R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. from Creators Syndicate

The Delousing of a Movement for 02/09/2012

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

WASHINGTON — As the tents were coming down at McPherson Square, the dead rats and mice being retrieved, the urine and feces and filthy bedding disposed of by District of Columbia employees dressed in hazardous-materials suits like their contemporaries at Fukushima, I thought of the left-wing press.

You see, I read the left-wing press. Not the urban throwaway rags, but I read The Na ...

Updated: Thu Feb 09, 2012

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Exit Newt for 02/02/2012

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

WASHINGTON — Ah, yes, Newt Gingrich did in the last days of the Florida primary precisely what I predicted he would do. He hurled wild charges at Mitt Romney that suggested Newt was losing his grip. He charged Romney with lying and falling into the hands of George Soros and Goldman Sachs, and he did this while seeking the Republican presidential nomination!

Newt quoted Sor ...

Updated: Thu Feb 02, 2012

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Newt Gingrich: Our Bill Clinton for 01/26/2012

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

WASHINGTON — How long have I been saying it? At least for 15 years, but in private, I have been aware of it longer. Newt Gingrich is conservatism's Bill Clinton, but without the charm. He has acquired wit, but he has all the charm of barbed wire.

Newt and Bill are, of course, 1960s-generation narcissists, and they share the same problems: waywardness and deviancy. Newt, like Bill, ...

Updated: Thu Jan 26, 2012

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Obama vs. Christie and the Future for 01/19/2012

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

WASHINGTON — Whose job would you want to have? Would it be President Barack Obama's or Governor Chris Christie's in the great state of New Jersey? Would it be President Obama's, whose budget woes are getting graver, or would it be Governor Christie's, whose budget is at least looking to be survivable?

Now Obama is facing the choice in his budgetary decisions. Does he raise taxes on ...

Updated: Thu Jan 19, 2012

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Tebow! for 01/12/2012

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

WASHINGTON — I have officially called off my boycott of the National Football League. I do not care how many felons or frotteurs play the game. Now there is Tim Tebow to redeem it. He can pass and run. He inspires his teammates. He inspires many returning fans like me. I shall follow him through the playoffs and maybe even next year as the season resumes anew. He is an American original & ...

Updated: Thu Jan 12, 2012

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Cat Nip From the Egotists for 01/05/2012

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

WASHINGTON — An underlying theme of our times that has gone unperceived by the high and mighty in media, government and other locales where the politically alive come to roost is the thumping failure of an increasing number of counter-productive, old progressive reforms. Once they were beheld as prodigies from the minds of superior citizens — such stars of yesteryear as Robert M. La ...

Updated: Thu Jan 05, 2012

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Perry May Still Be the Man to Take on Obama for 12/29/2011

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

WASHINGTON — The year 2011 has drawn to an end, and as I look back, I see several of my predictions that appear pretty sound. President Barack Obama is dead in the water and will be beaten in 2012. I have made that prediction over and again this year and I think it will be borne out.

Another observation I've made is that liberalism is dead. By the coming election, it will be the ra ...

Updated: Thu Dec 29, 2011

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Return of the Episodic Apologists for 12/22/2011

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

WASHINGTON — They are back! I speak of the episodic apologists, who have been a phenomenon of the Clinton Saga since its earliest days, back when the Clintons were flipping real estate and exchanging bad checks in Arkansas. The episodic apologists, like the legendary court historians of Franklin Roosevelt's time, are an essential ingredient of the era in which they labor. The court histor ...

Updated: Thu Dec 22, 2011

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Wonks on Parade for 12/15/2011

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

WASHINGTON — Do you recall in reading President Harry S. Truman's very good memoir, "Years of Trial and Hope: 1946-1952," his scholarly dissection of the Federal Reserve system and his discussion of low inflation's influence on relatively unstable growth? Actually, I don't either, and I read the book from cover to cover.

How about Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man who led our ...

Updated: Thu Dec 15, 2011

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Republicans Are Losing the Tax Debate for 12/08/2011

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

WASHINGTON — Do my eyes deceive me? It seems that the Republicans are in danger of losing the debate on cutting taxes. Some 30 years after President Ronald Reagan proved that tax cuts encourage economic growth — which enriches us all — glum figures like President Barack Obama are roaming the land talking about the apolaustic lives of the very rich and the need to take their lo ...

Updated: Thu Dec 08, 2011

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Barney Shuffles off for 12/01/2011

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

WASHINGTON — When Barney Frank announced the other day that he was shuffling off stage after three decades in the Congressional limelight, I was brought back to 1980, when some very thoughtful friends from Harvard told me to watch him. Paul H. Weaver had been an aide to Irving Kristol, the godfather of neoconservatism, which was lustrous in those days, and rightly so.

Paul was one ...

Updated: Thu Dec 01, 2011

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Forstmann, the Big-Hearted Prodigy for 11/24/2011

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

WASHINGTON — On Sunday morning we lost a big-hearted prodigy: Teddy Forstmann, financier, political player, philanthropist (especially for the young and those in education) and a bit of an adventurer. I know — I accompanied him on some and feared for my life. He was a member of the Board of Directors of The American Spectator in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Teddy died of brain ...

Updated: Thu Nov 24, 2011

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Who Was Fred Ikle? for 11/17/2011

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

WASHINGTON — The death of Fred Ikle last week inspires me to prophesy. Thus far, only the redoubtable Wall Street Journal has remarked on Fred's passing. That he was a formidable mind during the Cold War and important to the peaceful settlement of that decades-long struggle is remembered thanks to the Journal. Yet, to the rest of the media, he is a minor figure — perhaps a menacing ...

Updated: Thu Nov 17, 2011

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William F. Buckley, Still at Yale for 11/10/2011

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

WASHINGTON — Last weekend I was given a hint as to how an erroneous idea is born, and how it takes on a life of its own.

I was at Yale University as a guest of the William F. Buckley Jr. Program at Yale. It's run by a group of extremely winning young Yale students who are all admirably conservative. Bill would approve. They all carried themselves like young ladies and young gentlem ...

Updated: Thu Nov 10, 2011

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Scandal in the White House in Times Past for 11/03/2011

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

WASHINGTON — A presidential election looms on the horizon, and already the nation's great organs of opinion — and occasionally of fact — are gearing up to serve the commonweal and, ever so quietly, their own biases.

Already we're told that Herman Cain — the non-politician seeking the Republican nomination — had two untoward incidents in the 1990s with ladies ...

Updated: Thu Nov 03, 2011

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Those Demonstrators in the Park for 10/27/2011

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

WASHINGTON — It's called the Taranto Principle, and it's now being employed by the Kultursmogists to blanket the country in a preposterosity: namely that the Tea Partyers and the Occupy Wall Street crowd have much in common. So go ahead, loyal Democrats, and take up the Occupiers' anger. Giving presidential voice to the Occupiers' complaints will be a sure winner for President Bara ...

Updated: Thu Oct 27, 2011

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Claptrap Legislation for 10/20/2011

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

WASHINGTON — I do not know what the learned political scientists of the Republic say about it, but it seems to me that the laws of the land are now so poorly written that almost no one knows what they mean. That is a government bureaucrat's delight!

The healthcare bill, disparagingly and often referred to as Obamacare, is typical. No member of Congress could have read it before vot ...

Updated: Thu Oct 20, 2011

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Cain's Moment for 10/13/2011

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

WASHINGTON — As an observer on the national scene lo these many years, I have noted time and again that in a discussion of politics the first person to inject the topic of race into the discussion is often the racist. Though that person almost always affects to be without bigotry, in fact he or she is invariably a racist and hopes to emerge from the fracas as the moral colossus. Those who ...

Updated: Thu Oct 13, 2011

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The Book on Obama for 10/06/2011

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

WASHINGTON - Supposedly, this White House has just made a furious attempt to sink a book, "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President" by Ron Suskind, which came out Sept. 20. Jay Carney, the White House spinmeister, spoke ill of it. Numerous former White House staffers spoke ill of it. Carney said, "One passage seems to be lifted almost entirely fr ...

Updated: Thu Oct 06, 2011

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Liberalism Always Goes Too Far for 09/29/2011

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

WASHINGTON — One of the causes that has brought the great and worthy movement of Liberalism to its present state of decrepitude has been remarked upon in this column many times before: Liberalism always goes too far. Even in the case of a noble impulse, it goes too far. Public events in recent days, in that magnificent monument to liberalism called San Francisco, show us once again the ex ...

Updated: Thu Sep 29, 2011

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