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Bill Kristol

@BillKristol

15 Aug

1. Choosing to lose a war, and to relegate a country to a new dark age, is terrible. But doing very little to ensure that those who helped us, and those who counted on us, can reach safety before we leave, adds the dishonor of abandonment to the disgrace of defeat.

2. President Biden said today he is acting "to make sure we can have an orderly and safe drawdown of US personnel and other allied personnel and an orderly and safe evacuation of Afghans who helped our troops during our mission and those at special risk from the Taliban advance."

3. But anyone who has heard, directly or indirectly, from Afghans who have worked with us and helped us, who have stepped up at our encouragement--and who are all at grave risk--knows it is simply not true that we now have in place means for their "orderly and safe evacuation."

Read 6 tweets

Bill Kristol

@BillKristol

18 Jul

https://twitter.com/WHCOS/status/1416464176751513611

I think this is a significant statement by the White House chief of staff.

Short thread follows...

https://twitter.com/WHCOS/status/1416464176751513611

2. If you're White House chief of staff, you don't say a threat to our national well-being is preventable unless...you're ready to do something about it.

Now it's true the Biden Administration did a very good job rolling out the vaccines. All honor to them for that.

3. But that 30% of so of adults remain unvaccinated threatens a "preventable pandemic"--one not only very damaging to them but potentially worrisome with respect to unvaccinated kids, threatening to reopening society, and ultimately, because of variants, a concern to all of us.

Read 11 tweets

Bill Kristol

@BillKristol

27 Jun

"Trump voters are pro-military. Why are Trump and Carlson attacking the military?"
But the attack is on "woke generals," the "brass," and disloyal civilians in charge. It's an attempt to appeal to aggrieved troops and vets, and to divide the military and subvert civilian control.

It's a classic move from the authoritarian playbook.

Or from the fascist playbook.

Read 4 tweets

Bill Kristol

@BillKristol

2 May

1. Short thread on TX-06.
Of the vote for Republican candidates in TX-06 (a bit over 60% of the total), about 20% of it went to candidates who were hostile to or expressed reservations about Trump, about 25% to super-Trump enthusiasts, and about 55% to the two front-runners...

2. ...one of whom was endorsed by Trump (Susan Wright), while the other wouldn't say a critical word about Trump (Jake Ellzey). You might say the GOP primary voters seem to have been (very roughly) 20% in line with Liz Cheney, 25% with Jim Jordan, and 55% with Kevin McCarthy.

3. One might note that Susan Wright, though leading in the first round, got less than 20% of the vote. And she'd been slightly ahead even before the Trump endorsement. Maybe a Trump endorsement isn't quite what it's cracked up to be?

Read 7 tweets

Bill Kristol

@BillKristol

4 Apr

1. Thread.

OK, I'm just going to quote a few passages from Orwell's 1941 essay on Kipling, which as I mentioned earlier I happened to re-read this morning.

orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-fou…

2. "Kipling is a jingo imperialist, he is morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting. It is better to start by admitting that, and then to try to find out why it is that he survives while the refined people who have sniggered at him seem to wear so badly."

3. "But because he identifies himself with the official class, he does possess one thing which ‘enlightened’ people seldom or never possess, and that is a sense of responsibility. The middle-class Left hate him for this quite as much as for his cruelty and vulgarity."

Read 16 tweets

Bill Kristol

@BillKristol

24 Mar

1. Hamilton in Federalist #22, on, in effect, the filibuster:

"To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser.

2. "This is one of those refinements which, in practice, has an effect the reverse of what is expected from it in theory. The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security.

3. "But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority.

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