The Kristol Method

by Henry Farrell on August 12, 2007

Both “Ross Douthat”:http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/08/partisanship_and_the_national.php and “Matt Yglesias”:http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/08/may_i_have_another.php suggest that I was wrong to “claim”:https://crookedtimber.org/2007/08/06/trahisons-des-clercs-2/ last week that Kristol and Kagan were more interested in Republican hegemony than in the actual worth of their foreign policy ideas when they wrote their famous 1996 “essay”:http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=276 on the virtues of a neo-Reaganite foreign policy. What I said then was short-hand for what I said at greater length in a paper that I wrote a couple of years ago for an APSA panel that Russell Arben Fox chaired on conservatism. The paper has never seen the light of day, and probably never will (it wasn’t really an academic paper so much as a glorified form of current commentary; something less than academic research but more than a blogpost), so I may as well link to it “here”:http://www.henryfarrell.net/conservatism.pdf and excerpt the key bit that speaks to this argument (below the fold). [click to continue…]

Romnementum?

by John Holbo on August 12, 2007

In the 19th Century, Romnementum was a patent medicine compounded of equal parts chaff, opium and horse liniment.

Romnementum was also Agamemnon’s ne’er-do-well brother. Before that, I believe he was a Babylonian demi-god who met a sticky end. (Possibly I’m confusing him with some or other Jack Kirby character?)

But after the Ames straw poll, has Romney given new life to this old notion? What do you think? Does the man have …. Romnementum?

Hugh Hewitt is trying to sell it. As of this posting, his commenters are running cold. Let’s make this a Republican horse-race thread.

Strategic Analysis

by Kieran Healy on August 12, 2007

Good stuff. Someone should hire this guy. (Via Unfogged.)