President Barack Obama inadvertently found the perfect photo-op for his Cuba visit at a wreath-laying ceremony at the Jose Marti Memorial in Havana. A news photo at Revolution Square caught Obama standing together with American and Cuban officials, with an enormous mural of the iconic revolutionary Che Guevara looming over his shoulder on the adjacent […]
Rich Lowry
Posted inOp-Eds
Kemp’s more congenial politics needed today
Marco Rubio’s speech suspending his campaign after his crushing loss in the Florida primary was a requiem for an entire style of Republican politics. Rubio represented an upbeat, opportunity-oriented vein in the GOP that ran through George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism back to the late supply-sider Jack Kemp, who practically made a civic religion out […]
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Pitchman Trump good at selling his product
The presidency has been occupied by lawyers, ex-generals, a former actor and even a peanut farmer, but never before by a pitchman. Donald Trump seeks to become the first. He is the Billy Mays of the GOP, doing what the late, ubiquitous celebrity pitchman never could dream of: making the sale to a major political […]
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Ronald Reagan’s message still worthy
If there’s anything we thought we knew about the GOP, it is that it is the party of Reagan. Paying obeisance to Ronald Reagan — his memory, his accomplishments, his policies — has long been the price of entry to Republican presidential politics. Yet here comes Donald Trump, who gives no indication of caring the […]
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Difficult to knock Trump off top spot
Donald Trump is running riot in the GOP china shop and gleefully tearing the place up. Consider the strength of Trump’s position: After winning South Carolina, he goes into Nevada with momentum, and the latest poll there has him leading by 26 points. If he enters Super Tuesday a week later having won three out […]
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Trump taps into voters’ disgust with politics
Donald Trump’s crushing across-the-board victory in New Hampshire had the breadth and depth that one would expect of a future nominee. If the result doesn’t shake the lazy complacency about Trump that has held in Republican circles for months — and was reinforced by his disappointing Iowa finish — nothing will. The question is no […]
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Drafting females a step away from reality
In the blink of an eye, we’ve gone from opening combat jobs to women to Republican presidential candidates endorsing registering women for a draft. Hide your daughters — our deluded and cowardly political elites are a clear and present danger to common sense. A proposal from the chief of staff of the Army and the […]
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Lessons to be learned, courtesy of Trump
Donald Trump’s loss in Iowa wasn’t just a victory for conservatives, but a loss for the mogul’s routinely low and dishonest style of campaigning. There was nothing subtle about his disgraceful attacks on Ted Cruz’s eligibility to run for president, although Trump at times tried to wrap them in a hilariously transparent tissue of concern […]
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GOP establishment joining Trump
Few expected Donald Trump would be in a dominant position days before the Iowa caucuses. Fewer still expected the Republican establishment would be among the mogul’s deluded enablers. As if to validate every insult ever hurled at it, the GOP elite is putting on a display of fecklessness that has to surprise even its most […]
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Fight between populism, conservatism rages
At the moment, the Republican establishment is relevant to the presidential-nomination battle only as an epithet. Less than two weeks from the Iowa caucus, the fight for the Republican nomination isn’t so much a vicious brawl between the grass roots and the establishment as it is a bitter struggle between traditional conservatism and populism that […]