Conservatives will never have a national party. I can't believe you are making me agree with Curtis. Your only chance of this working even in the long term would be to have the democratic party split into 2 as well or creating an actual moderate party. One where adherence to the constitution and fiscal realism is the only party wide stance. Where social issues and size of government arguments are all welcome in the party and have to be worked out into a consensus.
Dang David, when i read your headline i was hoping for it to be the Bill Goldberg plan and not the Jonah Goldberg one. Seems to me if you could get Bill to run, he could take roughly half of the trump supporters who are wrestling addicts.
Here was my immediate reaction to your column: How about a Liz Cheney/Adam Kinzinger ticket? Both are younger, both charismatic and both are staunch republicans. Both of their political future, at least in the short term, is in the toilet. Why not foist them up as the new standard bearers for the Republican Party?
If you are looking for two people who have shown more character in their little fingers than most of those on the right of late, i don't know who they would be?
Cheney and Kinzinger would probably be interested.
I think Mitt Romney has the name recognition to make it works as well as having strong anti-Trump credentials. I’m not sure he’d want to risk his Senate seat by going against the establishment.
Beyond that, maybe a retired or retiring Republican? Larry Hogan and Jeb Bush are two possibilities.
I think Mitt should stay in the GOP, and work to stop the toxic forces from within. I think he is doing a good job from where he is. If the party boots him in 2024, then he can join the new proposed party.
Might work if you think three or four generations of progressive policies will not destroy the American dream. The three-party scheme you propose will certainly split the party I have the closest agreement with. But if you think Ossoff and Warnock are moderates, we are nowhere close. A four party division might work better but it's too much to hope for with an ever-increasing progressive cohort.
I am thinking 2 party with a 15 year transition. And compared to the socialists, yes Ossoff and Warnock are moderates. Far left candidates do not win statewide elections in Georgia.
Far left candidates do not win in Georgia unless there is a perfect storm of Trump discouraging his base and never-Trump protest votes. I suppose you are correct in a way - these days one must be full-blown socialist and anti-American or communist to be considered far left.
I think Bernie Sanders shifted the Overton window, to where people like Ossoff and Warnock appear moderate, when using the most extreme example to compare them to. You are correct, Ossoff and Warnock are not moderates by a long shot. Especially when not too long ago, we had Max Cleland, Max Baucus, Mary Landrieu, John Breaux, Joe Lieberman, Bob Graham, and others of their ilk that were far more moderate than Ossoff and Warnock.
We can agree in general terms but we all know when you get down to the nitty gritty, it's who we think are staunch defenders of the American way and who are hype-partisan zealots. We probably can't agree on what the American way is and will never agree on who supports it most faithfully.
I got to talk to Cleland about 5 years ago in the midst of the 2016 campaign. I asked him what he thought of the Democratic Party at that time. His answer was unprintable.
As a former Army Signal officer, I have to give him credit for duty I once had orders for. After I got my Signal Platoon ready to go to Vietnam, I was reassigned to test radios for a NATO project. I did not see combat but he did several years later. I do not give him credit for supporting unionization of Homeland Security personnel. He became a career democrat politician and supported their agenda which was more moderate at the time. I'm surprised to hear he was disenchanted.
But I think that when Loeffler and Perdue felt they had to try to perpetuate the Big Lie and pledge to throw out the electors, it put people like David and others of good faith in a pickle of a situation. Once you have people who pledge to throw out electors, it become dangerous. To where voting for lefties like Warnock and Ossoff may’ve been the only option David had, being a Georgia resident. Had Trump not engaged in his post election tantrums and conceded defeat, and not pressure Loeffler and Purdue to peddle the Big Lie, David would’ve most likely voted for them to keep a GOP Senate that would check Biden. So in the end, the Former Guy is the one who is most responsible for a Democratic Congress that Biden enjoys today, even if by a slim margin.
They could not throw out the electors once certified by the states. Everyone knew that. Their stance was no different than the grandstanding by Schumer, Schiff and Pelosi in impeaching Trump. You and David are certainly people of principle but you see only the worst in Trump and his supporters and refuse to acknowledge equally dishonest positions by Trump's enemies because of a mutual hate of the 45th President.
Trump has his problems but never-Trumps should recognize he and the Republicans are not alone in this shortcoming. I'm Trump tolerant because I agree more with what he actually did. I can't think of a single thing the current administration has gotten right. No commenter has been able to tell me anything Joe and his crew have done that's good for the USA except keep Trump out of office.
We’ve discussed this before, but if the GOP base got behind a Ron DeSantis or a similar candidate, they would at least overcome the problem many recalcitrant voters on the right had of Trump. Granted DeSantis is not everyone’s cup of tea, and I have some disagreements with him on policy grounds. But he would be amenable to some, if not all of the Trump skeptic crowd. I can’t speak for everyone, but if elevating DeSantis or another like minded candidate meant Trump being shut out in 2024, there will be a good amount of nonTrump conservatives would accept that trade off.
I'm 100% for DeSantis. I much prefer him to Trump but he is hated almost as much by the never-Trumps and the media have been piling on for a year. I'm sure you know the twisted narratives and outright lies the media have been quick to publicize and slow to (or refuse to) correct.
The problem is while the Constitution doesn’t permit members of Congress to throw out state certified slates of electors, is that 2/3rds of the GOP House Conference along with a handful of GOP senators attempted to do so. That the Constitution prohibits actions by elected officeholders due to powers not enumerated, hasn’t always stopped Congress and the President from acting outside the scope of the law and the Constitution. They take an oath to preserve and defend the Constitution and the rule of law, but they can get away with violating their oath if the people and our institutions do not hold them accountable for their actions.
As for Trump, there is nothing that I would like more than to move on and not have to be focused on his actions. I’m sure David feels the same way. It’s just that the former President and many of his strongest supporters keep relitigating the 2020 election, among other things. And they try to force those in the conservative movement to show one way, unconditional obsequiousness towards Trump. And that kind of personality cult would be wrong no matter who the person is.
The conservative movement is bigger than just one person. Trump had his chance as President for 4 years. His defeat to Joe Biden(a not very impressive candidate to say the least) in 2020 was of his own making. Trump did everything an incumbent seeking re-election shouldn’t do, yet he did it anyway. An intellectually honest assessment of why he lost would include Presidential behavior as among the chief reasons why. Especially his behavior on Twitter. 4 years of nonstop junkposting on Twitter wore thin on the general electorate. And Trump and the MAGA base never took the deleterious effects of his social media behavior seriously.
I agree Congress and Presidents act outside the law. I'm not sure what singling out Republicans and President Trump while ignoring Obama, Hillary, Russian hoaxes, national secret leaks, etc. does to stop it.
For sure he hurt his own cause. I do not tweet. I pay little attention to anyone's social media except on sites such as this. What I do pay attention to is policy actions which are arguable. Everyone has opinions and their own set of pundits to quote.
I really believe that Ross Perot winning 19 percent of the vote in 1992 forced both parties to reevaluate their priorities, and put pressure on them to bring our their best. I don’t think the 1994 Republican Revolution(Contract with America) would’ve happened without Perot’s 1992 run. In 1996, Perot won only 8-9 percent of the vote, but by then many of his former supporters were comfortable voting for either the revitalized GOP(from 1994) or a triangulated centrist Bill Clinton. Perot’s Reform Party might not have endured into the 21st century, but his impact on the 2 parties was undeniable for the better(at least from my angle, with the exception of trade. Perot opposed NAFTA, and I supported it).
Maybe Jonah’s proposed new Conservative party might have that success as Perot’s Reform party did(as long as choose people as competent as Ben Sasse, Liz Cheney, Bill Cassidy, Pat Toomey, etc, and not an Evan McMullin or anyone who goes Lincoln Project left to own the MAGAs). It’s hard to say for sure, and it is no doubt an uphill climb. But it’s worth a try. The Democrats are far past the days where nominating moderate to conservative Democrats like John Breaux, Max Cleland, Mary Landrieu, Zell Miller, Sam Nunn were more commonplace. Democrats like this would make it easy for me to vote D as a protest vote. The problem is that many in the party are too illiberal and too far in the leftist realm. That is why many people who would otherwise vote for a Jonah Goldberg proposed party end up reluctantly voting GOP, and I completely understand. That is why to see a similar effort in a center-left 3rd party(consisting of moderates and liberals) being a consternation to the present Democratic Party just as necessary as a Jonah proposed conservative 3rd party. Illiberalism is a problem that afflicts across the political spectrum, and having sane and competent liberals challenging the illiberalism of the current Democratic Party would in my humble opinion, help make it easier for principled conservatives to vote for a Jonah Goldberg inspired 3rd party. And moderates will have the benefit of choosing between a competent new liberal party or a new conservative party. I think a solid majority of liberal leaning Americans do not buy into the illiberalism of the Squad or Bernie Sanders. And I also do think many of them would be open for a center-left 3rd party to be be counterweight to a competent JGoldberg Conservative party.
I think only when both sides have their illiberal extremism challenged is where more good, decent Americans can feel comfortable breaking away from the current Dem-GOP electoral dichotomy.
I have voted Libertarian Party in the past for protest voting. But while I agree with them on most economic issues, foreign policy and defense is where they are way too far apart from me. I also disagree with them on a handful of social issues. After what happened in Afghanistan, it would be hard for me to vote LP given their views on that matter.
Lastly, I think conservatives supporting Jonah’s proposal, should also still participate in GOP primaries and support good conservatives(I think the National Review NeverTrumpers who had a slight disagreement with Jonah, also have a good point even if I thought Jonah had the stronger argument.) They might not win, but it would also be a good bulwark in preventing more Greenes, Cawthorns, Boeberts from emerging. Should they still emerge, that is where Jonah’s 3rd party can spoil their election. It would be a good, two pronged, all of the above effort to try to quash the illiberal extremism on the right.
There are too many that are willing to make a deal with the devil due to their fear of the Democratic party, because of their fear of their neighbors with differing political and policy preferences. Look at Curtis: he's so afraid that it makes him unable to recognize that the Republican party is willing to contort itself and betray its founding reasons for being.
I am afraid of the democrat party. Its agenda is the antithesis of everything I see as good about the USA. And, I know the Republican party is far from perfect. I just see a glimmer of hope in their policies.
I think you should have far more fear of those so willing to contort themselves into an unrecognizable shape in order to seize and hold power: the ends do not justify the means.
Conservatives will never have a national party. I can't believe you are making me agree with Curtis. Your only chance of this working even in the long term would be to have the democratic party split into 2 as well or creating an actual moderate party. One where adherence to the constitution and fiscal realism is the only party wide stance. Where social issues and size of government arguments are all welcome in the party and have to be worked out into a consensus.
Dang David, when i read your headline i was hoping for it to be the Bill Goldberg plan and not the Jonah Goldberg one. Seems to me if you could get Bill to run, he could take roughly half of the trump supporters who are wrestling addicts.
Here was my immediate reaction to your column: How about a Liz Cheney/Adam Kinzinger ticket? Both are younger, both charismatic and both are staunch republicans. Both of their political future, at least in the short term, is in the toilet. Why not foist them up as the new standard bearers for the Republican Party?
If you are looking for two people who have shown more character in their little fingers than most of those on the right of late, i don't know who they would be?
Cheney and Kinzinger would probably be interested.
I think Mitt Romney has the name recognition to make it works as well as having strong anti-Trump credentials. I’m not sure he’d want to risk his Senate seat by going against the establishment.
Beyond that, maybe a retired or retiring Republican? Larry Hogan and Jeb Bush are two possibilities.
I think Mitt should stay in the GOP, and work to stop the toxic forces from within. I think he is doing a good job from where he is. If the party boots him in 2024, then he can join the new proposed party.
That sounds more like a Rube Goldberg plan.
Might work if you think three or four generations of progressive policies will not destroy the American dream. The three-party scheme you propose will certainly split the party I have the closest agreement with. But if you think Ossoff and Warnock are moderates, we are nowhere close. A four party division might work better but it's too much to hope for with an ever-increasing progressive cohort.
I am thinking 2 party with a 15 year transition. And compared to the socialists, yes Ossoff and Warnock are moderates. Far left candidates do not win statewide elections in Georgia.
Far left candidates do not win in Georgia unless there is a perfect storm of Trump discouraging his base and never-Trump protest votes. I suppose you are correct in a way - these days one must be full-blown socialist and anti-American or communist to be considered far left.
I think Bernie Sanders shifted the Overton window, to where people like Ossoff and Warnock appear moderate, when using the most extreme example to compare them to. You are correct, Ossoff and Warnock are not moderates by a long shot. Especially when not too long ago, we had Max Cleland, Max Baucus, Mary Landrieu, John Breaux, Joe Lieberman, Bob Graham, and others of their ilk that were far more moderate than Ossoff and Warnock.
We can agree in general terms but we all know when you get down to the nitty gritty, it's who we think are staunch defenders of the American way and who are hype-partisan zealots. We probably can't agree on what the American way is and will never agree on who supports it most faithfully.
Replace Max Cleland with Sam Nunn and Zell Miller and I could agree.
I got to talk to Cleland about 5 years ago in the midst of the 2016 campaign. I asked him what he thought of the Democratic Party at that time. His answer was unprintable.
As a former Army Signal officer, I have to give him credit for duty I once had orders for. After I got my Signal Platoon ready to go to Vietnam, I was reassigned to test radios for a NATO project. I did not see combat but he did several years later. I do not give him credit for supporting unionization of Homeland Security personnel. He became a career democrat politician and supported their agenda which was more moderate at the time. I'm surprised to hear he was disenchanted.
But I think that when Loeffler and Perdue felt they had to try to perpetuate the Big Lie and pledge to throw out the electors, it put people like David and others of good faith in a pickle of a situation. Once you have people who pledge to throw out electors, it become dangerous. To where voting for lefties like Warnock and Ossoff may’ve been the only option David had, being a Georgia resident. Had Trump not engaged in his post election tantrums and conceded defeat, and not pressure Loeffler and Purdue to peddle the Big Lie, David would’ve most likely voted for them to keep a GOP Senate that would check Biden. So in the end, the Former Guy is the one who is most responsible for a Democratic Congress that Biden enjoys today, even if by a slim margin.
They could not throw out the electors once certified by the states. Everyone knew that. Their stance was no different than the grandstanding by Schumer, Schiff and Pelosi in impeaching Trump. You and David are certainly people of principle but you see only the worst in Trump and his supporters and refuse to acknowledge equally dishonest positions by Trump's enemies because of a mutual hate of the 45th President.
Trump made his own bed of hatred. I don’t think David hates him though. He simply recognizes how damaged and damaging Trump is to the nation.
Trump has his problems but never-Trumps should recognize he and the Republicans are not alone in this shortcoming. I'm Trump tolerant because I agree more with what he actually did. I can't think of a single thing the current administration has gotten right. No commenter has been able to tell me anything Joe and his crew have done that's good for the USA except keep Trump out of office.
We’ve discussed this before, but if the GOP base got behind a Ron DeSantis or a similar candidate, they would at least overcome the problem many recalcitrant voters on the right had of Trump. Granted DeSantis is not everyone’s cup of tea, and I have some disagreements with him on policy grounds. But he would be amenable to some, if not all of the Trump skeptic crowd. I can’t speak for everyone, but if elevating DeSantis or another like minded candidate meant Trump being shut out in 2024, there will be a good amount of nonTrump conservatives would accept that trade off.
I'm 100% for DeSantis. I much prefer him to Trump but he is hated almost as much by the never-Trumps and the media have been piling on for a year. I'm sure you know the twisted narratives and outright lies the media have been quick to publicize and slow to (or refuse to) correct.
The problem is while the Constitution doesn’t permit members of Congress to throw out state certified slates of electors, is that 2/3rds of the GOP House Conference along with a handful of GOP senators attempted to do so. That the Constitution prohibits actions by elected officeholders due to powers not enumerated, hasn’t always stopped Congress and the President from acting outside the scope of the law and the Constitution. They take an oath to preserve and defend the Constitution and the rule of law, but they can get away with violating their oath if the people and our institutions do not hold them accountable for their actions.
As for Trump, there is nothing that I would like more than to move on and not have to be focused on his actions. I’m sure David feels the same way. It’s just that the former President and many of his strongest supporters keep relitigating the 2020 election, among other things. And they try to force those in the conservative movement to show one way, unconditional obsequiousness towards Trump. And that kind of personality cult would be wrong no matter who the person is.
The conservative movement is bigger than just one person. Trump had his chance as President for 4 years. His defeat to Joe Biden(a not very impressive candidate to say the least) in 2020 was of his own making. Trump did everything an incumbent seeking re-election shouldn’t do, yet he did it anyway. An intellectually honest assessment of why he lost would include Presidential behavior as among the chief reasons why. Especially his behavior on Twitter. 4 years of nonstop junkposting on Twitter wore thin on the general electorate. And Trump and the MAGA base never took the deleterious effects of his social media behavior seriously.
I agree Congress and Presidents act outside the law. I'm not sure what singling out Republicans and President Trump while ignoring Obama, Hillary, Russian hoaxes, national secret leaks, etc. does to stop it.
For sure he hurt his own cause. I do not tweet. I pay little attention to anyone's social media except on sites such as this. What I do pay attention to is policy actions which are arguable. Everyone has opinions and their own set of pundits to quote.
I really believe that Ross Perot winning 19 percent of the vote in 1992 forced both parties to reevaluate their priorities, and put pressure on them to bring our their best. I don’t think the 1994 Republican Revolution(Contract with America) would’ve happened without Perot’s 1992 run. In 1996, Perot won only 8-9 percent of the vote, but by then many of his former supporters were comfortable voting for either the revitalized GOP(from 1994) or a triangulated centrist Bill Clinton. Perot’s Reform Party might not have endured into the 21st century, but his impact on the 2 parties was undeniable for the better(at least from my angle, with the exception of trade. Perot opposed NAFTA, and I supported it).
Maybe Jonah’s proposed new Conservative party might have that success as Perot’s Reform party did(as long as choose people as competent as Ben Sasse, Liz Cheney, Bill Cassidy, Pat Toomey, etc, and not an Evan McMullin or anyone who goes Lincoln Project left to own the MAGAs). It’s hard to say for sure, and it is no doubt an uphill climb. But it’s worth a try. The Democrats are far past the days where nominating moderate to conservative Democrats like John Breaux, Max Cleland, Mary Landrieu, Zell Miller, Sam Nunn were more commonplace. Democrats like this would make it easy for me to vote D as a protest vote. The problem is that many in the party are too illiberal and too far in the leftist realm. That is why many people who would otherwise vote for a Jonah Goldberg proposed party end up reluctantly voting GOP, and I completely understand. That is why to see a similar effort in a center-left 3rd party(consisting of moderates and liberals) being a consternation to the present Democratic Party just as necessary as a Jonah proposed conservative 3rd party. Illiberalism is a problem that afflicts across the political spectrum, and having sane and competent liberals challenging the illiberalism of the current Democratic Party would in my humble opinion, help make it easier for principled conservatives to vote for a Jonah Goldberg inspired 3rd party. And moderates will have the benefit of choosing between a competent new liberal party or a new conservative party. I think a solid majority of liberal leaning Americans do not buy into the illiberalism of the Squad or Bernie Sanders. And I also do think many of them would be open for a center-left 3rd party to be be counterweight to a competent JGoldberg Conservative party.
I think only when both sides have their illiberal extremism challenged is where more good, decent Americans can feel comfortable breaking away from the current Dem-GOP electoral dichotomy.
I have voted Libertarian Party in the past for protest voting. But while I agree with them on most economic issues, foreign policy and defense is where they are way too far apart from me. I also disagree with them on a handful of social issues. After what happened in Afghanistan, it would be hard for me to vote LP given their views on that matter.
Lastly, I think conservatives supporting Jonah’s proposal, should also still participate in GOP primaries and support good conservatives(I think the National Review NeverTrumpers who had a slight disagreement with Jonah, also have a good point even if I thought Jonah had the stronger argument.) They might not win, but it would also be a good bulwark in preventing more Greenes, Cawthorns, Boeberts from emerging. Should they still emerge, that is where Jonah’s 3rd party can spoil their election. It would be a good, two pronged, all of the above effort to try to quash the illiberal extremism on the right.
There are too many that are willing to make a deal with the devil due to their fear of the Democratic party, because of their fear of their neighbors with differing political and policy preferences. Look at Curtis: he's so afraid that it makes him unable to recognize that the Republican party is willing to contort itself and betray its founding reasons for being.
Fear and panic make people do stupid things.
I am afraid of the democrat party. Its agenda is the antithesis of everything I see as good about the USA. And, I know the Republican party is far from perfect. I just see a glimmer of hope in their policies.
I think you should have far more fear of those so willing to contort themselves into an unrecognizable shape in order to seize and hold power: the ends do not justify the means.
Justification of the means depends entirely on how dire one views the circumstances. I fear total destruction of the nation.