The two most powerful Republicans in Congress say the memory of Army captain Humayun Khan, a Muslim-American soldier who died in Iraq in 2004, should be honored and valued—but both stopped short of criticizing the GOP nominee for president, Donald Trump. Khan's parents spoke out against Trump's…
In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Fred Barnes and Vic Matus join host Eric Felten to discuss the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
This week, we learned Bill Clinton LOVES balloons, Bernie Sanders lost his speech, and Terry McAuliffe lets loose.
Hillary Clinton had an opportunity Thursday night to make the electoral map a mad scramble. For months, we've heard about Donald Trump's Rust Belt strategy, by which he would parlay a blue-collar coalition into blue-state pickups like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. For three days this week,…
How did it get to this point?
Philadelphia
If Bill Clinton truly did fall asleep during his wife's speech at the Democratic convention on Thursday night, you can hardly blame him. And that's not (only) because of the soporific content of the remarks. Rather, Clinton's speech went late into the night, not wrapping up until around midnight,…
Tim Kaine has moved sharply to the left on the issue of abortion over the last 10 years, but there remains some confusion over where the Democratic vice presidential nominee stands on the issue of federal funding of abortion.
Philadelphia
On Thursday, Khizr M. Khan, the father of Army Captain Humayun Khan, addressed the Democratic convention.
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Is there any politician as ill-suited to a city as Hillary Clinton is to Philadelphia?
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President Obama brazenly overplayed Hillary Clinton's experience in his 2016 DNC speech Wednesday night.
Many sorrowful conservatives observed after President Obama’s speech Wednesday night that Democrats, not Republicans, are the party trumpeting American greatness and optimism this year. To hear some tell it, John Winthrop was in the house. "American exceptionalism and greatness, shining city on…
"Within the context of the times it is clear that 'all men' was a euphemism for 'humanity,' and thus those people, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, who used the Declaration of Independence to demand equality for African Americans and women seized the…
As Jonathan Last recounts, Barack Obama's speech Wednesday night was the most motivated, focused, and impassioned address that he has given in some time And that certainly isn't due to his long-time love of Hillary Clinton. Rather, with Donald Trump having pulled even—or slightly ahead—in the…
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As Hillary Clinton prepared this week to become the first woman in U.S. history to be nominated for president by a major political party, her campaign reposted a video ad on Twitter originally produced by the Hillary for President campaign late in 2015. The ad, titled "44 boys is too many",…
Finally, something went right for the Democrats in Philadelphia on Wednesday night.
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Former President Bill Clinton spoke Tuesday evening at the Democratic National Committee Convention in Philadelphia, the same night his wife Hillary received the Democratic nomination for president. Around that time or shortly thereafter, the Donald Trump campaign website briefly added a press…
Philadelphia
You may not remember this, but four years ago Bill Clinton spoke on the third night of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. And it turned out to be the hinge of the campaign against Mitt Romney.
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer John McCormack on former president Bill Clinton's speech at the Democratic National Convention.
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On Tuesday, the boss talked with Andrea Mitchell about the importance of not underestimating Donald Trump and the value of speeches at the Democratic convention.
It is a fact well known to every student of the Constitution that the Framers' fourth national institution—the presidential selection system—never functioned as intended. Yet the 2016 presidential election keeps bringing the Framers' concerns to the forefront, as we lose control of every item on…
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The boss spoke to ABC News about the Democratic convention so far and which events at the convention will have an impact that lasts past the next few days.
During morning mass Tuesday, two ISIS terrorists stormed a Catholic church in France and killed an 86 year-old priest. Another person was seriously wounded. Monday afternoon, German authorities announced that a suicide bomb attack in Ansbach was perpetrated by a man pledging allegience ISIS leader…
Day one of the Democratic convention was dominated by disgruntled Bernie Sanders supporters. The protested in the city; they chanted and booed inside the arena. And so even though 90 percent of Sanders voters now say they're supporting Hillary Clinton, the Sanders vanguard was still fighting.
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When accepting the Republican nomination in Cleveland last week, Donald Trump said:
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The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with online editor Michael Warren on the Bernie disruptions on opening day of the DNC.
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Last week, at several points during the Republican convention, the crowd erupted into chants of "Lock Her Up!" in reference to Hillary Clinton. To say that the media found this distasteful and worthy of stern fingerwagging, would be an understatement. See "The GOP's new convention theme: 'Lock her…
Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus floated a conscience exception Monday afternoon for Democratic convention delegates upset by the party's meddling on behalf of Hillary Clinton during the primary.
Philadelphia
At a rally sprinkled with anti-Democratic National Committee and anti-Hillary Clinton signs on Monday in Philadelphia, Bernie Sanders implored his supporters to vote for Clinton and Tim Kaine.
Outgoing Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz spoke through unceasing crowd noise and jeers at a delegate breakfast for her state Monday morning, spinning the tremendous "interest" in her remarks into a plug for Florida.
The Democratic party has been plunged into turmoil over an email focusing on, of all things, whether or not Bernie Sanders believes in God. It's a remarkable turn of events, considering that Sanders has tried so hard to avoid talking about that very subject.
Donald Trump is leading Hillary Clinton in one new poll and tied with her another. Both polls were taken after the Republican National Convention, giving Trump an overall lead of 0.2 percentage points over Clinton in the Real Clear Politics average of polls. This marks Trump's first RCP lead since…
In an article and podcast posted Sunday, Politico's Glenn Thrush interviewed the boss about 2016.
Cleveland
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on Hillary's VP pick, Virginia's Tim Kaine.
When news broke that Hillary Clinton had chosen Virginia senator Tim Kaine to be her running mate, NARAL (the group formerly known as the National Abortion Rights Action League) showered praise on Kaine for maintaining a "100% pro-choice voting record in the U.S. Senate." Despite saying that he's a…
Cleveland
The New York Times reports:
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on Donald Trump's convention speech and about spending a week at the RNC Convention.
In his Thursday night convention speech, Peter Thiel cribbed his same old thesis but Trump-style.
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on Trump's convention speech.
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Cleveland
Ted Cruz's speech Wednesday night was an impressive endorsement of conservatism, the Constitution, and liberty—and an equally impressive non-endorsement of Donald Trump. It was, in other words, a conservative version of Ted Kennedy's "Dream Will Never Die" speech, given at the 1980 Democratic…
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with deputy online editor Chris Deaton on Mike Pence's address to the GOP convention.
Cleveland
Byron York has an interesting piece Thursday about the Trump team's bizarre eagerness to get into a fight with John Kasich. You should read the whole thing, but the short version is this: Kasich, either out of pique or self-interest or principle, didn't want to participate in the convention in his…
Cleveland
Something is missing from the Republican National Convention YouTube page. The page includes Monday's live stream, and a link to Thursday's live stream, but not Tuesday's or Wednesday's.
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The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with contributing editor Charles Krauthammer on Ted Cruz's speech at the GOP convention.
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Well, it's finally here, the moment we've all been waiting for, when Donald Trump is formally enshrined as the face, the body, and the soul of the Republican party. I hope it works out for them ...
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Cleveland
On Tuesday night, House speaker Paul Ryan gave a surprisingly enthusiastic speech on behalf of Donald Trump, imploring Republicans to give it their all in 2016 and "unify this party" in the interest of achieving "a conservative governing majority."
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Cleveland
One of the truths I've come to believe over the years in covering conventions is that they play differently in the hall than they do on TV. I'm not in Cleveland, so I can't tell you how it played to the room, but on the screen, Chris Christie's show-trial indictment of Hillary Clinton came across…
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Under Article V of the Constitution, a constitutional amendment may be proposed by a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress or by a special convention called by Congress on the application of two-thirds of the state legislatures. Thus, Congress controls one path for proposing amendments,…
Cleveland
Trumpism is a many splendored thing. It encompasses both support for the Iraq war and opposition to it. On a meta-level, it condemns supporters of the Iraq war and also forgives them.
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On Twitter, Jarrett Hill noted a big problem in Melania Trump's Republican National Convention speech. It was First Lady Michelle Obama's.
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Arkansas senator Tom Cotton defended Donald Trump's track record of receiving false and misleading ratings from fact checkers Monday.
House speaker Paul Ryan said Donald Trump is "not my kind of conservative" Monday, as he tried to explain the ideology of the presumptive GOP nominee for president.
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The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on good books to read at the GOP Convention.
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On Sunday, 60 Minutes aired a joint interview with Donald Trump and his vice presidential pick, Mike Pence. After Trump suggested that as president he would declare war on ISIS, Lesley Stahl noted, "but we did go to war, if you remember. We went to Iraq."
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Cleveland
Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University political scientist, has published a predictive model of presidential elections for decades. Through three simple factors—economic growth, presidential job approval, and tenure of the incumbent party—Abramowitz explains most of the variation in presidential…