Free Republic

I’m all for raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, but my favorite thing in the world is watching the smug fascists in the Never Trump movement deal with failure and despair. Oh, Jonah “Fauntleroy” Goldberg’s having a bad day? In the Nolte household, that piece of news ranks right up there with cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels. “‘Never Trumpers’ are close to giving up hope,” reads the Hill headline. Knowing Never Trumpers are giving up hope means you can keep your bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens. It gets better, so much better… “Former President Trump is...

Sometimes revealing a communist is a little like taking off a Band-Aid. You’ve got to pick at the edges a little bit until you can get enough gripped to rip it off.It has been a decade since Jonah Goldberg and I had our back-and-forth editorial debate about “modern republicanism.” [He lost both a massive number of readers and credibility.] In the years since, we are both exactly the same people; the only difference is – his mask has completely dropped and he’s no longer pretending.In this brutally perfect appearance on his new network gig, CNN, Jonah Goldberg, the pontificating pustule...

Former National Review columnist and unhinged Never-Trumper Jonah Goldberg recently claimed that small donors in the Republican primary were a problem “for democracy” and are “just venting their spleen” rather than acting strategically. The pompous neocon told “Inside Politics” host Dana Bash, “Small donors in Iowa are more important as an indicator of grassroots support than anything else. But I also think we’re dealing with a time where there’s a lot of people, there’s a lot of cheering and self-congratulations about the rise of small donors a decade ago.” He then added, “Now small donors are one of the biggest...

Is the GOP becoming a dysfunctional chatroom? In economics, Gresham’s law on currency markets holds that “bad money drives out good.” That principle also applies to the comment sections on online sites. In comments sections — including such mega-versions like Twitter — the nastiest commenters post more, and more obnoxiously, than the decent ones until, eventually, the decent folk just decide not to hang out anymore. The only remedy for this is comment moderation, where grown-ups in charge try to thwart the trolls lest they lose their more valuable customers. In Tim Miller’s book, “Why We Did It,” the former...

“The tapes are the real man — mean, vindictive, panicky, striking first in anticipation of being struck, trying to lift his own friable self-esteem by shoving others down,” Gary Wills wrote of Richard Nixon in the 2017 preface to his book, “Nixon Agonistes.” Wills added, perhaps unfairly, that “Nixon’s real tragedy is that he never had the stature to be a tragic hero. He is the stuff of sad (almost heartbreaking) comedy.” The passage comes to mind as we close out Donald Trump’s annus horribilis, during which he supplanted Nixon as the saddest figure in post-presidential politics. The Jan. 6...

It once again has become necessary that Mr. Jonah Goldberg, scholar, humorist, rationalist, and exemplar of moral consistency, bring to heel a rabidly partisan right-winger (Yearning for a Banana Republic). The burden is thrust upon him by a benighted epoch. "What an amazingly stupid time this is," laments Jonah. The immediate evidence of the era's stupidity is the enhanced partisanship for Donald Trump voiced by conservatives, after the FBI's raid on his estate at Mar-a-Lago. Apparently in reaction to the search, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, along with others, renewed his support for Trump's candidacy in 2024. He identified the...

In overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court delivered the right’s biggest single victory ever, and it may spell the end of the conservative movement as we’ve known it. It was Ronald Reagan who popularized the notion that the conservative movement rested on a fusionist “three-legged stool.” In theory, the three legs were free market economics, national defense and social conservatism. In practice, free market economics meant low taxes and pro-business policies. National defense meant anticommunism and, briefly, the war on terror. Social conservatism covered a lot of territory but the enduring core was opposition to Roe and abortion. Like...

p>Former President Donald Trump criticized three nominally conservative pundits as well as National Review magazine on Sunday following their recent dismissive pieces of the former president. Trump excoriated Peggy Noonan, columnist for The Wall Street Journal and former speech writer for President Ronald Reagan; Rich Lowry, editor of National Review; and George Will, columnist for the Washington Post."I listen to all of these foolish (stupid!) people, often living in a bygone era, like the weak and frail RINO, Peggy Noonan, who did much less for Ronald Reagan than she claims, and who actually said bad things about him and his...

One of the silver linings of the very large dark cloud of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is the clarity it provides. This is, broadly speaking a contest between good guys and bad guys.A lot of people who fancy themselves foreign policy realists roll their eyes at talk about “good guys” versus “bad guys.” The world is made up of nation-states with interests and those states act rationally on their interests. Good and bad ain’t got nothing to do with it.I’ve never bought this argument, on either analytical or moral terms.Yes, nations have interests, but the way they define their...

The next day saw a discussion with Dispatch editor Jonah Goldberg, who also waved away the Hunter Biden laptop story, which he later stated on Twitter that he did not believe “on it’s face.” Goldberg’s flippant attitude and smug gatekeeping was a perfect example of how so many pundits and thinkers are now more interested in hearing what each other have to say and bathing in self-satisfied pontifications rather than in serving their audiences. But the ultimate irony is that former President Barack Obama was a special guest, appearing onstage alongside Jeffrey Goldberg. Breitbart reporter Charlie Spiering later summed up...

Stephen Hayes, a conservative journalist and and commentator who left Fox News last year over the company's publication of a controversial documentary about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol is joining NBC News. Hayes, CEO of the political news and commentary website The Dispatch, will join NBC as a contributor and political analyst and is slated to appear on “Meet The Press” this Sunday, the network announced on Friday. "I’ve known and worked with Steve Hayes on and off for nearly 25 years. He is a principled reporter and analyst who always puts truth and facts above...

Dear Never Trumpers: The Cruise Is Over How a generation of "conservative" intellectuals finally turned into Democrats A lot has happened since my well known essay "The Collapse of the Never Trumpers" appeared in 2018 — and none of it has been good for that tribe of pundits or their garden gnome leader, Bill Kristol. In fact, most of them have seen their careers collapse so spectacularly that only Michael Avenatti could really understand. George Will has semi-retired to a life of boring students to death as a commencement speaker at small colleges. Jonah Goldberg and Steven Hayes used to...

Fox News commentators Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes have quit the network, upset over a documentary about Jan. 6 that was produced by Tucker Carlson. “With the release of ‘Patriot Purge,’ we felt we could no longer ‘do right as we see it’ and remain at Fox News. So we resigned,” they wrote in a joint post at The Dispatch, where both work. “Patriot Purge” is a documentary series from Carlson about what took place on Jan. 6, when protesters and rioters breached the U.S. Capitol in Washington, interrupting a joint session of Congress that was certifying electoral votes. A...

The trailer for Tucker Carlson’s special about the Jan. 6 mob at the Capitol landed online on Oct. 27, and that night Jonah Goldberg sent a text to his business partner, Stephen Hayes: “I’m tempted just to quit Fox over this.” “I’m game,” Mr. Hayes replied. “Totally outrageous. It will lead to violence. Not sure how we can stay.” The full special, “Patriot Purge,” appeared on Fox’s online subscription streaming service days later. And last week, the two men, both paid Fox News contributors, finalized their resignations from the network. “I’m game,” Mr. Hayes replied. “Totally outrageous. It will lead...

Famous never Trumpers Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes quit as contributors for Fox News in protest of Tucker Carlson’s January 6 documentary suggesting that the Capitol Hill riot may have in part been sparked by the FBI. In late October, as Carlson’s documentary hit the subscription service Fox Nation, Jonah Goldberg sent a text to Stephen Hayes wondering if he should quit the network. “I’m tempted just to quit Fox over this.” “I’m game,” Hayes replied. “Totally outrageous. It will lead to violence. Not sure how we can stay.” Speaking with the New York Times, Hayes and Goldberg said they...

Some great news. Two RINOs who are Fox News contributors just quit from Fox News. They quit because Tucker Carlson released a documentary exposing what really happened on Jan 6th. The two RINOs are Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg. From The New York Times: The trailer for Tucker Carlson’s special about the Jan. 6 mob at the Capitol landed online on Oct. 27, and that night Jonah Goldberg sent a text to his business partner, Stephen Hayes: “I’m tempted just to quit Fox over this.” “I’m game,” Mr. Hayes replied. “Totally outrageous. It will lead to violence. Not sure how...

The first thing to know about the “Let’s go Brandon” thing is: It’s funny. Or at least, it started out funny. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s how it started. In September, largely or even entirely in response to the Biden administration’s botched handling of our withdrawal from Afghanistan, crowds at various sporting events started chanting, “F— Joe Biden!” That’s not funny or appropriate. But maybe understandable, given how badly he botched the pullout. On Oct. 2, NASCAR driver Brandon Brown won a big race. While he was being interviewed by a reporter, the crowd could...

I have always been — and remain — a skeptic of third parties, because they punish the party they have the most in common with. The historian Richard Hofstadter famously quipped that “Third parties are like bees: once they have stung, they die.” But in this scenario, that’s a feature, not a bug. The point is to cause the GOP some pain for its descent into asininity. Giving conservatives turned off by both the Democrats and the Trumpified GOP a way to vote their conscience in the general election would put political pressure on Republican candidates to curtail their Trump...

Maybe President Biden should handle COVID-19 the way he’s handled Afghanistan. It’s a strange thought, given how badly he botched the US withdrawal. But at least Afghanistan Joe had a clear idea about what we needed to do. COVID Joe has no such exit strategy. He’s making it up as he goes. SNIP Biden relishes this fight. He’s already achieved one of his goals — to change the subject from handing Afghanistan to the Taliban in time for the anniversary of 9/11. But the other political calculation is that he doesn’t need the support of people ideologically (and foolishly) opposed...

We're Americans. And nothing is more natural for Americans to cut our losses and move on. You can see it in the building pressure for President Trump to concede the election to former Vice President Joe Biden. The Washington Examiner ran this editorial-page headline: It's time for Trump to concede and move on. Jonah Goldberg, who is still worth reading, stated this, according to Breitbart's Joel Pollak: Never Trump stalwart Jonah Goldberg published an essay Friday in which he argued that President Donald Trump “is trying to steal an election he clearly and unequivocally lost.” The Trump team which sends...