One of the most discussed articles of the past week was Matthew Yglesias’s Monday piece in Vox contending that this country’s combination of a presidential system and increasing ideological polarization is a recipe for eventual political breakdown (the article was headlined “American democracy is doomed”). New York magazine’s Chait thinks Yglesias overlooked something important. Chait argues that the major threat to America’s political stability is that conservatives in the U.S. are much farther to the right than are conservatives in other industrialized democracies.
New York Magazine
Lefty Blogger: Inhofe Global-Warming Speech Shows ‘Why No Intelligent Person Should Ever Vote For’ Republicans
By Tom Johnson | March 3, 2015 | 10:52 AM EST New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait argues that “Inhofe’s argument was breathtakingly devoid of a factual or logical grasp of its subject matter” and remarks that while “the design of environmental regulation, or the appropriate balance between economic cost and clean air, is a subject on which reasonable people can disagree…the modern Republican party (as opposed to the one of a generation ago) is structurally incapable of reasonable disagreement or calculus. Cranks like Inhofe have veto power.”
By Tom Johnson | February 28, 2015 | 4:37 PM EST
The writer-at-large for New York magazine identifies Carson as the latest of the Republican party’s three “Great Black Presidential Hopes,” but argues that Carson is more significant than Alan Keyes or Herman Cain because he’d be running “in the context of both restrictive voting laws and the retro civil-rights jurisprudence of the John Roberts” Supreme Court. Rich also claims that “Carson lends credence to the right’s continued effort to sanitize and rewrite America’s racial history to absolve the GOP of any responsibility for injustices then or now.”
Bloggers Wonder How Walker Will Handle GOP’s ‘Ample Population of Lunatics’ and Their ‘Stark-Raving-Mad Beliefs’
By Tom Johnson | February 24, 2015 | 4:34 PM EST Jonathan Chait, Paul Waldman, and Amanda Marcotte each discuss how the Wisconsin governor and probable presidential candidate has responded to recent questions about issues including evolution, Obama’s religious beliefs, and Obama’s patriotism, as well as how his answers might play with the “paranoid” Republican base that thinks, in Waldman’s words, that “Obama is The Other, an alien presence occupying an office he doesn't deserve.”
Frank Rich: Brian Williams Is Non-Partisan, and NBC Nightly News Has No ‘Discernible Political Agenda’
By Tom Johnson | February 11, 2015 | 11:43 AM EST New York magazine pundit Rich admits the anchor badly mishandled the flap over his Iraq-war tall tale but dismisses much conservative criticism of Williams: “They view him as Exhibit A of a lying left-wing mainstream media conspiracy…But neither in public nor private have I ever seen or heard Brian Williams express any partisan political opinion.”
By Tom Blumer | February 11, 2015 | 12:00 AM EST
In his story on Brian Williams at 10:55 p.m. ET Tuesday, Gabriel Sherman at New York Magazine reported that the now-suspended anchor and his agent "were presented with a dossier of Williams' apparent lies," and that "Williams himself was only slowly grasping the depths of the mess he'd created."
That begs the obvious question of whether the public will ever get to know what's in that "dossier," and what impact its contents may have had on the substance of NBC's news reports during the past dozen (if not more) years. Excerpts from Sherman's report follow the jump (links are in original; bolds are mine):
Lefty Blogger: ‘Bizarre’ GOP Position on Climate Change Should Be ‘Completely Disqualifying’ For Political Office
By Tom Johnson | January 24, 2015 | 2:13 PM EST New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait writes, “If a candidate for a managerial job at your office insists that two plus three equals seven, it wouldn't matter how well-qualified this candidate may be at any other aspect of the job,” and that similarly, “even if you agreed with everything else the Republicans stood for” other than climate-change denial, “how could a party so obviously unhinged be entrusted with power?”
By Tom Johnson | January 19, 2015 | 9:57 PM EST
New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait says reform conservatives such as Peter Wehner are “trying to coax the Republican Party back toward sanity” but argues that Wehner undervalues the “apocalyptic strain” in right-wing rhetoric.
By P.J. Gladnick | January 16, 2015 | 4:09 PM EST
New York Magazine writer Annie Lowrey thinks she has found a way to reduce campus rapes; raise taxes on beer and smoke more dope.
Blogger Jonathan Chait: ‘History Will Be Very Generous’ With Obama Thanks to His ‘Broad Record of Accomplishment’
By Tom Johnson | January 13, 2015 | 1:48 PM EST New York magazine’s Chait argues that Obama “has incontrovertibly made major progress on, or fulfilled, every one of” the goals with which he started his presidency, and that “the horrifying consequences conservatives insisted would follow have all failed to materialize.”
By Tom Johnson | January 7, 2015 | 9:44 PM EST
Chait writes that “the Muslim radical argues that the ban on blasphemy is morally right and should be followed; the Western liberal insists it is morally wrong but should be followed. Theoretical distinctions aside, both positions yield an identical outcome.”
By Tom Johnson | January 3, 2015 | 3:02 PM EST
Edelstein gripes in New York magazine that “the native population are portrayed as invaders of our sacred space instead of vice versa,” and that “the people [Chris] Kyle shoots always represent a ‘savage, despicable evil,’ and the physical and mental cost to other Americans just comes with the territory.”