Free Republic

The Bush camp clearly despises Donald Trump. In his remarks at Shanksville, Pennsylvania on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, George W. Bush took thinly-veiled shots at Trump, alluding to him and his supporters as a "malign force." But there was nothing veiled about the shots that former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, now a Washington Post columnist, took at Trump today. CNN's New Day gave Gerson a platform to expand on his recent column, unsubtly entitled, "The Trump nightmare looms again." Gerson ultimately made his pitch: in 2022, Republicans should vote Democrat. Get the rest of the story and...

'Even as of now, the US government has not launched and broad and serious investigation into where the coronavirus came from' Actually, it looks like this virus did come from a lab in China. Nearly a year and a half into the pandemic, that’s the new consensus in the American media. Boy, these things change fast. There are holdouts of course. Just today, over at the Washington Post, a China shill called Michael Gerson wrote a hilariously overwrought column entitled: "The right is dwelling on slanderous myths about the origins of COVID-19." The radical right! Slanderous myths! Russian QAnon sleeper...

Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, who worked in the White House under former President George W. Bush, said the Trump presidency is “unraveling.” Gerson bashed President Trump in his latest column published Thursday. Bush’s top aide and director of presidential speech writing outlined a series of attacks against Trump and his policies from immigration and foreign policy to the president’s unpredictable rhetoric. "The Trump presidency is not just unfolding, it is unraveling. All narcissists believe they are at the center of the universe," Gerson wrote. "But what happens when a narcissist is actually placed at the center of the universe?...

Another Republican has hopped on the impeachment train. After the Mueller report detailed President Trump's failure to take what Michael Gerson calls "a criminal plot by a hostile foreign government" to the FBI, the chief speechwriter for former President George W. Bush writes that "House leaders should lay the groundwork for impeachment." This move strays from politics' usual goals of "partisanship" and "endless fundraising," Gerson continues in his Monday op-ed for The Washington Post, but adds that this choice will "echo across the decades."

Michael Gerson's much-ballyhooed articles in The Atlantic and The Washington Post have made quite a splash, at least among evangelicals. Much of the response has been of the hand-wringing kind. As in, what right does Gerson have to throw evangelicals under the bus because of their support for Donald Trump? Well, count me as an evangelical who mostly agrees with Michael Gerson. I believe that the overall support for Donald Trump is a self-imposed obstacle to evangelicals' ability to be a faithful witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ.When Gerson, after listing just some of Trump's sizeable moral failings,...

Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, a former senior aide to President George W. Bush, used his Friday op-ed to warn establishment Republicans that “the time for panic and decision is upon us.” Gerson urges Republicans to join Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) in publicly raising two questions: “Is Trump psychologically and morally equipped to be president? And could his unfitness cause permanent damage to the country?” If the reports are true that the majority of Senate Republicans agree with Corker’s comment that Trump could cause “World War III,” then Gerson exhorts them to publicly act on their convictions. Though Gerson does not...

CBS’s Face the Nation led off 2017 with a political panel where everyone was completely disgusted by President-elect Trump. The two Bush White House veterans – speechwriters Michael Gerson and David Frum – talked in dark terms about an election stolen by Russia and a forthcoming “constitutional crisis.” On the Left were Jeffrey Goldberg, the Obama-polishing editor of The Atlantic magazine, and former NPR anchor Michele Norris, who left the taxpayer-funded network when her husband took a job in the Obama White House. Norris declared that Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan clearly had a racial component, since America was...

Columnists are starting to blame voters for the rise of Donald Trump, and say their collective decision to make him the presumptive Republican nominee is a terrible mistake. Liberal columnist Richard Cohen wrote in the Washington Post on Monday that the election has filled him with a sense of "fear of my fellow Americans." "I don't mean the occasional yahoo who turns a Trump rally into a hate fest," he wrote. "I mean the ones who do nothing. Who are silent. Who look the other way… I always knew who Trump was. It's the American people who have come as...

If Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee, one of the main reasons will be that many in the conservative movement found him acceptable. And one of the main reasons that many conservatives are finding Trump acceptable is that the most influential political talk radio host in history, Rush Limbaugh, has provided his blessing. Not his endorsement. Limbaugh takes pains to preserve neutrality between Trump and Ted Cruz, whom he describes as the obvious choice “if conservatism is the dominating factor in how you vote.” But Limbaugh has also consistently defended Trump as a legitimate choice for those whose dominating factor...

...In real life, expletives are often used as a form of aggression or cruelty. A co-worker who tells you to Trump yourself is usually being unpleasant. A co-worker who does this every day is often creating a hostile or demeaning work environment. Language suitable for decent company is a form of politeness, which is a species of respect, which is an expression of morality. And if I am the last holdout on this issue, so be it. I don't really give a damn. Win or lose, Trump has brought the language and sensibilities of cable TV to presidential politics...

Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” op-ed columnist for The Washington Post Michael Gerson said it’s time to “confront” GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump and his followers.

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. Since the Islamic State attacks in Paris on November 13, we have seen the development of a new, and strange justification for the Obama administration’s insistent refusal to jettison its manifestly failed strategy of contending with IS specifically and with Islamic terrorism generally.

In my post yesterday about the #NROrevolt Twitter rebellion by restrictionist Donald Trump fans against the pro-restrictionism National Review, I mentioned that there was a rich stream of apoplectically anti-Donald Trump commentary emanating from within the conservative media. I thought it might be useful to catalogue some of the vituperative and often entertaining arguments thus far into one place. (For a previous post on Trump's conservative-media supporters, click here.) The following list, encompassing neoconservatives, social cons, and libertarian-leaners, includes Bret Stephens, George Will, Glenn Beck, Michael Gerson, Charles C.W. Cooke, Karl Rove, Jonah Goldberg, John Podhoretz, Kevin D. Williamson, Mona...

In a compelling column, George Will – who knows a thing or two about conservatism – makes the conservative case against Donald Trump. Mr. Will refers to Trump as an “unprecedentedly and incorrigibly vulgar presidential candidate” who is coarsening our civic life. He labels Trump “a counterfeit Republican and no conservative.” And he argues that Trump is an affront to anyone devoted to the legacy of William F. Buckley, Jr., the founder of National Review and a giant in American conservatism. Just as Buckley excommunicated the John Birch Society from the conservative movement in the 1960s, so should conservatives today...

During an appearance on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 on Tuesday, Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson took a swipe at supporters of Trump and accused them of being ultra-right wing, nationalist individuals. Gerson, who has been a harsh critic of Trump, argued that the Republican presidential candidate and his supporters have a “resentment of outside, of Mexico, of China, and immigrants. That's more like a European right wing part, a UKIP, or a National Front in France.” (VIDEO-AT-LINK)The Washington Post columnist maintained that Trump’s candidacy was a “serious issue here” and “not all fun and games for the Republican Party” and...

(RNN) – The St. Louis Post-Dispatch axed conservative thinker George Will's syndicated column Wednesday. Editor Tony Messenger apologized to his readers. He stated the change had been considered for months, but "a column published June 5, in which Mr. Will suggested that sexual assault victims on college campuses enjoy a privileged status, made the decision easier. "The column was offensive and inaccurate; we apologize for publishing it," Messenger said. The newspaper announced Will's column would be replaced by Michael Gerson, "former speechwriter and top aide to President George W. Bush." In Will's column, Colleges become the victims of progressivism, he...

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial Page Editor Tony Messenger writes that readers — both liberal and conservative ones — have lobbied the paper to change its lineup of conservative columnists. But apparently a bit of a push was necessary. That came from a recent controversial piece by Washington Post columnist George Will — the one about the “supposed campus epidemic of rape” and the way in which “victimhood” serves as a “coveted status that confers privileges.”

Americans have something of a science problem. They swallow, for example, about $28 billion worth of vitamins each year, even though the Annals of Internal Medicine recently concluded that “[m]ost supplements do not prevent chronic disease or death, their use is not justified, and they should be avoided.” Americans often fear swallowing genetically modified plants (and Vermont recently required labeling of food containing genetically modified organisms, known as GMOs), though GMOs have “been consumed by hundreds of millions of people across the world for more than 15 years, with no reported ill effects,” according to the Journal of the Royal Society...

Modernizing party can't forget its base: Michael Gerson (Newser) – The Republican Party might win the odd national vote in the coming years, but it needs a long-term prescription: Eventually, "there won’t be enough white and gray voters to win national elections," writes Michael Gerson in the Washington Post. But as the party seeks to reform, it can't forget about the religious conservatives that form its biggest constituency. Just look at David Cameron: He's tried to expand the appeal of Britain's Tories and is losing his base in the process. In short, the GOP "needs to become more socially...

Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson attacked Sen. Rand Paul, my brother, Rush, and my good friend Mark Levin in a recent column for their various comments concerning the National Security Agency's surveillance data collection operation and other administration activities. I find it noteworthy that Gerson -- who holds himself out as measured and reasonable, as one who abhors sloppy thinking and expression, and as one who decries the politics of personal destruction -- has gone out of his way to personally attack Limbaugh and Levin. He challenged their conservatism, patriotism, integrity and honor instead of simply registering his disagreement with...