Life is way too short to read shit like that.
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It’s a pretty lazy article, even by pundit standards.
In the very abstract it’d probably be better if there were easier ways for politicians to be more flexible. Ironically he says that and then points to party fundraising and organizing has major reasons why new parties don’t emerge but those are like the whole reason why parties exist in the first place. He don’t even mention any legal moats that the parties have put up, or doesn’t grapple with the science that shows that even in multi party democracies they tend to condense down to two broad coalitions.
The article is a prime example of phoning it in to get paid.
Aussie headline.
Australian plane turned back.
Not until half way into the article do we find out that a
major regional airport closed. 360 flights cancelled. 50000 people impacted…
But I guess we lead with the aussie connection.
Independent Senators are great in theory, the problem is that in Sinema’s case, “independent” means that everything she does is for her own benefit, not for her constituents or the American people.
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This newspaper is so consistently beyond parody, really amazing.
Who is David French?
A “reasonable” cosmopolitan conservative in the mold of David Brooks, representing the views of like four or five actual Republican voters, tops.
David Brooks-non zero chance I will meet him someday. He is in the local high school hall of fame and we do history events. 
https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1610473465139560449?s=20&t=EMjOwD7AK5LWaj9hfTlH1g
abc news reporter: we got a video of a man with his hands cuffed behind his back getting pepper sprayed point blank and getting choke slammed onto the pavement
abc news editor: white guy or black guy? cause if it’s a white guy i got a great zinger
He has a more religious bent than Brooks, more of a Douthat type, and is big on civility and decorum, so he has been a consistent anti-Trumper. He’s also one of those guys who describes himself as a veteran because he did some bullshit non combat zero danger job in Iraq, can’t be bothered looking up what it was. But yeah he is basically a lab-grown NYT “conservative” who they hire to make their liberal readership kid themselves that they read actual conservative opinion.
Does Sheriff John Bunnell work for ABC News now?
Also, I think his religious viiews are pretty extreme for a Catholic, like religious fascist. Could be mistaking him for one of these other douchebags, though.
he was Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG Corps) in Iraq
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In an article titled “The Senate Needs More Kyrsten Sinemas,” Friedersdorf argues that the newly independent senator is making “Congress more representative of America.” He does not show that Sinema’s issue positions or voting record align her with a substantial but underrepresented segment of the electorate. In fact, he does not engage with the substance of her politics at all. Rather, Friedersdorf’s celebration of Sinema is based entirely on her decision to identify as an independent despite the fact that she actually represents one of the most overrepresented constituencies in Congress.
His argument goes like this: Although between 35 percent and 50 percent of Americans identify as independents, only 2 percent of U.S. senators identified that way before Sinema’s decision. This “glaring disparity between the proportion of independents in the population and their numbers in Congress” is likely “contributing to a loss of faith in Congress as a representative democratic institution.” Therefore, to reduce polarization, increase social trust, and render Congress more representative of the public, we need more senators to emulate Sinema’s example.
But as Friedersdorf acknowledges, Sinema’s rebrand is primarily a means for preempting a primary challenge. In her short time in the Senate, Sinema has managed to alienate an extraordinary share of her ostensible base. One recent poll from Civiqs found that 80 percent of Arizona Democrats disapproved of Sinema. A survey from Morning Consult, meanwhile, found Sinema enjoying a less catastrophic — but still perilously weak — 46 percent approval from her state’s Democrats. Last year, a Data for Progress poll of a hypothetical primary race between Representative Ruben Gallego and Sinema found the former prevailing by a 74-16 margin.
These poll results indicate that Sinema has not merely alienated her party’s progressive voters but also a great number of moderates
Thus, Sinema’s problem isn’t that she dared to prioritize the median voter over her party’s ideological extremists. Rather, her problem is that she has treated her constituents with contempt while pandering to deeply unpopular special-interest groups. Sinema hasn’t only bucked her party’s stakeholders on key votes; she has also made little time for soliciting their views or responding to their concerns. A former aide told the Daily Beast last month that Sinema limited “all meetings with constituents in her D.C. office” to a “half-hour period on Wednesdays,” giving each group roughly three minutes of face time. That is consistent with reports from local Democratic groups in Arizona, which say that “Sinema has rarely engaged with them, declining to hold large public town halls or meetings with state party figures.”
At the same time, Sinema has consistently refused to explain her dissents from party orthodoxy in public. The senator never made a public case for her opposition to closing the carried-interest loophole. She simply forced her party to kill Joe Biden’s tax proposal behind closed doors.
All this has left Sinema with little hope of winning a Democratic Senate primary. She has therefore concluded that her best bet is to preempt one: By registering as an independent, Sinema is telegraphing her willingness to run a third-party spoiler campaign if any Democrat dares to challenge her in 2024. That could intimidate her party into lining up behind her.
Nevertheless, Friedersdorf sees this Machiavellian tactic as a democratic triumph.
But to believe that such superficial gestures could heal our polity’s maladies is to misdiagnose the latter. And to think that Sinema’s brand of politics gives voice to the unheard is to mishear the voiceless. Our democracy could use more of many things, but champions of the carried-interest loophole who rebrand as “independents” to escape democratic accountability isn’t among them.
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He’s a constitutionalist I think, bit of a lawbro, but an advocate for fundamentalism. This is one of the more infamous stories:
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Gross. Pence and “mother” rules.
Which is perfectly acceptable and correct. Unless he says he’s a “combat” veteran.
Yes, this this is personal. I never deployed but you bet your ass I’m a veteran.
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I think being in Iraq is enough to make the “zero danger” comment pretty damn dumb
The butler on Family Affair? He looked after Buffy and Jody, on behalf of the Hulk.
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I’m old too. Did we ever know his first name? I just remember “Mr”