RealClearPolitics Articles

The deadly riot at our nation’s Capitol stands as a monument to the power of words. When misused, words can confuse, divide, incite, and even kill. But history has taught us words also have the power to inform, inspire, unite, and protect.       Since rioters breached the Capitol doors on Jan. 6, more than 40,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. Yet the toll of this unfathomable pandemic is being overshadowed by the fallout from another presidential impeachment and the threat of more violence as our nation prepares for President-elect...

As our nation observes one of the most sacred and solemn traditions in our republic, the peaceful transition of power, on so many minds is the question: What’s ahead for the Republican Party?  I, like millions of Americans of all political stripes, was horrified by what took place at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. I was equally horrified by the misinformation and false rhetoric that allowed it to happen in the first place. Make no mistake, the president’s rhetoric directly contributed to the violence against our nation’s greatest symbol of democracy. It must continually be...

Let us begin with this fact: The left always suppresses speech. Since Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, there has been no example of the left in control and not crushing dissent.  That is one of the important differences between liberal and left: Liberalism and liberals believe in free speech. (The present leftist threat to freedom in America, the greatest threat to freedom in American history, is made possible because liberals think they have more to fear from conservatives than from the left. Liberals do not understand that the left regards liberals as...

With Democrats about to control all the levers of power in Washington, the biggest winners might be the wind and solar companies. These firms' stocks continue to surge mostly because President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to invest several hundred billion dollars in green energy through a pipeline of taxpayer-funded grants, loans, tax credits and loan guarantees. This game plan looks suspiciously like a replay of the litany of green "stimulus" fiascoes that Biden piloted as vice president back in 2009 with the $800 billion Obama stimulus plan. The experiment in the government as an investment...

As we stumble through the twilight of the Trump era, let us devote a moment to an actual issue. Let us briefly visit Donald Trump's vow to save the coal industry -- notable because it figured prominently in his successful 2016 campaign. His "Trump Digs Coal" sign at a rally showcasing miners in hard hats signaled to blue-collar voters that he was on their side. Did he Make Anthracite Great Again? He did not. Trump leaves office with the coal industry in collapse. Over his four years, America saw a 24 percent drop in average quarterly coal mining jobs. In 2019 alone, more than eight coal...

That mob that split off from the Donald Trump rally of Jan. 6 to invade the Capitol has proven a godsend to the left. The death of a Capitol cop has enabled the left -- which spent the summer after George Floyd's death trashing "racist cops" and shouting, "Defund the Police!" -- to posture as fighting allies of the men in blue. Liberals who implored us to understand the grievances of the rioters, looters and arsonists last summer have become sudden converts to the church of law and order. Elites who had condoned the smashing of statues and monuments to Columbus, Washington, Jefferson and...

MANNS CHOICE, Penn. -- There is a little burst of wonder that road travelers experience when they head west out of Bedford, climb Tulls Hill and are welcomed by the Lincoln Motor Court at the crest. It's a burst of wonder up for sale. The motor court is a concept that is both familiar and foreign to the modern eye: part motel, part cabin, delightfully welcoming as 12 detached cabins all form a semicircle around the central office, nestled cozily among scores of pine trees. Long before the orange-roofed Howard Johnson's dotted America's highways or Holiday Inns opened at interchanges of our...

We would picnic on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol, my friends and I. Technically it wasn’t allowed, but if you didn’t play touch football or whip a Frisbee around -- if you were discreet about the blanket and food -- you could Renoir away the day on the lush, tree-shaded lawn below the East Front. There was no “security” fence; just knee-high, gray granite borders designed by the great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. When I came up from Kentucky decades ago to begin my career as a Washington reporter, “security” was not a major concern at the...

Good morning, it’s Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2021, that last full day of the chaotic, problematic presidency of Donald John Trump. The man may yet manage to get himself convicted in a Senate impeachment trial -- after the fact, as it were – but either way his presidency ends tomorrow. Today is the birthday of several American politicians, past and present, including Jose Aponte Hernandez of Puerto Rico, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, New Jersey Rep. Mikie Sherrill, and incoming Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. But the birthday I want to linger on is that of Robert E. Lee, born at...

WASHINGTON (AP) — When Joe Biden takes the oath of office Wednesday outside a wounded U.S. Capitol, he will begin reshaping the office of the presidency itself as he sets out to lead a bitterly divided nation struggling with a devastating pandemic and an insurrection meant to stop his ascension to power. Biden had campaigned as a rebuke to President Donald Trump, a singular figure whose political power was fueled by discord and grievance. The Democrat framed his election as one to “heal the soul” of the nation and repair the presidency, restoring the White House image as a...

Donald Trump was permanently banned from Twitter on Jan. 8, bringing to an end to perhaps the world’s most prolific and influential Twitter account. While Twitter has deleted all of his tweets, the Trump Twitter Archive has preserved the 56,571 utterances sent by @realDonaldTrump since his first one on May 4, 2009. What can we learn about how Trump used his account over the years? The timeline below shows the total number of tweets he sent each week since he joined. Trump didn’t begin tweeting heavily until August 2011 and really embraced it starting in September 2012 as he...

In George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” members of the Outer Party of Oceania engage in the Two Minutes Hate ritual against Emmanuel Goldstein, who is supposed to be the enemy of the people but may actually just be a fabricated symbol to distract the people from their real enemy — Big Brother. In Nancy Pelosi’s “Twenty Twenty-One,” members of the Democratic Party engage in the Two Hours Hate against Donald Trump, who is supposed to be the enemy of the people, but may actually just be a fabricated symbol to distract the people from their real enemy...

A sprawling series of barbed-wire barricades surround the U.S. Capitol, and so many members of the National Guard are camped out inside they’re sleeping on floors. While bracing for the possibility of more violence in Washington and beyond, Democrats are urging swift confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s national security team. There’s one obvious problem, however: Before the storming of the Capitol that left five dead and a nation aghast and on edge, Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s choice to lead the Department of Homeland Security, was facing one of the toughest...

Senate Republicans have the opportunity to not only convict Donald Trump of “incitement of insurrection,” but also punish him with a ban on ever running for political office again, so he could never again be president or the standard-bearer of the Republican Party. If you are a Republican who believes Trump is a figurative cancer on the GOP, then this is your best chance to remove the tumor. The problem, as with any operation, is that the procedure comes with risk. For one thing, the surgeon might not remove all of the cancerous growth. What if Trump and Trumpism have already...

Good morning, it’s Monday, Jan. 18, 2021. Over the weekend, the human race hit a grim milestone: The novel coronavirus that spread rapidly out of central China a year ago has now claimed 2 million lives. That’s the official tally compiled by Johns Hopkins University. When you think that China’s government still admits to only 4,800 deaths -- in the world’s most populous nation and where this contagion originated -- the true number is almost certainly significantly higher. In two days, when Joseph R. Biden Jr. takes the oath of office as the 46th U.S. president, the...

It took a MAGA-draped mob storming the U.S. Capitol and five deaths for a handful of Republicans in Congress finally to have the courage to stand up to Donald Trump. Ten GOP House members joined all their Democratic colleagues to impeach Wednesday, making Trump the only president ever to be twice impeached. Rep. Liz Cheney, the third-ranking Republican leader in the House, explained her vote: “The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened...

Democratic victories in the Senate runoff elections in Georgia have reopened a pathway for federal aid to states and local governments. These elections produced a 50-50 tie in the upper chamber, which Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will be able to break in favor of the Democrats. “This has increased the likelihood that Congress will pass legislation providing federal assistance,” said Erlinda Doherty, director of the budgets and revenue committee for the National Conference of State Legislatures. This bright prospect for the states comes against the backdrop of the impeachment...

WASHINGTON -- The knives were out for me in January 2017 when I arrived in Washington as the White House correspondent for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. You see, I worked for what scolds liked to call Sheldon Adelson's paper -- and that was a no-no. Adelson died Monday night, and I never got a chance to say this. Had he given me marching orders? I heard that question a lot in 2017. In fact, I didn't meet or talk to Adelson until 2018, when I introduced myself at an event ahead of the Jerusalem Embassy opening. The "marching orders" question is one I never heard directed at the many other...

Among all the bad policy coming out of Springfield, Ill., let’s celebrate the occasional glimmer of good sense.  But first, some background: Illinois’s legislature passed legislation on policing and related matters last week in the dead of night. The 764-page bill passed the state Senate at 4:49 a.m. after being introduced and distributed to the members at 3:04 a.m. Only a few legislative insiders could have possibly known what was in the bill before voting; the rest of the legislature, first seeing the measure upon its introduction, voted blind. Only after the Democrat...