Salon.com > Ross Douthat

GOP plan: Bring Dubya back!

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 12:42:00 +0000

It’s fast becoming a cliché, but it’s nevertheless the truth: If Republicans plan to win the White House any time soon, they’re going to have to change. And that change will have to be more substantial than simply asking the Romney clan to ease up a bit on the whole public service thing, or churning out more Spanish-language campaign ads during the next election. To borrow one of the president’s favorite phrases, when it comes to an altered Republican Party, there’s got to be a “there” there. Singing some new lyrics atop the same old tune just won’t cut it. (Sorry, Senator Rubio.)

So the question is not so much whether the GOP should change but, rather, how? Two options commonly proffered are as follows: Republicans could follow the lead of Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and push for even smaller government (I call this the “more cowbell” school of thought). Or they could look instead to the small but influential group of right-wing intellectuals claiming to offer a new path: the “conservative reformers.” The decision looks so simple. Either one step forward, or two steps back.

Anti-gay marriage: Indefensible

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 11:45:00 +0000

After days spent carefully studying the oral arguments in the two cases currently before the Supreme Court involving gay marriage, and then a nationwide attempt to read Justice Kennedy's mind, we now must wait months to learn what the Court will actually do. The debate has naturally shifted back to our toxic cable news, inane Sunday shows, and stultifying newspaper columns, where the evolution of gay marriage opposition is well underway. Not evolution necessarily to support, but to a politer form of opposition.

At this point it's apparent that every Democrat seeking the presidency in 2016 will be pro-same-sex marriage. If trends hold, a large majority of the country will be with them as well. But it's impossible to say whether and which Republicans running over the next few election cycles will be vocally opposed, supportive or totally noncommittal.

Living in a “post-work” society

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:31:00 +0000

In Sunday’s New York Times, conservative columnist Ross Douthat invokes the utopian dream of “a society rich enough that fewer and fewer people need to work—a society where leisure becomes universally accessible, where part-time jobs replace the regimented workweek, and where living standards keep rising even though more people have left the work force altogether.” This “post-work” politics may be unfamiliar to many readers of the Times, but it won’t be new to readers of Jacobin.

Is abortion about women?

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 19:28:00 +0000

Is feminism simply about women's physical presence in the workforce? That's the conclusion you would draw from reading Ross Douthat's recent column in the New York Times this weekend, which, as Jessica Valenti pointed out, uses the word "mansplaining" to describe Todd Akin and then goes on to demonstrate how it's done.

Douthat says that "most anti-abortion Americans are also gender egalitarians" because they believe in "women's professional advancement," and thus feminists have to convince everyone that women can keep on chugging in the workplace even without "unrestricted access to abortion." I have never encountered a contemporary feminist who defines feminism's goals as women simply being allowed to work for money outside the home, particularly because some women have always done that, if with limited opportunity for advancement. (And while the women's movement can claim a lot of credit for making that workplace more fair, women's increased presence in the paid workforce has long been about more than liberation.)

Would you want David Brooks’ job?

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 12:45:00 +0000

What’s the toughest job in the United States today? I’ll nominate one: conservative New York Times columnist.

Case in point: Jonathan Chait beat up on David Brooks on Friday. It's brutal, and I have nothing particular to say about the details. But I do question this:

Moderate Republicanism is a tendency that increasingly defies ideological analysis and instead requires psychological analysis. The psychological mechanism is fairly obvious. The radicalization of the GOP has placed unbearable strain on those few moderates torn between their positions and their attachment to party. Many moderate conservatives have simply broken off from the party, at least in its current incarnation, and are hoping or working to build a sane alternative. Those who remain must escape into progressively more baroque fantasies.

Well, maybe.

I think there's a far easier institutional explanation for the regularly contorted efforts of Brooks (and Ross Douthat): The job demands it.

More babies won’t save the economy

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 15:54:00 +0000

Ross Douthat, whose enthusiasm for 19th-century views on sexuality can always be counted on, struck again this weekend with another column addressing his favorite concern, the sadly empty uteruses of America. He was roundly criticized by feminists, including the Prospect's E.J. Graff. He outlined a belief that foolishly letting women decide how many babies they have will lead to American decline. The argument, always claimed to be made more in sorrow than in anger, is that women will simply have to give up on the advantages of limiting child-bearing so that we have enough young people around to take care of us when we’re old.

Douthat calls for an end to our modern, feminist ways, which he calls "decadent." But I would like to offer a better, more humane solution to the problem of a declining future workforce: Instead of simply flooding the market with babies to buoy the economy, why not invest—with public funds, as a community—in the ones we have to get the same results?

Ladies, Uncle Sam needs your uterus!

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 18:30:00 +0000

Ladies of America, are you suffering from "late-modern exhaustion"? Have you been selfishly "shrugging off the basic sacrifices" of your patriotic childbearing duties, by which we mean sacrificing your own goals and aspirations? And more to the point, do you really need better access to affordable birth control and abortion when your "decadence" is already so efficiently bringing down American society?

Of course, when New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat filed his Sunday column warning of the coming American demographic winter, he was too smart to so openly blame women's choices and feminism that way, or talk about women much at all. He knows the audience he's trying to persuade, which doesn't openly blame such things but does worry, in polite terms, about the U.S.'s toppling from its "global perch."