Jonathan Chait

Recently, both Vox’s Zack Beauchamp and New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait have argued that ideological conservatism isn’t (and never has been) the major reason for Republican electoral success, and that those who consistently vote GOP because they believe in small government and low taxes are greatly outnumbered by those who do so because they’re racists.

Ralph Nader, are you prepared to don a sackcloth and perform a public act of penance for your role in causing the defeat of Al Gore in the 2000 election? Who is demanding this political burning of Nader? Jonathan Chait of New York magazine who still can't get over his obsession with Gore's loss in the 2000 election. He flat out blames Ralph Nader for that loss and is now enraged that Nader won't…

A few days ago, Vanity Fair reported that Donald Trump is “considering creating his own media business, built on the audience that has supported him thus far in his bid to become the next president of the United States.” Jonathan Chait thinks such a venture “makes sense” since there’d be a “numerically large” ready-made audience for its fare. “Perhaps [Trump] grasps a truth the official…

In a Monday piece, the writer who goes by Doctor RJ dismissed opponents of the PC agenda as “white conservatives” who believe they’re being victimized by “a thought-policing left,” whereas in reality “this is not a situation where people are being silenced from expressing an opinion.” As the Doctor sees it, “When we break the political correctness argument down, it’s really about idiots wanting…

When liberals call Republicans “deniers,” it typically has to do with climate change. Jonathan Chait alleges big-time GOP denial on a non-scientific matter. “Republican voting support is increasingly coterminous with white racial resentment even as conservatives firmly believe in their own racial innocence,” wrote Chait in a Tuesday post. “Conservatives deny the existence of racism in the…

New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait has contempt for both Donald Trump (“his appeal operates…at a sub-intellectual level”) and those who’ve voted for him (“the Republican Party turns out to be filled with idiots”). Still, suggested Chait in a Thursday post, Trump and his supporters have unwittingly clarified something important: the Tea Party movement is not and never was truly conservative,…

In a Tuesday post, New York magazine’s Chait suggested that conservatism is driven not by an elite but by its riff-raff. Chait asserted, “Whatever [the] abstract arguments for conservative policy…on the ground, Republican politics boils down to ethno-nationalistic passions ungoverned by reason,” and remarked that Donald Trump’s supporters “have revealed things about the nature of the party that…

New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait admires Bernie Sanders’s willingness (eagerness?) to raise taxes so as to “finance the kind of social benefits American liberals would prefer.” That’s why Chait is disappointed that Sanders opposes Philadelphia’s proposed three-cents-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened drinks, revenue from which would fund citywide pre-kindergarten and other programs. In a Tuesday…

There’s a crucial difference between the Loch Ness Monster and any Republican health-care-reform plan worthy of the name: Nessie almost certainly does not exist, but the GOP plan cannot exist. That, essentially, was the message of a Monday blog post by New York magazine’s Chait. “It is impossible to design a health-care plan that is both consistent with conservative ideology and acceptable to…

“I’ve made up my mind -- don’t confuse me with the facts” could be Republicans’ unofficial motto when it comes to Obamacare, suggested New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait in a Tuesday post concerning decreased growth in health-care costs. Chait asserted that “some aspects of the lower health-care-inflation rate can be clearly tied to Obamacare reforms,” though he allowed that “it’s impossible to…

In early 2008, Barack Obama annoyed many liberals when he said that President Reagan (but not President Clinton) had “changed the trajectory of America.” New York magazine’s Chait no doubt will irritate many conservatives by suggesting Obama has done the same over the past seven-plus years. In a piece for the March 21 issue, Chait commented, “Obama hasn’t so much moved from the center to the left…

If you’re a conservative brainiac, contends New York magazine’s Chait, something’s been nagging at you, especially since Donald Trump started riding high in the polls: the realization that so many of your fellow right-wingers are dumb. “The conservative movement’s tightening grip over the Republican Party has coincided with its elevation of leaders incapable of explaining their policies cogently…

If New York magazine blogger Chait had expressed metaphorically his argument about the relationship between racism and the conservative movement, it might have gone something like this: Conservatism is a perfectly presentable, structurally sound wooden house, but a lot of conservatives are termites. In a Thursday post, Chait himself wrote, “While conservatism has [a] perfectly non-racist basis…

In a Friday piece, New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait delved into why he’d welcome seeing Donald Trump atop this year’s Republican ticket. For one thing, there's the possibility of permanently driving a wedge between the party’s masses and its financial elite. “The GOP is a machine that harnesses ethno-nationalistic fear…to win elections and then, once in office, caters to its wealthy donor base…