A Third Party Is the Coward’s Way Out
Plus: A Memoir of Wine and Violence
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MONA CHAREN: A Third Party Is the Coward’s Way Out.
DURING THE ALL-TOO-BRIEF one-on-one contest between Nikki Haley and Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, there was a good deal of analysis declaring it the last stand of the Reaganite vision for the GOP versus the MAGA takeover. That was the wishiest of wishful thinking—and not just because such large segments of the current Republican party delight in Trump. It’s also because the Reaganite wing has made such a poor showing for itself.
CATHY YOUNG: A Fake Vote for Putin, a Win for the Protesters
“HELL VOTES FOR THE DEVIL” was how Alexander Nevzorov, the sharp-tongued former Russian TV journalist turned émigré podcaster, characterized the “presidential election” that took place in Russia over the weekend. But no metaphor for the ritual vote that crowned Vladimir Putin for a sixth term could be more scathing than a piece of election agitprop shown in an actual Russian TV news segment—a microminiature sculpture in which a 5-millimeter ballot with microscopic print is held between the front legs of a preserved grasshopper and then dropped into a tiny glass ballot box:
🎥 PODCASTS AND VIDEOS 🎧
Bulwark Podcast with Tim Miller: Susan Glasser: An Edifice of Lies [Ad-Free🔐]
Just Between Us: Props to Mike Pence 🔐
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ALEC DENT: A Memoir of Wine and Violence.
THE DELTA IN THE REARVIEW MIRROR is Hillbilly Elegy meets In Cold Blood—part memoir, part ethnography, part true crime. It follows the life of author Di Rushing, focusing on the fourteen years she and her husband, Sam, ran the first winery in Mississippi until its ultimate destruction at the hands of a disgruntled former employee who terrorized the Rushing family and their business.
ALSO from Alec Dent @ Worn & Wound: Collector Profile: Andrew Benzer and His Prodigious “To Sell” Pile. ⌚️
BRENT ORRELL AND DAVID VELDRAN: Conservatives Distrust Higher Ed—But Still Need Degrees.
AMERICANS’ FAITH IN OUR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES has seen a marked decline in recent years, with the percentage of adults who say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the institutions of higher education plunging from 57 percent to 36 percent between 2015 and 2023, according to Gallup. While the rising cost of a college degree is likely a major culprit behind this trend, another, more pernicious factor is at work—ideology. Confidence in higher ed has slipped among all party identifications, but among Republicans it fell right off a cliff: The percentage of Republicans who professed “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher ed dropped a whopping 37 percentage points, nearly double the national average, and four times the dropoff for Democrats.
🚨OVERTIME🚨
Happy Tuesday! Candidates I’m watching tonight: Matt Dolan & Phil Heimlich in OH-2, whom I profiled in 2022. Heimlich is the only honorable choice.
Election #ProTip: Don’t concede until the polls close, and certainly do not send a concession email before the polls close, like Derek Myers did in OH-2’s 11-way race! (Mediaite).
Bob Dylan wrote a song for Huey Lewis, but Lewis never recorded it… and lost the tape (NBC).
It Turns Out the ‘Deep State’… Is Actually Kind of Awesome (NYT).
The last days… of the Boeing whistleblower (Fortune).
Pro-Trump lawyer arrested on bench warrant… in Washington, D.C. What did she think was going to happen?! (Detroit News)
Christine Blasey Ford Testifies… Again (The Atlantic).
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