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Readers of this column will remember, as apparently political scientists and pundits have not, that in the rancorous months before the Democratic primaries got underway, I identified that one dynamic new political constituency that would decide the winner. In years gone by, the dynamic constituency was the youth vote. And there was the year of the women's vote. This year as we watched Dr. Howard Dean gain the role of frontrunner, the veins in his neck bursting, his face an angry gnarl of sneers and grimaces, it became obvious that the dynamic new force in the Democratic primary was the...

<p>Recently, I have been making my own scholarly contribution to political scientists' understanding of the 2004 election by identifying a rising new constituency within the electorate, the moron vote.</p> <p>Those who compose it are the angry, the fearful and the unaccountably neurotic. When they beheld Dr. Howard Dean hollering in public about how very angry he was, they thought of Abraham Lincoln. Now they behold Sen. John Pierre Kerry boasting of all the hair he has on his chest, the medals on his wall and his grim plans for President George W. Bush and they think of John F. Kennedy or maybe Robespierre — Mr. Kerry is still very French-looking, n'est-ce pas?</p>

Print Article         Close Window     Job Growth Description By Published 3/11/2004 12:06:21 AM WASHINGTON -- Recently I have been making my own scholarly contribution to political scientists' understanding of the 2004 election by identifying a rising new constituency within the electorate, the moron vote. Those who compose it are the angry, the fearful, and the unaccountably neurotic. When they beheld Dr. Howard Dean hollering in public about how very angry he was, they thought of Abraham Lincoln. Now they behold Senator John Pierre Kerry boasting of all the hair he has on his chest, the medals on his...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Do my eyes deceive me? The morning after Super Tuesday expired with a burst of fireworks enhaloing the hunk of granite that is John Kerry's head, Sen. Hillary Clinton -- still the most popular Democrat in the country -- pops up at Washington's Mayflower Hotel to give a major speech on trade and manufacturing, two burning issues during the Democrats' primary season. What can this mean? Several weeks back, as Kerry emerged as the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, that veteran Clinton-watcher with the keen eye for political machinations, Dick Morris, announced that Hillary had become a...

WASHINGTON -- Do my eyes deceive me? The morning after Super Tuesday expired with a burst of fireworks enhaloing the hunk of granite that is John Kerry's head, Senator Hillary Clinton -- still the most popular Democrat in the country -- pops up at Washington's Mayflower Hotel to give a major speech on trade and manufacturing, two burning issues during the Democrats' primary season. What can this mean? Several weeks back as Senator Kerry emerged as the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, that veteran Clinton-watcher with the keen eye for political machinations, Dick Morris, announced that Hillary had become a...

In response to a comment in our textbook stating that women remain the second sex in our society, I said to the class, “Well, in 2008, I wouldn’t be surprised if a woman became president.” The students agreed with me and a few mentioned Hillary Clinton’s name aloud. Another student, the lone conservative present, emailed me the next day and asked why I would make such a statement. “Because it’s true,” I answered. Most conservatives are completely baffled by the Hillarymania of today’s liberals. A recent poll illustrates that she remains a highly polarizing figure among the American electorate. Should...

<p>The campaign trail has been cluttered with such fantasticos as Sen. John Pierre Kerry, Dr. Howard Dean, Generalissimo Wesley Clark, and the Rev Al Sharpton. Now I too have had to venture onto the campaign trail, but a more civilized trail it is.</p>

<p>Readers of this column will remember, as apparently political scientists and pundits have not, that in the rancorous months before the Democratic primaries got under way I identified the one dynamic new political constituency that would decide the winner.</p> <p>In years gone by, the dynamic constituency was the youth vote. And there was the year of the women's vote. This year as we watched Dr. Howard Dean gain the role of front-runner, the veins in his neck bursting, his face an angry gnarl of sneers and grimaces, it became obvious the dynamic new force in the Democratic primary was the moron vote. That is to say the angry, stupid, political neurotic who has proceeded into middle age convinced the world is against him/her.</p>

A review of “MADAME HILLARY THE DARK ROAD TO THE WHITE HOUSE” By R. EmmettTyrrell, Jr. with Mark W. Davis This is the probably the most focused and serious book I’ve read by Mr. Tyrrell. He clearly suppressed his considerable talent for amusingly limning the Clintons as the clowns that they are to deliver instead a steady, updated, and well-informed account of what they are up to and why we need to remain concerned with their machinations. The Clintons take over and manipulations of the Democratic Party are described well and documented early in the book. The Clintons today, as...

MADAME HILLARY THE DARK ROAD TO THE WHITE HOUSE R. Emmett, Tyrrell Jr. with Mark W. Davis This is the probably the most focused and serious book I’ve read by Mr. Tyrrell. He clearly suppressed his considerable talent for amusingly limning the Clintons as the clowns that they are to deliver instead a steady, updated, and well-informed account of what they are up to and why we need to remain concerned with their machinations. The Clintons take over and manipulations of the Democratic Party are described well and documented early in the book. The Clintons today, as demonstrated by Tyrrell...

<p>So, no sooner does Sen. John Kerry emerge from the New Hampshire primary as the Democrats' fragile front-runner than word gets out that Bill Clinton was flying down to Washington to plan the Democrats' return to the White House, and at this "high level" meeting Sen. Hillary Clinton would join him. What is this all about? Are the Democratic presidential contenders not capable of sorting things out on their own? Two, after all, were coaxed into the race by the Clintons, Sen. John Edwards and Gen. Wesley Clark.</p>

<p>Really, it is not very amazing a government vendetta has been launched against Rush Limbaugh, the very successful and gifted talk show host.</p> <p>Governments have attempted to suppress criticism for centuries. The Founding Fathers were acutely aware of that and provided strong protections in our system of government for dissent and for free speech. But would Thomas Jefferson, for instance, have anticipated that a journalist's fellow communicators would remain silent while one of their own was being threatened with jail?</p>

<p>So, no sooner does Sen. John Kerry emerge from the New Hampshire primary as the Democrats' fragile frontrunner than word gets out that ex-President Bill Clinton is flying down to Washington to plan the Democrats' return to the White House, and at this "high-level" meeting Sen. Hillary Clinton will join him. What is this all about? Are the Democratic presidential contenders not capable of sorting things out on their own? Two, after all, were coaxed into the race by the Clintons, Sen. John Edwards and Gen. Wesley Clark.</p>

<p>By R. EMMETT TYRRELL JR.</p> <p>So, no sooner does Sen. John Kerry emerge from the New Hampshire primary as the Democrats' fragile frontrunner than word gets out that ex-President Bill Clinton is flying down to Washington to plan the Democrats' return to the White House, and at this "high-level" meeting Sen. Hillary Clinton will join him. What is this all about? Are the Democratic presidential contenders not capable of sorting things out on their own? Two, after all, were coaxed into the race by the Clintons, Sen. John Edwards and Gen. Wesley Clark.</p>

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Really, it is not very amazing that a government vendetta has been launched against Rush Limbaugh, the very successful and gifted talk show host. Governments have attempted to suppress criticism for centuries. The Founding Fathers were acutely aware of that, and provided strong protections in our system of government for dissent and for free speech. But would Thomas Jefferson, for instance, have anticipated that a journalist's fellow communicators would remain silent while one of their own was being threatened with jail? Right now, extreme measures are being taken against Limbaugh, and what impresses me more than a...

The conservative magazine survived and prospered for twenty-five years before Bill Clinton came into its sights. Now the former President is rich and smiling, and the Spectator is dead&nbsp;by Byron York &nbsp;..... &nbsp;ne Friday afternoon last July, Wladyslaw Pleszczyn ski, the No. 2 man at The American Spectator for twenty years, from its time as a small-circulation conservative intellectual review through its run as the shouting voice of anti-Clintonism, rummaged through the magazine's shut-down office in Arlington, Virginia, cleaning out his desk before movers arrived, on Monday, to cart everything away. The Spectator had been sold nearly a year earlier ...

<p>By R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.</p> <p>My first gaucherie committed in our nation's capital came in 1970. I was traveling with Vice President Spiro Agnew, the acerbic pol who for obvious reasons was trying to coax me away from the American Spectator to become one of his speechwriters.</p>

<p>Why when things have been going so swimmingly on the campaign trail did Howard Dean heave off a gratuitous lie to an Iowa newspaper? Moreover it was an obvious lie, the kind of lie a mischievous adolescent might tell. Mr. Dean, the leading moralizer in a field of moralizers, all primping and curtsying to win the Democratic presidential nomination, was asked to identify his "closest living relative in the armed services." Mr. Dean identified his brother, a young man who anyone familiar with Mr. Dean's biography knows, disappeared while a tourist in Laos in 1974.</p>

<p>By R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.</p> <p>Dr. Howard Dean poses for me an unanticipated moral dilemma. Throughout the 1990s, I debated him on a little-known public affairs show taped in Montreal -- beautiful Montreal, I should add. It is a grand city with much of the elegance of France and the added asset of having almost no native-born French.</p>

<p>By R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.</p> <p>"Hit 'em when they're down," is our motto. "Pile on," is our hearty exhortation. Who are we? We are the noble souls of the press. We are the self-described heroes, who write "history's first draft" as daily journalism is called. Yes, perhaps old Henry Ford had something when he described history as "bunk."</p>

WASHINGTON -- So the left-wing Democrats have found their Cosimo dé Medici! The Ford Foundation was not sufficient to satisfy their political needs, nor the Rockefeller Foundation, nor the MacArthur mother lode. They needed a billionaire, and in the person of George Soros they have him. The Clintons, Mr. McAuliffe of the Democratic National Committee, and all the other crybabies who whimpered and wrung their hands about the fate of American democracy when they found rich conservatives were funding conservative think tanks and intellectual reviews now have a rich political philanthropist of their own. At least they have found one...

Ramadan Rats   Print Friendly Format  E-Mail this to a Friend By Published 10/30/2003 12:53:54 AM WASHINGTON -- With the sudden eruption of violence in Iraq at the vestibule of Ramadan it is now apparent that at least someone reads American history, Saddam’s brutes and perhaps the terrorists from al Qaeda. American schoolchildren know very little American history, lost as they are in courses on gender genius and conflict resolution. Yet, our enemies in the Middle East remember the Vietnam War, the Tet Offensive, and how while our army triumphed in Vietnam our politicians rendered the war unwinnable at home. Ahead of the curve once again, the...

<p>Sir Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill, is in Washington, lecturing and writing. Tapped after the death of Churchill's son, Randolph, to write the authorized biography of this colossal figure, Mr. Gilbert produced eight volumes (not counting three volumes of documents), and he has written other books on Churchill, Napoleon, the Holocaust and other matters. He is among the most illustrious scholars of the day; and the British historian, Paul Johnson, calls him the most "industrious" and exact of historians.</p>

<p>I am wondering. At this point in the Democratic lunge for the presidential nomination, does Howard Dean have a monopoly on that sector of the Democratic vote that we may classify as the moron vote? Or is the idiotic Sen. John Pierre Kerry of Massachusetts chipping away at these serried ranks of oafs?</p>

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As the editor of the magazine that broke the Troopergate stories, I have endured a decade of lectures from journalism's bulging choir of ethicists. In the Troopergate stories, The American Spectator had Arkansas state troopers attesting to Boy Clinton's philandering and to more serious matters, to wit: his misuse of government employees, misuse of government offices and vehicles, and even his misuse of government credit cards. All the troopers' stories were verified by documentation or by other witnesses' accounts. Moreover, the Boy President's ithyphallic behavior continued in the White House, as was made luridly clear with the...

<p>As the editor of the magazine that broke the Troopergate stories, I have endured a decade of lectures from journalism's bulging choir of ethicists. In the Troopergate stories, the American Spectator had Arkansas state troopers attesting to Boy Clinton's philandering and to more serious matters, to wit: his misuse of government employees, misuse of government offices and vehicles, and even his misuse of government credit cards. All the troopers' stories were verified by documentation or by other witnesses' accounts.</p>

Washington -- As the editor of the magazine that broke the Troopergate stories, I have endured a decade of lectures from journalism's bulging choir of ethicists. In the Troopergate stories, The American Spectator had Arkansas state troopers attesting to Boy Clinton's philandering and to more serious matters, to wit: his misuse of government employees, misuse of government offices and vehicles, and even his misuse of government credit cards. All the troopers' stories were verified by documentation or by other witnesses' accounts. Moreover, the Boy President's ithyphallic behavior continued in the White House as was made luridly clear with the 1998...

The nation's pundits are surmising in their whiz-kid way that retired general Wesley Clark's candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination has been instigated by some mysterious stratagem devised by the Clintons. I suppose the thing is possible. Yet a more plausible explanation for this glamorous candidacy is that the telegenic general has been inspired by the California gubernatorial campaign of Arianna Huffington. She is an inspiration to all such luminaries of the Kultursmog. Watch for the General to come down hard on SUVs, as Arianna has, and to sniff at "big money in politics," as Arianna has from her Hollywood...

<p>In history one man can make a difference. This is the insight that has provoked historians to confect what is called the Great Man theory of history. For instance, had there never been a Napoleon Bonaparte, Europe would have remained an 18th century theme park far into the 19th century. Had there never been an Adolf Hitler, Europe would have remained a 19th century theme park far into the 20th century or at least until Josef Stalin made his move on Central Europe.</p>

Washington -- After waiting two and a half years for the Senate's Democrats to allow a vote on his nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Miguel Estrada has decided to become rich. Rather than hear such paragons of balderdash as the Hon. Charles E. Schumer calumniate him as politically extreme Estrada withdrew his name from the Senate's butcher block. Now he will continue his extremely lucrative law practice at one of Washington's most prestigious law firms. For over two years he has wondered if he would be able to afford a lovely country retreat...

The Current Crisis Washington -- America is at war. We have already lost more of our countrymen at home than on the battlefield. I would imagine that in the average American's mind Islamofascism and terrorism loom more menacingly than memories of the Soviet Union once did. Most Americans recognize that in this war we have no alternative but to fight. Yet seven of the fabled nine dwarves now seeking the Democratic presidential nomination are taking acerbic issue with the President. Said Senator John Pierre Kerry, the other day in his most intemperate declamation: "Overseas, George Bush has led and misled...

Washington -- Just as things were going swimmingly for the presidential campaign of Dr. Howard Dean, a thick gray storm cloud floats over his shiny oval of a head. In New Hampshire, scene of the first presidential primary, he has forged ahead of his nearest opponent, Senator John Pierre Kerry. Last month it was the Francophone senator who was ahead, 25% to 22%. Now Dr. Howard Dean is ahead 38% to 17% in New Hampshire. Vast crowds are turning up all over the country to hear him. In Seattle, Washington, 10,000 showed up in another of what the New York...

Before attending to this week's business I should like to defend myself from the machotypes who fell on me for saying in last week's column that a .30 caliber Weatherby magnum was capable of reaching a bird at 1200 yards. Allow me to quote from a memo to AmSpec's expert on the subject, my friend Chuck Fowler. Quoth: "A 165-grain bullet from a 30-378 Weatherby drops nineteen and a half inches at 500 yards. It screams out of the barrel at a blistering 3500 feet per second. I'm sure at 1200 yards it may drop twice again as much as...

<p>Being an insomniac, I read many of the works of the country's leading political scientists and academic historians at bedtime. Believe me, a thick book on voting patterns among the homeless in Brooklyn Heights or one by a leading historian about homosexuality among 17th-century slave traders in the Caribbean is more certain to induce sleep than a whole bottle of Seconol, though the barbiturate is arguably less deleterious to one's health.</p>

Washington -- Robert L. Bartley, the esteemed former editor of the Wall Street Journal, writes in his WSJ column that a "Stop-Dean Campaign" is emerging from the smoke-filled rooms of the Democratic Party, or is that the room-freshener-filled rooms? You know what hypochondriacs the Democratic panjandrums have become. Says Bartley, "The chance of a Dean nomination warms the hearts of the party's faithful, but chills the bones of its professional pols." They fear that Dr. Howard Dean will be another George McGovern, and they remember the grisly fate of their party under the leadership of that glassy-eyed gasbag. Apparently their...

<p>The other day Paul Gigot, the editorial page editor of the invaluable Wall Street Journal, wrote a very informative report from Iraq's holy city of Najaf. He wrote in part that things are not going as badly over there for us as most of the other journalists seem to think.</p>

<p>SEVILLE, Spain. -- Ever since reading Papa Hemingway's "Death In the Afternoon," I have wanted to attend a bullfight. In years past I had seen them on television, though I have been told that, as with hockey, television does not capture the full drama of the corrida de toros. In Spain there seems to be a bullring in every major city, and Seville's is particularly inviting, swept, as it is, by refreshing breezes. Fate presented me with an opportune moment to put myself in Papa's place at ringside, though I went cleanly shaven and completely sober.</p>

<p>MALAGA, Spain &#8212; I have been tooling around the south of Spain in search of anti-Americanism and the perfect bullfight. The anti-Americanism does not seem to be much in evidence. There was a homunculus waiter in Seville who became unpleasantly abrupt when my tip did not live up to his expectations &#8212; expectations that perhaps become a bit elevated when a Yank swaggers in. Yet, that is about it. Of course, I have been in the company of ordinary Spaniards, not university professors or parlor intellectuals, and those are the types that incubate such brilliant ideas as anti-Americanism.</p>

There is something obscene about the rising clamor for evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The cynical omniscient tone of career peaceniks such as Susan Sontag and of prehensile presidential candidates such as Dr. Howard Dean is repellent. It is not only that for a dozen years there has been international agreement that Saddam Hussein's regime had these weapons and, in some instances, used them. It is what we have already found in abundance throughout Iraq that makes the sniping contemptible, namely: mass graves, torture chambers, hidden prisons. The hubbub over the missing weapons of mass destruction, attendant...

<p>Sen. Hillary Clinton's apocryphal memoir, following as it does upon the publication of her manservant Sidney Blumenthal's apocryphal memoir, reminds all serious students of the Clinton saga that the Clintons never let you down. They are always true to their nature. They lie. They lie when the do not have to and they deliver a whopper when a little white lie would suffice. And another thing: They are not going to move on. They are not going to "put it all behind them."</p>

Washington -- The dark times at the New York Times grow darker. Just days after the paper flagellates itself with a front-page story admitting that it repeatedly published fabricated stories full of plagiarism and other journalistic sleight-of-hand from a 27-year-old con-man reporter whom the editors of the Slippery Rock Herald would have apprehended, the indispensable Drudge Report announces that "at least two more NY Times reporters are being investigated for possible journalistic irregularities." Drudge, one of modern American journalism's prodigies (and naturally a fellow objurgated by establishment journalists everywhere), goes on the reproduce a memo from the Times' editors calling...

<p>In September 2002, the Bush administration released a 31-page strategy statement that took cognizance of the new type of international conflict facing the civilized powers. It was this national strategy statement that got us to where we are today with two rogue nations, Taliban Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, disarmed and other rogue nations feeling the heat. Terrorists everywhere have sobered up a bit.</p>

<p>Some have compared news reports of former Education Secretary William J. Bennett's gambling habits with investigations of former President Bill Clinton. But one veteran Clinton foe isn't buying the analogy.</p> <p>"The American Spectator's reportage on Boy Clinton in the 1990s is in no way comparable to the invasion of Bill Bennett's privacy by the Washington Monthly and Newsweek. From our first Troopergate story through our revelations about technology transfer and other irregularities by the Clintons, I maintained that Clinton's fundamental offense was not sex, but the abuse of power, first in the Governor's office and later at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.</p>

<p>What was it that Tom Wolfe once called the American press? If memory serves, he called it the "Courtly Gentleman." That was the synecdoche Mr. Wolfe created for the standard-issue journalist, who, he said, always strikes "the seemly sentiment." The perceptive Mr. Wolfe was once again having fun with pomposity and getting it right.</p>

Washington -- Last Saturday, after awakening at 5:00 a.m. in Virginia's Shenandoah Mountains to hunt wild turkey, I showered and dressed in black tie for one of my favorite Washington evenings, the White House Correspondents' Association dinner. If I did not see any turkeys during the matutinal hunt, I was guaranteed to see them in abundance during the vespertine melee that this distinguished gathering has become. In all of New York there is nothing quite like it, though you can find an approximation of it on the Virginia countryside. I have in mind the county fair, at least the county...

<p>One of the gratifying developments of President George W. Bush's World Crisis is the intellectual transformation of Hollywood, Calif. No longer is it merely a preserve of slob producers and air-head actors hustling for the philistines' bucks. It is the intellectual jewel of the Western World.</p>

<p>Have you seen the April 7 issue of Time magazine? It appears that last week the Coalition of the Willing lost the war — and to Iraq, not to the Red Army, not to the Wehrmacht, not Napoleon's Grand Army, but to Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard.</p>

<p>Having now witnessed the sympathetic treatment that so many world leaders accorded Saddam Hussein, especially at the United Nations, an unexpected thought occurs: Can Adolf Hitler's reputation, too, be rescued?</p> <p>I would not have thought so until I witnessed the supportive treatment Saddam's regime has been getting. In France fully a third of the populace is pulling for him in his war with the "Anglo-Americans." Who are these Frenchmen? Possibly they are the descendants of those French who collaborated with the Nazis.</p>