Free Republic

My item on Rand Paul the other day, predictably, went over quite badly in the libertarian community. The Insomniac Libertarian, in an item wonderfully headlined “Obama Quisling Jonathan Chait Smears Rand Paul,” complains that my Paul piece “never discloses that [my] wife is an Obama campaign operative.” A brief annotated response: 1. I question the relevance of the charge, since Rand Paul is not running against Obama. 2. In point of fact, my wife is not an Obama campaign operative and has never worked for Obama’s campaign, or his administration, or volunteered for his campaign, or any campaign, and does...

Since the 2012 elections, there’s been an extended debate over the strength of the current Democratic majority and the future viability of the Republican Party. I’ve long argued that these postmortems are overwrought, and nothing about the results altered that. After all, the demographic changes in that election were more attributable to a surprisingly large number of white voters staying home (fewer whites voted last year than in 2004, despite steady growth in absolute numbers) than to any rapid growth in minority votes. The GOP performed about as well in November as we would have expected given the state of the...

When I pleaded with liberals to stop ignoring President Obama's failures on civil liberties, foreign policy, and the separation of powers, treating them as if they didn't even merit a mention, the quintessential example of the troubling phenomenon hadn't yet been published. Now it has. In New York, one of America's premier magazines, Jonathan Chait, a sharp, experienced political writer, has penned a 5,000 word essay purporting to defend the president's first term. It is aimed at liberal critics who, in Chait's telling, naively expected too much. Tellingly, as Chait writes for affluent urban liberals who railed against the Bush...

The following 65 names are confirmed members of the now-defunct JournoList listserv. 1. Ezra Klein 2. Dave Weigel 3. Matthew Yglesias 4. David Dayen 5. Spencer Ackerman 6. Jeffrey Toobin 7. Eric Alterman 8. Paul Krugman 9. John Judis 10. Eve Fairbanks 11. Mike Allen 12. Ben Smith 13. Lisa Lerer 14. Joe Klein 15. Brad DeLong 16. Chris Hayes 17. Matt Duss 18. Jonathan Chait 19. Jesse Singal 20. Michael Cohen 21. Isaac Chotiner 22. Katha Pollitt 23. Alyssa Rosenberg 24. Rick Perlstein 25. Alex Rossmiller 26. Ed Kilgore 27. Walter Shapiro 28. Noam Scheiber 29. Michael Tomasky 30....

It seems that, in the wake of the liberal celebrations over the passage of the Senate ObamaCare bill, their former vociferous, opposition to it has been tossed down the memory hole. And woe betide anyone who points out how much they used to hate it. Such was the case of The New Republic senior editor Jonathan Chait who castigates your humble correspondent in this article for pointing out this inconvenient fact: P.J. Gladnick at Newsbusters accuses yours truly of hypocrisy:

Remember all that hype from the liberals until last night about how horrible the Senate ObamaCare was? Yes, they admitted it was a terrible piece of legislation but it was necessary for the House of Representatives to pass it in order for the Senate to somehow improve it via reconciliation. Well, toss that all out the window. Suddenly, sans any change in that formerly detested bill, it has suddenly become a "brilliant" piece of legislation as you can see in this gushing ode to the current unchanged ObamaCare bill by Jonathan Chait of the New Republic: Historians will see this...

It appears that The New Republic senior editor, Jonathan Chait, is a bit irked at your humble correspondent for pointing out that he seems a to have gone off the deep end on the subject of ObamaCare: Some of us realized all along that there was no rational reason that the Massachusetts election had to kill health care reform. Fundamentally, the main barrier -- getting sixty votes in the Senate -- had already been crossed. The remaining obstacles are puny. All the Democrats needed to do was have the House pass the Senate bill. If they insisted on changes, most...

Few liberals have been more insistent on the inevitability of ObamaCare than The New Republic editor Jonathan Chait (along with his TNR colleague Jonathan Cohn). He is stubbornly clinging to the notion that ObamaCare can be a done deal despite the results of yesterday's election in Massachussets giving Republicans the 41st vote to block it in the Senate. To give you an idea of how far Chait has gone off the deep end, take a look at his money quote on the topic of liberal Democrats who consider the Mass. election a referendum on ObamaCare in his ironically titled column,...

The presidential election has an oddly placid feel to it. Four years ago, the notion that George W. Bush would get another four years in office, actually ratified by a plurality of the voters, was more than any liberal could bear, and, after the election, there was loose talk everywhere about "Jesusland" and wanting to flee to Canada. This time, even though Democrats are extremely enthusiastic about Barack Obama, that life-and-death quality is absent. I think the reason is that a lot of liberals kind of like John McCain. I know I do.

The presidential election has an oddly placid feel to it. Four years ago, the notion that George W. Bush would get another four years in office, actually ratified by a plurality of the voters, was more than any liberal could bear, and, after the election, there was loose talk everywhere about "Jesusland" and wanting to flee to Canada. This time, even though Democrats are extremely enthusiastic about Barack Obama, that life-and-death quality is absent. I think the reason is that a lot of liberals kind of like John McCain. I know I do. Eight years ago, I was a hard-core...

John McCain and his fiercest enemies all publicly agree: He is and always has been a right-wing conservative. Indeed, those of us who saw McCain as lurching to the ideological left a few years ago are now being portrayed as delusional romantics and partisan schemers. McCain's allies, and delighted conservatives, are... --snip-- In the first two years of George W. Bush's presidency, McCain became, in the words of one prominent Democrat, "the leader of the loyal opposition." McCain voted against both of Bush's major tax cuts. In addition to shepherding campaign finance reform through Congress, he co-sponsored a patients' bill...

On the east and west coasts today, two liberal columnists unleashed a torrent of vitriol at Hillary and Bill Clinton. At the Los Angeles Times, contributing editor Jonathan Chait asked Is the right right on the Clintons? Consider these blistering excerpts [emphasis added]: * Something strange happened the other day. All these different people -- friends, co-workers, relatives, people on a liberal e-mail list I read -- kept saying the same thing: They've suddenly developed a disdain for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Maybe this is just a coincidence, but I think we've reached an irrevocable turning point in liberal opinion...

Jonathan Chait is a man on a mission. Target: Supply-side economics. Problem: He views supply-side theory through a liberal lens, which is why it’s not making sense to him. Chait, a senior editor at The New Republic, has written a book titled “The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics,” along with various op-ed pieces roasting supply-side theory. Chait’s argument focuses on the oft-stated belief of supply-siders that tax cuts pay for themselves by spurring economic growth – that taking smaller slices of a bigger pie still yields you more pie than...

Jonathan Chait is one of the Founding Fathers of Bush Derangement Syndrome. Way back in '03, the New Republic senior editor authored one of BDS's early, seminal works: "The Case for Bush Hatred," whose very first line was the unequivocal: "I hate President George W. Bush." Ah, but Jonathan Chait isn't a mere one-hatred man. As of this morning, we can conclusively state that in addition to his animus toward our nation's chief executive, Jonathan Chait also hates lower taxes. In his New York Times column "Captives of the Supply Side," Chait directs his ire at lower federal taxes in...

Of all the low points during the Bush administration, perhaps the most surreal was the week in December 2004 when Bernie Kerik was poised to become secretary of Homeland Security. By the traditional measures used to judge qualifications for this sort of job, Kerik was not an ideal candidate. The main points in Kerik's favor were his loyal service to Rudy Giuliani, first as driver for his mayoral campaign, then corrections commissioner, then police commissioner--the last of which was commemorated by the casting of 30 Kerik busts. On the negative side of the ledger were his multiple alleged felonies, including...

And here I thought I was joking. Yesterday, I closed this item on Maureen Dowd's column - in which she longed for an Iraqi dictator to whom to surrender - by wondering whether we should "look for Dowd to pop up in Baghdad sometime soon, leading a 'Bring Back Saddam' movement?"But the appeal of bringing back Saddam is apparently no laughing matter in liberal circles. In today's Los Angeles Times, New Republic editor Jonathan Chait - he of "Bush Hatred" fame - has written a column entitled, yes, "Bring back Saddam Hussein." I kept reading for a clue that this...

On Monday, July 10, 2006, fabulous radio host Hugh Hewitt celebrated his 6th anniversary on the air with an on-air spanking of Los Angeles Times columnist Jonathan Chait. The day before, in another one of his badly misguided op-eds, Chait actually wrote that President Bush is a "greater threat" to the country than Osama bin Laden, and it is "quite reasonable to conclude that Bush will harm the nation more" than Bin Laden.Hewitt invited Chait to his program and proceeded to do what he does best with far-left liberals who espouse unsupportable views. Hewitt coolly shredded Chait and his Times...

It's always shocking when the left unmasks itself — it's usually very brief but when it happens not only can't you turn away, it's actually important that you don't. While it would seem impossible, the left has found a new low, this time courtesy of both the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. On the same day, both newspapers published bizarre attacks on the most basic values of personal appearance and physical health of the president and those he supports. It's the newest indication of how frustrated and frenzied the left has grown in the face of an America...

In a Los Angeles Times column (10/8), Jonathan Chait says, "To say that I consider Bush a 'bad' president would be a severe understatement. I think he's bad in a way that redefines my understanding of the word 'bad.' "I used to think U.S. history had many bad presidents. Now, my 'bad' category consists entirely of George W. Bush, with every previous president redefined as 'good.' "There's also the fact that, on a personal level, I despise him with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns. What I'm saying is, advocating Bush is kind of tricky." But "what I'll argue...

In the lead-up to the war against Iraq, liberal doves all made pretty much the same point, with some variation: However successful the conflict itself might be, the long-term diplomatic costs of alienating much of the world would outweigh any benefits. This prediction, while questionable, at least had the benefit of playing out over such an extended period of time that it could not be conclusively disproved until its adherents were all long dead. Alas, after the campaign hit a snag, many doves were unable to resist the temptation to crow over the supposed overconfidence of the war plan --...