How did Josh Mandel get to be Josh Mandel? It is a reasonable question. Mandel is the leader of the pack of Republicans seeking the nomination for the open U.S. Senate seat from Ohio. He thinks that public education should be left to churches and synagogues. He embraced the Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. It hasn't been long since a politician with Mandel's profile was consigned to the fringes of the party. He is now the man to beat. Journalists are trying to figure out who the guy is. Last week, Politico asked what he believed. The New York Times said that the Senate candidate was a rising Republican when he abandoned his moderate roots. Those who have watched his transformation wonder if his rhetoric reflects who he really is. Many Democrats and Republicans agree that he doesn't act the way he used to, and he doesn't talk the way he used to. Maybe. Mandel doesn't seem like much of a mystery. He decided that becoming fully Trumpist was his best route to power. That is it. The story is over. Everything else is commentary. The recent round of Josh Mandel profiles is interesting, if only because the stories represent a minor genre of journalism that was created by the Trump Era. Reports of this type look at an up-and-coming white guy conservative who used to be perceived as smart and thoughtful, or moderate, or perhaps simply decent, and guys like Mandel, his Ohio rival, and Sen. Josh Hawley. Can he possibly be for real? How did he get this? Conservatives have long joked about the strange new respect that some Republicans get if they are perceived to have shifted left. These stories are called the "strange new disrespect" genre. In these pieces, the candidates or their proxies try to explain their journey to the dark side. The recent Washington Post profile explaining the radicalization of the author of Hillbilly Elegy, for example, quotes writer Rod Dreher on why the author went from being a Never-Trump conservative to throwing bombs at retired generals. Maybe these candidates really do have complicated stories and that they have taken an honest intellectual journey toward Trumpism because it makes the most sense to them. It is possible, right? The simpler explanation is that the three men are just really ambitious and doing whatever it takes to get the power they want. It can get buried under all the other ideas. The founding fathers knew something about ambitious men. They obsessed over how to contain their ambitions and make sure the new nation could resist demagoguery and corruption while they drafted the Constitution. They wrote that ambition must be counteracted. It worked for more than 200 years. Not so much these days. Donald Trump, an ambitious man who cannot tolerate being counteracted by other ambitious people, and certainly not by a majority of voters, has made American democracy fragile. Other Republicans are following in his footsteps. Enhancing ambition is not counteracting it. We are all worse off as a result. Of all the strange new disrespect pieces I have read over the last year, I think my favorite was a story by Molly Ball of Time magazine. In a surprising moment, Ball was told that his decision to evolve from his earlier anti-Trump conservatism was born of a desire to win support from Republican voters. Trump is the leader of this movement, and if I actually care about these people and the things I say I care about, I need to support him. That is a false choice and a grudging one at that, but it makes more sense than the idea that those awful Democrats wentaded him into a reversal of his previously stated principles. He is ambitious. It is not complicated. 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Groene told The Associated Press that he would be stepping down this week to avoid a public uproar. See what my neighbor found when he couldn't clean his gutter. Hong Kong banks are bearing the brunt of losing their over-the-counter transactions business because of the widespread closing of branches due to the swine flu. The total number of bank branches that have been closed in the city has risen to 412 as of Saturday, based on an analysis of announcements by banks. This is 37 per cent of the local branches, compared to 25 per cent a week earlier. 50 b has been shut down by HSBC. The rock icon explains why he won't touch their boots. Ivan Fedotov refused to wear his medal after the men's hockey final. 3 ways your dog asks for help and the true cause... If it felt threatened, he said his nation might join NATO. This is a false narrative that ignores history, and it was said that Colin Kaepernick isn't in the NFL because of his business decisions. El-Erian said there was only a 10% chance that the Fed would leave the economy and markets undamaged. The AirMini AutoSet is the world's smallest CPAP. For a limited time, you can get a free prescription for the AirMini. The U.S. has warned the UN that it believes Russia has plans to kill a lot of people. The season nine premiere of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver focused on the debate over teaching critical race theory in schools. We are living in a different time.The Week
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