Martin Longman

Last week, vehement anti-Trumper George Will declared that conservatism in 2017 is “soiled by scowling primitives.” Washington Monthly blogger Martin Longman doesn’t disagree, but he contends that Will is partly to blame for that sordid state of affairs.

In a Friday post on the website of The Washington Monthly, not of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Martin Longman discussed President Trump in strikingly medical terms. “The reason Trump has become so vulnerable so quickly is because he’s treating Washington like the pathogen when he’s the infectious agent,” declared Longman. “A better politician might be able to take over the host…

Hillary Clinton’s popular-vote margin continues to be a compelling news story for some, including Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, who believes that the Electoral College should vote next month for Clinton because she was “the people’s choice.” Even though The Washington Monthly’s Martin Longman thinks Lessig’s view is “nonsense” and that Donald Trump’s loss of the PV is trivial under our…

Some left-wing pundits, anticipating that Donald Trump will lose on November 8, are pre-emptively trying to make sure that conservatives take the blame for Trump’s nomination. Gary Legum of Salon argued that right-wing news outlets “have both spent the better part of the Obama administration pushing the exact silly demagoguery  and conspiracy theories that riled up the conservative base and…

According to one left-of-center blogger and one right-of-center professor, a major takeaway from the 2016 presidential contest is that ideological conservatism is unpopular, even in the Republican party. Samuel Goldman, a political-science prof at the George Washington University and a frequent contributor to The American Conservative, stated that the “great message” of Donald Trump’s campaign “…

At the Democratic convention, Bill Clinton accused Republicans of fabricating a “cartoon alternative” to the real Hillary Clinton. The Washington Monthly’s Martin Longman claims that Democrats don’t need to create cartoon versions of conservatives since there’s already “something cartoonish about the right,” and in that regard Donald Trump “seems like a natural successor” to Sarah Palin and (wait…

In a few months, Barack Obama will become the fifth post-World War II president to serve two full terms. The Washington Monthly’s Martin Longman thinks Obama tops the other four in terms of “popularity and moral credibility,” as indicated not only by the positive reception Obama got for his Wednesday-night DNC speech boosting Hillary Clinton, but by the public’s curiosity beforehand about what he…

Though the Brexit debate didn’t break down along ideological lines, some liberal writers focused their morning-after scorn on pro-Leave conservatives. Talking Points Memo editor and publisher Josh Marshall wrote that American conservatives rooted for Brexit because of “the same turn back…the clock to glory nonsense that animates Trumpism…American conservative glee [over Brexit] is just a retreat…

One demographic group you won’t see mentioned in poll results from Quinnipiac, Monmouth, or pretty much anywhere else is “aggressive a**hole[s].” Nonetheless, according to Washington Monthly blogger Martin Longman, such voters have constituted the key bloc in this year’s Republican presidential primary-and-caucus process. “If you take the electorate and subtract every laid off mechanic and guy…

If judicial review means that the U.S. Supreme Court is a de facto super-legislature that can in effect supersede actual legislatures, that’s fine with Washington Monthly blogger Martin Longman. In a Wednesday post, Longman acknowledged that certain SCOTUS rulings over the past several decades have been politically motivated, but argued that those were appropriate remedies for the “deplorable and…

Liberals disagree on when Republicans changed from a mere opposition party into a truly malign force. For obvious reasons, the early 1980s are a popular choice. Martin Longman thinks it happened later, during Bill Clinton’s second term, but also speculates that the GOP’s “crackpot” period may be almost over. Donald Trump’s presidential bid, contended Longman in a Friday post, may even spell the…

These days, one of the biggest meta-debates in politics concerns apportioning blame for the staying power of the Donald Trump circus. How much of Trump’s popularity is attributable to, say, the mainstream media? To conservative talk radio? In a Sunday post, The Washington Monthly’s Martin Longman pointed the finger at Republicans and absolved President Obama. Apropos of Trump’s economically…

Some analysts have pointed out that it’d be risky for Republicans to preemptively block anyone President Obama nominates to succeed Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, but that approach wouldn’t necessarily end when Obama leaves office. Washington Monthly blogger Martin Longman believes that if in 2017 a Democrat becomes president but GOPers retain sufficient power in the Senate, they’ll just…

Democrats have long envied Republicans’ message discipline, which presumably means Dems are relishing what Martin Longman calls the “disarray” in the GOP and in its main “official organ,” Fox News. “I don’t think right-wing media is set up to deal with an unorthodox candidate [Donald Trump] who doesn’t consistently hew to the conservative line,” remarked Longman. “I also don’t know how they’d…