“In my darker moods, I suspect that American politics, at least at the presidential level, is ultimately just a popularity contest. In the television age, the more personally charming guy wins — or, at minimum, has a monumental advantage. Partisans on both sides tend to not like this argument for all sorts of reasons. For instance, they tend to like their candidates better than the other team’s. Of course, this is often just a rationalization. If you honestly believed that Michael Dukakis was a more likable guy than George H. W. Bush, or that Nixon would be a more entertaining drinking buddy than JFK, you should seek therapy, or a vigorous regimen of enemas, or both. The simple fact is that if John Kerry and Al Gore weren’t pompous human toothaches, they would have blown George W. Bush out of the water.” -Jonah Goldberg, May 8, 2009

"With their memories of the sixties, when to be young was very heaven, they still believe that an oppositional stance in pursuit of perfection is virtuous in itself—indeed, is the prime or sole content of virtue. And it is this belief that renders them interesting to Hollander, for it makes genuine moral reflection about the nature of various governments and policies impossible. It transforms merely personal discontents into matters of supposedly great general importance."

-Theodore Dalrymple on Paul Hollander: The Only Superpower: Reflections on Strength, Weakness, and Anti-Americanism

• Peggy Noonan
• Christopher Buckley
• Nicole Wallace
• Steve Schmidt
• David Brooks
• David Frum
• Jeffrey Hart
• Arlen Specter**
• Olympia Snowe*
• Susan Collins*

h/t Red State

*RINO Lepers

**Who says a leper can't change his spots?

Even The Lepers Don't Want Her

Kathleen Parker

Quarantined for Observation

Michael Steele