Category Archives: The Partisan Mind

They Just Won’t Stop

Posted on April 29, 2011 | Comments Off on They Just Won’t Stop

The Hill: “GOP bill would require birth certificates from presidential candidates”

Because otherwise voters might elect a President who was never even born.

Yeesh.

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Posted in Political Animals, The Partisan Mind

Oops.

Posted on April 20, 2011 | 1 comment

The Des Moines Register: “A case of mistaken identity has entangled a small family-owned Des Moines company in union protests and led to a death threat… Dutch Koch, president of the Des Moines company, wants everyone to know he’s not one of those Koch brothers, and he’s not politically active.”

1 Comment

Posted in The Partisan Mind

In Politics, Inertia Always Wins

Posted on April 14, 2011 | Comments Off on In Politics, Inertia Always Wins

The GOP has been bragging that its budget deal that passed the House today will save $38 billion. The CBO took a closer look, and it turns out the actual figure is $353 million, or 0.02 percent of this year’s budget deficit.

In The Daily Caller, I point out that this is one more example of the iron law of politics — inertia always wins.

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Posted in Publications, Spending, The Partisan Mind

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Setting a New Tone

Posted on March 9, 2011 | Comments Off on Setting a New Tone

People complain that the level of political discourse in America is lower than ever. That isn’t actually true if you look at the historical record. But the ratio of heat to light is still far too high.

Over at the Daily Caller, I share a bit of wisdom from the economist Joseph Schumpeter about how people can have a more constructive dialogue about the direction of the country.

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Posted in Great Thinkers, Publications, The Partisan Mind

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The Difference between the Parties Narrows Even Further, Cont’d.

Posted on March 7, 2011 | 2 comments

The Hill: Obama to resume military trials for detainees at Guantánamo Bay

It becomes more and more difficult every year to find substantive policy differences between Bush and Obama.

The cognitive dissonance in people who support one and oppose the other must be maddening.

2 Comments

Posted in The Partisan Mind

The Difference between the Parties Narrows Even Further

Posted on March 2, 2011 | Comments Off on The Difference between the Parties Narrows Even Further

The Hill reports that Attorney General Holder says Guantanamo Bay will likely remain open beyond 2012.

Makes one long for the days when Democrats were good on this issue. Now they’re just as bad as their friends across aisle.

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Posted in Security Theater, The Partisan Mind

What Happened to the Anti-War Movement?

Posted on January 21, 2011 | Comments Off on What Happened to the Anti-War Movement?

It all but disappeared when President Obama was elected. Apparently it was mostly a partisan phenomenon.

I predict the same thing will happen to the tea party movement if a Republican wins in 2012.

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Posted in International, The Partisan Mind

Useful Partisans

Posted on November 29, 2010 | Comments Off on Useful Partisans

Partisans are strange creatures. They can support a policy for years when their guys are in charge, then oppose it in the blink of an eye when the other team takes power. Ross Douthat takes a thoughtful look inside the partisan mind in today’s New York Times:

[M]illions of liberals can live with indefinite detention for accused terrorists and intimate body scans for everyone else, so long as a Democrat is overseeing them. And millions of conservatives find wartime security measures vastly more frightening when they’re pushed by Janet “Big Sis” Napolitano (as the Drudge Report calls her) rather than a Republican like Tom Ridge.

He also identifies a bright side to partisanship that I hadn’t thought of:

But for the country as a whole, partisanship does have one modest virtue. It guarantees that even when there’s an elite consensus behind whatever the ruling party wants to do (whether it’s invading Iraq or passing Obamacare), there will always be a reasonably passionate opposition as well. Given how much authority is concentrated in Washington, especially in the executive branch, even a hypocritical and inconsistent opposition is better than no opposition at all.

Good point.

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Posted in The Partisan Mind

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Family Research Council Designated a Hate Group

Posted on November 24, 2010 | Comments Off on Family Research Council Designated a Hate Group


The Southern Poverty Law Center has officially designated the Family Research Council a hate group. The SPLC defines hate groups as having “beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.”

The Family Research Council’s views on gay rights accurately fit that description. Something about the SPLC’s move smacks of a PR stunt, more about politics than policy. But it is technically accurate.

Of course, people should be free to dislike other people for any reason they wish — even if those reasons border on bigotry, as they do with FRC. Bigotry and homophobia are wrong, but they shouldn’t be crimes; freedom of thought and all that.

But an organization that wants to use the power of the state to enforce its moral views deserves universal opprobrium. Morality is an individual issue. Not a government one. That FRC is so eager to use the cudgel of government to make people abide by their views is troubling. And not just because I don’t share those views.

This whole controversy highlights the fundamental contradiction at the heart of conservatism, which I don’t think gets nearly enough attention. Many conservatives hold fairly free-market economic views. They don’t think government can do a good job running the economy. Yet they assume that the same government that can’t deliver the mail on time is somehow able to achieve their overarching vision of a more moral society.

Not the most internally consistent philosophy.

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Posted in Philosophy, The Partisan Mind

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Why I Didn’t Vote This Year

Posted on November 2, 2010 | 2 comments

Over at The Daily Caller, I tally up the arguments for and against voting. This year, the minuses outweighed the plusses — at least for me. But different people will come to different conclusions, and that’s fine. Consider this a list of arguments to consider, and an invitation to think for yourself.

I’m rather sick of moralizing do-gooders preaching that voting is your civic duty. “If you forfeit your right to vote, you forfeit your right to complain,” they say. Hogwash. Tell that to blacks before the 15th Amendment and women before the 19th Amendment and see where that gets you.

My main points:

-The mathematics come out against voting. Average turnout in my Congressional district is about 200,000 voters. I have one vote.

-Expressive voting, however, is perfectly legitimate. People place a high value participating in democracy. They value having their say. Exercising their rights. Those are wonderful reasons in favor of taking the time to vote.

-But voting takes time. The time I spend voting is time I can’t spend on activities that have more impact, such as writing articles for publication. I do, after all, make a living expressing my opinions on policy issues.

-To vote or not is a personal decision with no right or wrong answer. Think it through. Do what’s right for you. And don’t look down on people who decide differently than you do.

2 Comments

Posted in Elections, Political Animals, Publications, The Partisan Mind

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