Tag Archives: George Will

media news

It’s official: Hell has frozen over

I know I have said this before, so forgive me for repeating myself.

Except this time I am sure of what I am about to say: It’s official. Hell has frozen over. Completely.

How do I know that? Because one of the deans of conservative commentary, George Will — a man who for years was associated with the Republican Party — is urging voters to cast their ballots for (gulp!) Democrats.

Will leads his latest column this way: Amid the carnage of Republican misrule in Washington, there is this glimmer of good news: The family-shredding policy along the southern border, the most telegenic recent example of misrule, clarified something. Occurring less than 140 days before elections that can reshape Congress, the policy has given independents and temperate Republicans — these are probably expanding and contracting cohorts, respectively — fresh if redundant evidence for the principle by which they should vote.

Not long ago, Will decided to leave the Republican Party. He is now an “independent” voter. He was a Fox News contributor. Since leaving the GOP, he has gravitated toward other broadcast and cable news networks, where he also contributes to their commentary.

Will dislikes Donald J. Trump. His description of “Republican misrule in Washington” is a direct condemnation of the leadership provided by the president.

Read Will’s column here.

Will wants voters to cast their ballots for Democrats in the 2018 midterm election. He wants congressional power to swing back to Democrats, hoping that they can act as a bulwark against the “carnage” that Trump has created in Washington.

Will writes: In today’s GOP, which is the president’s plaything, he is the mainstream. So, to vote against his party’s cowering congressional caucuses is to affirm the nation’s honor while quarantining him.

Granted, the idea of a Democratically controlled Capitol Hill doesn’t thrill the columnist. He refers to that possibility this way: A Democratic-controlled Congress would be a basket of deplorables, but there would be enough Republicans to gum up the Senate’s machinery, keeping the institution as peripheral as it has been under their control and asphyxiating mischief from a Democratic House.

Still, the very idea that George Will, of all people, would advocate such a rebellion means only one thing: Hell has frozen over.

national news

What has happened to the GOP?

The Party of Abraham Lincoln has become …

The Party of Donald J. Trump. The “Party of Child Abuse.” The Party of Demonization. The Party of Insult and Innuendo.

So it appears as longtime Republicans of stellar standing are calling it quits on their party.

Perhaps the most notable recent defection came this week as Steve Schmidt, Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign adviser and GOP “strategist” renounced his party and said he intends to start voting for Democrats. He calls the Republican Party “vile” and said it no longer represents the high and noble ideals that produced its founding in the mid-19th century, which was to end slavery.

There have been other well-known Republicans. Former U.S. Rep. — and current TV talk show host — Joe Scarborough is one; Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist George Will is another.

Geraldo Rivera, whose own Republican credentials at best are a bit suspect, told his fellow Fox News colleagues that the GOP has become the “party of child abuse.”

U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who’s leaving the Senate at the end of the year, referred to the “cult” that is developing within the GOP. Other Republican officeholders and office seekers are reluctant to cross the president for fear of being skewered by him.

U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina criticized Trump, who then endorsed his GOP primary opponent. What happened? The opponent won and Sanford will be out of office at the end of the year, if not sooner.

Yes, it’s fair to ask: What in the world has happened to the Grand Old Party, which once was known as a great political party?

It’s been co-opted by a guy who before he ran for president had no political experience. He had no public service experience. He still has virtually no knowledge of how government works or how it requires teamwork that involves players from both sides of the aisle.

Heaven help us.

national news, political news

Texas turning ‘purple’? Maybe … but not just yet

Donald Trump gestures while speaking surrounded by people whose families were victims of illegal immigrants on July 10, 2015 while meeting with the press at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, where some shared their stories of the loss of a loved one. The US business magnate Trump, who is running for president in the 2016 presidential elections, angered members of the Latino community with recent comments but says he will win the Latino vote. AFP PHOTO / FREDERIC J. BROWN (Photo credit should read FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images)

George Will is a conservative columnist/pundit who — no surprise here — detests Donald J. Trump, the Republican Party’s presidential nominee.

He has written an essay, moreover, that makes an intriguing suggestion. It is that Trump’s presidential candidacy just might turn one of the nation’s most Republican-leaning states into something far less so.

I refer to Texas.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/will-texas-become-another-brick-in-the-democrats-blue-wall/2016/07/20/08b55f5e-4de0-11e6-a422-83ab49ed5e6a_story.html

My own sense is that Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton has a long way to go just yet in making Texas truly competitive in this election.

Will, though, suggests that the time is closer than some of us believe.

He notes that Dallas County has gone from solidly Republican to solidly Democratic. He reminds us that Hispanics and Asians are two fast-growing minorities. He speaks as well about how Texas is mirroring the nation’s turn toward a majority-minority population.

All of that plays into Clinton’s push to become president.

Texas, though, hasn’t elected a Democrat to any statewide office since 1994. Will says that’s the longest statewide GOP winning streak in the nation.

My own sense is that if Texas becomes moderately competitive in the Clinton vs. Trump contest — meaning if Clinton can close to within, say, 5 or 6 percentage of Trump — then we’re going to see a serious blowout in the making.

If she somehow manages to win the state’s 38 electoral votes — and that can happen only if Latinos and African-Americans turn out in record numbers — then the blowout can be of historic proportions.

Will it happen in Texas?

Maybe soon. Just not right now.

national news, political news

George Will to GOP: think strategically

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George Will can turn a phrase with the best of them.

The noted columnist and television commentator is well-known for a lot of things, which include: his ardent political conservatism and his equally ardent love for baseball.

I’ll set aside the baseball expertise for a moment and focus on what he has said about the presumptive Republican Party candidate for president of the United States.

Will has given up on his Republican Party because of Trump’s emergence as the standard bearer in this fall’s campaign for the White House.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/284908-george-will-leaves-gop-this-is-not-my-party

He has registered in Maryland, where he lives, as an “unaffiliated” voter. He no longer is a registered Republican.

Actually, this isn’t huge news. It’s important only because of Will’s standing among the conservative intelligentsia.

Even tough Will’s abandonment of his party isn’t a huge surprise, it stands to reason, given that the presumptive nominee has zero public record on which to run. Moreover, many of the positions he has taken in the past — such as being against free trade, being pro-choice on abortion — run directly counter to traditional Republican political orthodoxy.

Frankly, I prefer the Texas method of registering voters. We don’t declare party affiliation when we get our voter registration card. We vote in whichever primary we want and our card might — or might not — get stamped by the polling place judge at the time we vote.

Will’s best advice this year to Republicans?

Suck it up. Prepare yourselves to lose the White House and then work like hell to win it back in 2020.

national news

University students should listen to George Will

Here we go once again: Liberal educators, politicians and students don’t want to hear a voice from the other end of the political spectrum, so they’re launching an effort to ban that voice from their campus.

Please. Stop this nonsense.

Conservative columnist George Will has been invited to deliver the commencement speech at Michigan State University. Alumni, students and some administrators have decided Will’s world view isn’t welcome there. Specifically they object to his recent statements about sexual assault among female college students.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/12/10/us-senator-denounces-michigan-states-decision-t/201841

I’ll stipulate that I disagree with Will’s view that “victimhood” has become some sort of badge of honor. The threat of sexual assault is real and it needs to be dealt with in a serious manner.

Indeed, I generally disagree with just about everything Will says in his column or in his role as a Fox News “contributor.”

There. I’ve declared my bias.

But universities — institutions of higher learning — do themselves a terrible injustice when they prohibit all points of view from being heard on the issues of the day.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, an MSU alumna, has weighed in with her objections to Will’s appearance at her alma mater. She said Will’s “statements on sexual assault are inaccurate, offensive, and don’t represent the values of our state or MSU.”

So … what?

Let the man speak and then challenge his assumptions. Debate them. In the open. Intelligently. Let’s have a full airing of competing ideas on sexual assault.

Universities are supposed to be open to wide ranges of thought, ideology and philosophy. Isn’t there some inscription on some wall at the East Lansing campus that suggests that the university is a place where everyone’s views are welcome?

How about fulfilling the university’s mission and letting a noted conservative commentator speak his mind to students who are able to draw their own conclusions about whether he is right … or wrong?

 

Uncategorized

Will shatters the Fox mold

http://mediamatters.org/video/2014/07/27/foxs-george-will-we-should-tell-child-immigrant/200215

George Will might find himself out of a job if the Fox New Channel brass takes serious exception to what the commentator said this morning on Fox News Sunday.

He said, and you should watch the clip attached here, that the United States of America ought to welcome the “criminals with teddy bears” into our culture, not send them back to their Central America homeland where they face possible, if not probable, harm.

I’ll just dispute one point in Will’s comment here. He mentions the nation has 3,141 counties. Divide the number of counties into the 57,000 or so child refugees who’ve come here and you have a mere handful of children moving into each county. That logic presumes we can distribute the children evenly among all American counties.

Whatever.

I found the exchange between Will and Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace stunning.

Will is right to note that we’ve handled far more immigrants than what’s happening right now at the border. The “wretched refuse” ought to be welcome, he said.

Wow! I think I’ll try to catch my breath now.

Uncategorized

Who you calling ‘diverse’?

I have to agree with George Will on this one: Liberals dislike diversity in thought and conservatives now appear to be embracing it.

Will, one of the more noted conservative commentators and columnists in America, made the assertion on the Fox News Channel Sunday.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/10/06/george_will_liberals_dont_want_diversity_in_thought_and_thats_what_the_republicans_now_have.html

It’s an interesting twist.

Republicans are eating their young, as the late GOP state Sen. Teel Bivins of Amarillo used to say.

The party is waging war within itself, which Will says is not knew among the Grand Old Party. He cited the 1912 Teddy Roosevelt-William Howard Taft fight and the 1964 feud between the Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller wings of the party. He didn’t mention the 1968 and 1972 fights among Democrats.

But Will’s point about the Republican battle is that it’s becoming the more interesting party these days, as Democrats seem to be singing off the same page.