Hard to Watch

The Agony of Moderate Republicans

The craziness of the GOP primary is driving center-right pundits to fits. Last week former Bush speechwriter David Frum diagnosed the party as having “lost touch with reality,” and now Foreign Policy blogger Daniel Drezner came out as a “RINO.” “There's good, solid partisanship—a vital necessity in this country—and then there's unadulterated horseshit. Too much of the GOP's rhetoric on Obama reads like the latter to me.” New York’s Jonathan Chait watches columnist Michael Gerson squirm. “He’s a useful stand-in for the mindset of Republicans who share a loyalty to their party but lack a deep attachment to its right-wing platform. When confronted with a relatively straightforward description of the party’s agenda, he instinctively recoils—not at the agenda, but at the description itself.”