Free Republic

Jonah Goldberg wrote a column for National Review before departing for his Christmas holiday in Hawaii. Was it a retelling of a long ago night before Christmas, when a tiny Jonah in footy PJs couldn’t sleep for hope of a pony under the tree? No. It was a screed titled “Conservative Facts.” What set off Goldberg was a column in American Greatness by Chris Buskirk titled “Death of The Weekly Standard Signals Rebirth of the Right.” Goldberg speckles his efforts with pop culture references to things like Star Trek. Example: in this column, he says Washington “picked a wrong week...

The last two presidential election cycles have revealed a stinking hypocrisy in conservatives: They profess their love of capitalism and entrepreneurship, but when offered a real capitalist and entrepreneur, they go, “Eek, a mouse!” And they tear him down in proud social-democrat fashion. In the off season, they sound like Friedrich Hayek. When the game is on, they sound like Huey Long, Bella Abzug, or Bob Shrum. Last time around, Mike Huckabee said Romney “looks like the guy who laid you off.” Conservatives reacted like this was the greatest mot since Voltaire or something. To me, Romney looked like someone...

Last month’s “Restoring Honor” rally (“America today begins to turn back to God”) and the Delaware GOP primary victory of Christine O’Donnell (“We’re not trying to take back our country; we are our country”) reveal that the Tea Party movement isn’t really a revival of Goldwater Republicanism. Rather, it’s becoming increasingly clear that its nearest antecedent is 1992-era Pat Buchanan. Revisit, if you will, the crescendo of Pat’s notorious convention speech at the GOP Convention in Houston, in which he exhorted the “Buchanan Brigades” to “come home and support” that RINO, George H.W. Bush. He concluded with a dramatic and...