Michael Brendan Dougherty

Senior Writer @NRO. author of My Father Left Me Ireland. Making sense of the disruptive politics of the 21st century.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

Column today: Why did National Populism Disrupt the Right?

tl;dr Globalization sets economic integration against national sovereignty and democracy.
https://t.co/lELJW578or

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

Well now that age and changing taste has pushed me out of the hot-wings era of a man’s life, I should take the opportunity to fake up some comically exaggerated moral-aesthetic objection to them in principle.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

Hmm. Tariffs have an effect, but I hope people don’t think they can effect major political shifts of sentiment five years before they are implemented.

[Scott Lincicome @scottlincicome]

"To repeat: Trump suffered a net 24.5 point decline on the economy between Election Day 2018 and the start of the Iran war. Yuge!

Did things get even worse once the war started? Absolutely"

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

@justin_hart what do you think drove up gas prices from $2,90 in january to almost $5 by summer and $4.15 on Election Day?

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

No, it really was The War.

https://t.co/2QWcS1Bamq

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🇺🇸 Mike Huckabee just took the debate over the Iran war to a whole different level.

The US ambassador to Israel says he believes opposition to the war goes beyond politics.

“I see this as spiritual darkness, spiritual blindness.”

He even says Satan has blinded people's minds and influenced their thinking.

So we're not just talking about disagreements over foreign policy anymore.

Writer: Lynn

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

You go to war with the war you have.

[Noam Blum @neontaster]

I think “the war” is burying the lede a bit. I’d say it was the how the war was prosecuted that did it. Still no end in sight or any sort of strategy. I doubt a well-executed kinetic campaign would yield results quite this bad.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

David Shor is not in the Vanceguard. The president’s pollster was for the war. This isn’t hard. Defeats become
blowouts at the margins. The war drove approval down at a faster, steeper rate than it was falling in the 12 months before. It drove unmissable inflation in gas and diesel. Voters deciding late were looking at this.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

The difference between defeat and blowout was the war. This isn’t even slightly controversial.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

@WhiskeyRebelEsq

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

@JonahDispatch @bryan_caplan A few of us have been saying that the Marxist fantasy of a new humanity, and future without politics has broken containment

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

@AnthonyMaio it’s everything. But the scale of the defeat was made so much worse by focusing on a war that nobody understood and that raised prices right when people wanted the president to focus on killing inflation.’

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

@HeartCuteBears @zackbeauchamp Facts don’t care about your feelings

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

@zackbeauchamp I just put it up to watch people express their pathological need to QT about tariffs. (rather than tax cuts, or any other the other unpopular policies)

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

@joeljmiller Yes, but one drove the decline to the point that many many more seats were lost.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

This is exactly right- it's a cynical tactic

[Dusty Coniferous @dustyconiferous]

@michaelbd The entire point of the tariff conversation is to goad people away from questioning the war. It's that simple.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

@JohnPuri2026 @MikeMitchNH I also don’t understand why the National Security Advisor is spared

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

@davidharsanyi David Shor is now a Vancegaurd wrecker.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

Gas prices are a hoax.

[David Harsanyi @davidharsanyi]

This is the Vanceguard version of Michael Mann's hockey stick graph.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

What an unifignified death rattle.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

It is worse than pointless to take a democratic republic to war with the most dangerous adversary it has faced in decades without ever consulting Americans about what sacrifices or risks they would make or what ends they would pursue in that venture and then deplete your arsenal without achieving a single political objective while undermining many others. Now, having far outrun democratic legitimacy for operating, we face the humiliation of retreat or the abysss of escalating without the resources to win or manage the costs of victory- regime management/refugee crisis, etc.

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

The level of denial about this is incredible.

[Eric Levitz @EricLevitz]

According to @davidshor, Republicans were on track for a normal-sized midterm defeat --- right until Trump launched the Iran War. https://t.co/WcJ5Ffniiu

[Michael Brendan Dougherty @michaelbd]

@JEFFWH75 @PBBen10 The war was needless. What do you think America is going to accomplish here besides fiscally breaking American households and Western governments?