John Podhoretz:

You cannot beat something with nothing. Obama had a record that was less than nothing but a machine and an approach to victory that were more than enough to add up to something. Romney, in the end, had nothing but Obama’s nothing.

Seen in this light, the notion that the right is dying is ludicrous. Romney called himself “severely conservative,” and that may be true of him personally, but it certainly was never true of him politically. Indeed, it was only when he finally and at long last ran as himself—the confident and well-spoken serious person with leadership skills—that he began making the sale to the American people. Then, when his challenge was to put meat on those bones in the second and third debates, he could not do so. When he needed to convince people not only that he had it in him to be presidential but that he had distinct ideas of what he would do once he became president, he failed. Conservatism could have saved him. He did not understand it, and he rejected it.

How can Romney’s loss invalidate the right when he was not a candidate of the right? It can, perhaps, as a matter of image, but it cannot as a matter of fact.

…The United States will now undergo a four-year stress test of American liberalism, as Obama will get his tax hike and ObamaCare will be implemented. Those who think Obama cared about people like them will now experience the full extent of his caring.

As Mencken said, democracy is about the idea that the common man know what he wants, and should get it good and hard.

…and its ideological underpinnings. My thoughts on that, and Paul Krugman, over at PJMedia.

It’s like Godzilla versus Bambi:

Krugman knows all this, of course. He just writes as if we don’t.

Which is what makes him a hack, for whom the Times should be embarrassed to provide a platform. Of course, they have a lot of hackery to be embarrassed about.