In two recent postings, here and here, Ross Douthat concludes that the Republican Party as we know it will soon no longer exist. “There is now no possibility that the Republican Party will survive its rendezvous with Donald Trump unbroken.” Which means that on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017, there will be two Democratic presidents…
Tag: Ross Douthat
John Podhoretz, half right on Trump—okay, make that a quarter
Over at Commentary, definitely not one of my fave rave’s, Editor John Podhoretz has “A New Theory of Trump”, taking another crack at explaining the Donald. Podhoretz’s argument is stated rather elliptically—or perhaps obliquely—but what he’s getting at, basically, is that George W. Bush got a lot of things wrong, but Republicans were so obsessed…
Ted Cruz, too “oleaginous” to win, says Ross Douthat
Ross Douthat, totally covering (and totally not lubricating) his ass, quotes two unnamed conservatives to the effect that Sen. Ted has just too greasy an affect to resonate with the Republican masses. Is this just a (barely) polite way of saying “This guy sucks”? Dunno, but if Ted comes a-callin’, Mr. Douthat better not bend…
Ross versus Ezra: No way! Your crazies are way crazier than our crazies!
Ross Douthat picks a fight with Ezra Klein over whether Obama Derangement Syndrome is more intense than Bush Derangement Syndrome.Klein links BDS to 9/11, but struggles to find comparable causality for ODS: “Bush Derangement Syndrome sought extraordinary explanations for extraordinary events; Obama Derangement Syndrome seeks extraordinary explanations for an ordinary presidency.” Sniffs Ross, “This … does…
The case against the case against the case against the Crusades
Ross Douthat, whom I’ve more or less left alone for some time, has a considered pushback against President Obama’s recent prayer breakfast talk during which he alleged that Christians could, at times, be as bad as Muslims, citing the Crusades and the Inquisition as examples. Douthat wisely leaves the Inquisition alone1 but is not completely…
Ross Douthat, out on a limb
I have made rather a cottage industry out of ridiculing NYTimes columnist Ross Douthat, descending, to my shame, more than once to the level of referring to him as “Ross Dumb Fuck,” but, well, those times are past. In the past two weeks Ross has turned in columns that place him firmly, even shamelessly, in…
Ross Douthat’s Obama Outrage O’ the Week
I’m in the habit of reading Ross Douthat’s blog “Evaluations” at the New York Times, which, when he is not ruminating about the reverberative, not to say rebarbarative, phallocentricity of John Melius, is largely devoted to Ross’s mostly honest account of “thoughtful” conservatives like Ross to craft a domestic policy for the Republican Party that…
Ross Douthat goes there
Throughout the life of this blog, I have made intermittent yet persistent sport of Timesman Ross Douthat, to the point, on several occasions, of referring to him as “Ross Dumb Fuck.” Well, perhaps I haven’t matured, but Ross has, recently turning in a stunner of a column in which he admitted, as a Republican, that…
Alan Vanneman, eternally naïve
Yeah, it seems like it was only a week ago I was praising Ross Douthat for speaking intelligently about the situation in Ukraine. Well, that was then. Now Ross is on a roll, to wit: Is it really so ridiculous to believe that the Syria crisis confirmed certain impressions that Putin had already cultivated about…
Ross Douthat, in with a stand-up triple
I never seem to get tired of making fun of Ross Douthat, but on Ukraine the dude has really been pounding the ball, pointing out politely to his neocon confrères that it really doesn’t matter who runs Ukraine. Today he pretends to take neocon huffing and puffing about “grand strategy”* very seriously, letting Walter Russell…