E. J. Dionne
MemoPad Entries
Romney’s Clintonesque Moment
Thursday, May 17th, 2012WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney was against Bill Clinton before he was for him. There was Romney, campaigning Tuesday in Iowa, praising the nation’s last Democratic president and casting him as far superior to the current incumbent. “Almost a generation ago, Bill Clinton announced that the era of big government was over,” Romney declared. “Clinton was
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E.J. Dionne: I’m Not Quitting The Church
Sunday, May 13th, 2012WASHINGTON — Recently, a group called the Freedom from Religion Foundation ran a full-page ad in The Washington Post cast as an “open letter to ‘liberal’ and ‘nominal’ Catholics.” Its headline commanded: “It’s Time to Quit the Catholic Church.” The ad included the usual criticism of Catholicism, but I was most struck by this paragraph:
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Obama’s American Exceptionalism
Wednesday, May 9th, 2012WASHINGTON — Can a Republican primary in Indiana have even the remotest connection to a presidential election in France? Richard Mourdock, the tea party giant-killer who defeated Sen. Richard Lugar on Tuesday, clearly thinks so. “Just yesterday, France elected a socialist,” Mourdock declared in his victory speech. “There are those I’m sure in the administration
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Little Journals That Loom Large
Monday, May 7th, 2012WASHINGTON — We know there are coffee lovers and tea lovers, as well as lovers of baseball, football, art, literature, music and cars. But many years ago, Father Richard John Neuhaus, a hero to conservatives who earlier was a guide to religious radicals, identified a category to which I proudly belong: He said there were
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It’s More Than Bin Laden
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012WASHINGTON — We expect some hypocrisy in politics, but it was still jaw-dropping to behold Republicans accusing President Obama of politicizing the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden. Wasn’t it just eight years ago that the GOP organized an entire presidential campaign — including the choreography of its 2004 national convention — around
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