Christmas special | The Spectator

GOP West: could Republicans have an Arizona advantage?

This article is in The Spectator’s December 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. November inflicted more dismay on Republicans. Twelve months out from the presidential election, state and local races this year subjected the GOP to another bloodbath. The party lost both chambers of the Virginia legislature and gave up the governor’s mansion in deep-red Kentucky, despite a campaign intervention by the President. The drubbing Republicans received in city and county contests near Philadelphia was the most frightening of all, presaging difficulty ahead for Trump’s reelection efforts in Pennsylvania. Democrats could relax: 2018 was not a fluke after all.

Roger Kimball

The Ukraine blame game

This article is in The Spectator’s December 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. The unfolding deep-state effort to remove Donald Trump from office diffuses an acrid aroma of paranoia, partly because of its ever-expanding cast of enemies. After the tears and disbelief of 2016, there were rumors about ‘Russian collusion’ between the Trump campaign and Moscow. It emerged that investigations into Trump and his associates dated back to at least July 2016, when the FBI covertly launched ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ to investigate Michael Flynn, Carter Page, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and other Trump campaign associates. The Obama administration had been sniffing around Trump since 2015, when his campaign first began to show signs of life.

Ross Clark

Britain is dangerously close to having an overtly anti-American prime minister

This article is in The Spectator’s December 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. What have Fidel Castro, Nicolás Maduro, Hamas and the Khomeinist regime in Iran got in common? That the US has not exactly seen eye to eye with them over past years and decades? Well, yes. But there is another thing too: Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour party leader who could soon be the British prime minister, has warmly praised them all. Castro, according to Corbyn on the occasion of the former Cuban leader’s death in 2016, was a ‘champion of social justice’. Corbyn rang in to a Venezuelan TV program in 2014 to praise Maduro, who introduced him as a ‘friend of Venezuela’.

Spectator Editorial

Forever in our debt

President Donald Trump will enter an election year with the threat of impeachment still hanging over him. Yet in most respects his administration is in a far better position than his critics could have imagined when he took office nearly three years ago. Economic growth, while in retreat in recent months, remains ahead of that of other developed countries. Stock markets, which Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said might ‘never recover’ from Trump’s election, are at near-record highs. Where Trump’s opponents feared that his bellicose language would spark a nuclear conflict in North Korea, he defused the situation. His approach to foreign policy may be incoherent, but it hasn’t yet proven to be disastrous.

Jacob Heilbrunn

Who likes Mike?

This article is in The Spectator’s December 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. It’s springtime for billionaires. Former New York mayor and media mogul Michael Bloomberg, who earned fame, among other things, for his abortive crusade against oversized high-calorie sugared drinks, is now joining liberal activist and billionaire Tom Steyer in running for the Democratic presidential nomination. Bloomberg, who turns 78 in February, has filed to enter the primary in Alabama and plans to skip the first four primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

Chadwick Moore

Trump vs the cities

Update June 2, 2020: There’s something very wrong with our cities, as the devastating riots this week show. Last year, in the the Spectator's Christmas US edition, I wrote about how in a few short years the liberal city rapidly became the progressive city under an organized insurgency of far-left activists embedding themselves in municipal governments. The results have been devastating, as our once beautiful cities marinate in dirt, disease and strife. Now, they are burning. Failed progressive policies have never been more evident than they are today. With the election five months away, Trump now has an opportunity to pitch himself as the leader who will fight against the degradation of the inner cities.

Toby Young

The real reason for college food fights

This article is in The Spectator’s December 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. Oberlin College hit the headlines earlier this year when it lost a high-profile lawsuit against a small business. Staff and students at the liberal arts college had accused a bakery in the local town of racism and organized a boycott after an employee caught an African American student shoplifting. The owners of the bakery sued the university for defamation, infliction of emotional distress and tortious interference. Turned out, the store’s employees were completely color-blind when it came to stopping people stealing — of the 40 shoplifters arrested in the previous five years, 32 were white — and the jury found with the plaintiffs.

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