Victor Hugo famously said that nothing can stop an idea whose time has come. Unfortunately, that also applies to bad ideas. Daniel Patrick Moynihan reportedly quipped that affirmative action is a bad idea whose time has come. I feel the same way about Donald Trump’s third run for the White House. (more…)
Tag: 1996 presidential campaign
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2,212 words
After spending several weeks in deep hugger-mugger at the Republican Party platform committee this summer, the leaders of the Right wing of the GOP emerged triumphant. Their deeply beloved and totally useless Human Life Amendment was reaffirmed. (more…)
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May 23, 2018 Samuel Francis
Behind Democracy’s Curtain
2,244 words
One of the more exciting prospects for the Dole-Clinton presidential contest should have been the “presidential debate,” which, ever since the Kennedy-Nixon slugfest of 1960, has titillated the mass electorate with the delusion that the voters actually have a real choice between two different viewpoints. The only reason a Dole-Clinton debate ought to have been exciting, however, is that it should have been interesting to see what the two participants could possibly disagree about. What exactly were they supposed to debate? (more…)
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2,389 words
With all the febrile ebullience of a re-run of a 1950s sit-com, the Republican Party will descend upon the city of San Diego this month determined to efface any evidence that Pat Buchanan ever existed and committed to staging the miraculous spectacle of a political convention without any politics. (more…)
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Whether a full-scale nuclear war between modern superpowers would last quite as long as the three-week blitzkrieg among this year’s candidates for the Republican presidential nomination is an intriguing question that neither military nor political scientists seem to have asked, but whatever the answer, a duel with nuclear weapons might well be less bloodthirsty than the GOP’s recent shoot-out at the OK Corral of American democracy. (more…)