Court’s ... Read More
It’s somewhat unclear what exactly Senators Nelson, Collins, Specter and Snowe were aiming for in the cuts they demanded from the Senate stimulus bill. They didn’t dispute the need for a large economic stimulus, nor did they offer a detailed critique of why spending on school construction or state aid would be “less stimulative” than other far less stimulative measures ... Read More
Briefly: It’s a load of bull. Less briefly: “Bipartisanship” is a feel-good election-y term that should not, and cannot, be the way President Obama gets things done in Washington. Let me offer some thoughts on the matter. First off, there’s now no incentive for most of the Republican Party to cooperate with Obama, especially in the House of Representatives. Though ... Read More
When I first heard Gov. Sarah Palin say, in the vice-presidential debate, that she would not “attribute every activity of man to the changes in the climate,” I wanted to believe it was a mere verbal gaffe. I assumed she meant that she didn’t attribute every change in the climate to the activities of men. She meant that we might ... Read More
How President Bush Won Latino Voters and His Party Lost Them AgainBy Kenzie Bok ‘11 “George W. Bush’s first foreign trip as President was not to a traditional European ally but to a ranch in a remote region of Mexico, where he met with another newly-elected cowboy president: Vicente Fox.” As Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, University Professor and Co-Director of Immigration Studies ... Read More
I was recently reading the Harvard Independent (a mistake, I know), and one of the writers had a piece discussing two widely-read articles over the summer trashing students from Harvard and other Ivy League universities. I skimmed through most of it, and what really struck me was a passage mentioning Harvard students’ homogenized, unfailingly reasoned and moderate political positions. It ... Read More
I was looking at the Times today and happened upon this article on the latest development in Turkey, a judge banned an openly Islamic candidate from running. Well, what really amused me and got me thinking was that Turkish news was obviously filed in the World section, and also, if you look at the top of the article, in the ... Read More
The Richmond Times-Dispatch ran an interesting article last week on Sen. John Warner’s (R-Va.) fundraising (or lack thereof) in the first quarter of 2007. While the news has been full of reports noting the vast war chests of many politicians, Warner reported raising only $500 since January of this year. With rumors swirling around about his potential retirement when his ... Read More
