When he returned home, Pence explained why assistance to Ukraine is essential to American security. "We’re there because it’s in our national interest to give the Ukrainian military the ability to rebut and defeat Russian aggression," Pence told Jonathan Karl of ABC News. "Because if Russia overran Ukraine, I have no doubt, John, that it wouldn’t be too long before they crossed a border where American servicemen and women would be required to go and fight."

Pence said that President Biden has failed to make a compelling case for American leadership. Biden rarely discusses Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He would rather devote his limited energy to domestic policy. On the few occasions when he does address the conflict, Biden says that Ukraine is part of a global contest between democracy and authoritarianism. This abstract framework, Pence said, is too closely related to Biden’s partisan agenda to attract support from Republicans and independents.

Nor does Biden’s grand rhetoric match his overly cautious actions. Biden continually delays sending Ukraine the platforms required to defeat the Russian invaders, needlessly extending the war and undermining Western resolve. And Biden rejects the defense buildup necessary to replenish U.S. weapons stocks, bolster allies, and deter further aggression. "The Biden administration has been cutting back on our defense spending at a time that the world is becoming more dangerous by the day," Pence told radio host Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday.

Pence says that Biden’s lassitude on Ukraine is connected to his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, his foolish pursuit of a nuclear deal with Iran, and his recent turn toward dovishness on China. Pence offers a full-spectrum critique of Biden’s progressive foreign policy that one rarely hears from the other GOP presidential candidates, who tend to harp on one or two discrete issues when they mention international affairs at all. Pence’s trip not only demonstrated his commitment to advancing freedom abroad. It revealed his intention to resist those in his own party who are prepared to abandon Ukraine and the West.

Pence is not alone in this fight. Republican views on Ukraine are more complicated than a casual observer of conservative media might assume. For example, a late spring poll conducted by Beacon Research and Shaw & Company Research on behalf of the Ronald Reagan Institute found that GOP voters back increased defense and security spending and American leadership and engagement in the world. A 71-percent majority of Republicans said that Ukrainian victory is important to the United States. Fifty percent of Republicans support further military aid to Ukraine.

The Reagan Institute survey suggests that GOP support for aid to Ukraine will rise if figures such as Pence continue to inform voters of the war’s stakes. For instance, after pollsters explained that U.S. aid to Ukraine is a small percentage of the Pentagon’s budget, that Ukraine controls most of its territory, and that the war has seriously degraded the Russian military, the percentage of Republicans who said that U.S. assistance has been worth it jumped by 18 points, to 59 percent.

The data imply that, in the absence of energetic and effective leadership, negative partisanship determines voter attitudes. Republicans soured on aid to Ukraine not because they side with Russia, but because they consider the war to be another wasteful Biden project. When Republicans learn the facts behind U.S. involvement, however, their instinctual hawkishness kicks in. What they have lacked is a prominent GOP spokesman for freedom.

Mike Pence has stepped into the breach. Of course, at this stage, Republican support for Ukraine is considerably stronger than Republican support for Pence’s campaign. He trails both former president Donald Trump and Florida governor Ron DeSantis in national and state polls—distantly.

Nonetheless, Pence’s decision to highlight his support for Ukraine is not only courageous, but also savvy. It draws a contrast with DeSantis, who hasn’t found his footing on the issue, as well as with Trump, who says that he will end the war in 24 hours, with details to be worked out later. Aid to Ukraine, moreover, is the one place where Republican voters disagree with the former president. It’s a wedge issue in a GOP primary that, unlike criminal indictments, separates Trump from many in his party.

Foreign policy can pop up in unusual ways in presidential elections. Pence must recall how John McCain rode the success of the surge in Iraq to a late-breaking win in the 2008 Republican contest. Pence might benefit from a similar vindication this fall if the Ukrainian counteroffensive bears fruit and Russian lines collapse.

Even if Pence loses the GOP nomination, he may galvanize enough Republican voters to dissuade Trump from appeasing Putin. His stand for American strength and leadership in defense of democracy sustains a noble tradition of conservative internationalism. "I’m a guy who believes in that old Reagan Doctrine," Pence told Hugh Hewitt. "If you’re willing to fight the enemies of the United States on your soil, we’ll give you the means to fight them there so our men and women in uniform don’t have to fight them."

Ukraine’s resistance to Russian aggression has proven that there’s nothing old about the Reagan Doctrine. It’s as necessary today as it was 40 years ago. Reminding voters of this fact, and of America’s role as a beacon of hope for those without freedom, is Mike Pence’s mission. And most Americans—and Republicans—share his cause.

The post Mike Pence and The Fight Over GOP Foreign Policy appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Solution: Talk up job numbers and investment figures. Boast about factory construction. Note that inflation is on a downward slope. Highlight your ties to organized labor. Remind the electorate that you are doing your best to eliminate annoying consumer fees. Admit that more work needs to be done, but that America's brightest days are ahead. "There is nothing beyond our capacity if we work together," Biden said in Chicago on Wednesday. Clap, clap, clap. End of speech.

The strategy is familiar. Use rhetoric as a substitute for performance. If voters dislike what you are selling, don't change the product. Market it differently. Call it Bidenomics. Light fire once more to the "trickle-down" straw man. Barack Obama did this all the time.

Nor is an aggressive economic message new to Biden. His arguments in Chicago were the same ones he's been making for years. He rehearsed these lines at the last State of the Union address in February. Biden's job approval average that night: 43 percent. His approval average today: 43 percent.

The words have no effect. Why? Because neither the cleverest slogan nor the most eloquent spokesman can disguise the underlying reality: Not only has Biden presided over a decline in real average hourly earnings, his policies are responsible for the loss of purchasing power.

The worst inflation in 40 years did not come out of nowhere. It was goosed by Biden's American Rescue Plan Act. That bill, passed early in 2021, flooded a recovering economy with $2 trillion in fiscal stimulus on top of the trillions spent the previous year to sustain America during the pandemic. The spending splurge, in combination with restrictive energy and trade policies, generated the inflation that has dogged Biden's presidency.

Biden has no answer for it. He cherry-picks the positive data while hoping that the Federal Reserve and the tendency of economies to find equilibrium will solve the problem for him. All he needs is for inflation to reach 2 percent and for real hourly wages to climb into positive territory. Then he can declare victory. The tenor of his speeches would harmonize with the public mood. He could campaign for reelection not as the least bad alternative, but as a genuine bringer of prosperity.

Or so the theory runs. A lot must go right for the public to judge Bidenomics a success. The Fed, for example, must fine-tune its coming interest rate hikes. If not, the central bank could set off a long-predicted recession just as the presidential election gets underway. Higher interest rates might also trigger additional bank failures along the lines of spring's financial mini-crisis. Neither outcome is desirable; both are plausible. The Fed's track record is not encouraging. And inflation has been more persistent than anyone would like.

Biden faces other dangers. To quote the late great Jack Germond: When the economy is bad, it's the only issue. When the economy is good, different issues come to the fore. Issues that may not play to Biden's strengths.

Say Fed chairman Jerome Powell is a genius—in other words, suspend your sense of disbelief—and the economy avoids recession and financial implosion. Inflation subsides. Real wages recover and grow. Would Biden be a sure bet for reelection? He'd be helped, of course. But this economy is not the president's sole liability. The public doesn't just reject Bidenomics. It also rejects Bidenomics's namesake.

Biden's fitness for office is already in doubt. Americans have grave concerns over the 80-year-old president's physical and mental capacity. And people age in only one direction. Nothing in Biden's domestic program will make the president any younger. Not only do voters prefer the Trump economy—when real wages were rising faster than prices—they also say the 77-year-old former president is in better condition than his successor.

The worries over Biden's infirmity spill over into views of his vice president. Kamala Harris, who would inherit the office of president if something happens to Biden, is the most unpopular vice president in the history of the NBC poll. Bidenomics may make Democratic partisans feel better about the economy. Nothing can make them feel good about Harris.

Meanwhile, IRS whistleblowers have revealed the true meaning of Bidenomics: The term well describes the buckraking schemes that some members of the Biden family, including the president's son Hunter, have used to get rich while avoiding federal taxes. Biden's entanglement in this scandal is sure to grow in the coming year, as the House of Representatives and intrepid reporters seek to uncover, or restate, the details of the Biden family operation. What they find won't make the president more popular.

It would be a mistake to ascribe Biden's political position to the economy alone. A decline in the standard of living has interacted with, and intensified, the public's revised attitude toward Biden the man. No longer is he the genial grandpa who issues reassuring platitudes from his Delaware basement. He is rather a cranky and out-of-it octogenarian with a spotty record and an estranged relationship to the truth.

This transformation in how voters perceive Biden explains why the presidential election is competitive. Biden led Donald Trump throughout 2019 and 2020. Now the two candidates are neck-and-neck. Indeed, Trump is slightly ahead. The coming presidential election looks like it will resemble 2016 more than 2020. Which helps Donald Trump.

The nation is on autopilot, gliding toward a general election that voters do not want, determined by sure-to-be-narrow outcomes in three or four states: Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Nevada. The president's fate rests not on Bidenomics but on long-running trends in the electorate. Biden's future depends not on his agenda, nor on his charisma, but on the anti-MAGA coalition that cost Republicans in 2017, 2018, 2020, and 2022. He's counted on this coalition before. Will it save him again?

The post 'Bidenomics' Won't Save This Presidency appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Would you be inclined to bargain with such a regime? If your answer—against all evidence—is yes, then you can look forward to a short and unhappy career in Joe Biden’s State Department. For President Biden is on the verge of betraying Congress and the American people by rewarding the Islamic Republic of Iran for its various misdeeds.

According to news reports, Biden is prepared to authorize billions of dollars in payments to Iran in exchange for the release of U.S. prisoners, a halt to militia attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria, cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, a moratorium on ballistic missile sales to Russia, and a freeze on uranium enrichment at 60 percent (90 percent enriched uranium is considered weapons-grade). Biden will say this perverse arrangement is necessary to free innocents and prevent the outbreak of war. What he won’t be able to do is call it a deal.

Biden can’t call the agreement a deal because he wants to avoid congressional review. The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 forbids the president from relieving nuclear-related sanctions on the Islamic Republic without congressional approval. The administration’s end-run around the law is clever. It is also pathetic.

This deal that dare not speak its name will have no force. It will rely entirely on the goodwill of the 84-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a grizzled trickster and ally of Vladimir Putin. The New York Times reports that Khamenei has authorized the deal because it leaves Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in place. The second Biden begins to doubt the wisdom of paying further ransom money, Khamenei will start spinning his centrifuges once more. And if paramilitaries controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fire mortars on Americans—well, he could say the bloodshed came from militants over whom he exercises no control.

Notice that the deal-that-is-no-deal says nothing about Iran’s deadliest proxy, Hezbollah, or about Iran’s drone traffic. This omission is consistent with Biden’s nasty habit of selling out America’s allies whether it be the democratic government of Afghanistan, the peoples of Lebanon, Syria, and, of course, Israel, or the Ukrainians resisting Russian occupation. Biden’s bribe—what Richard Goldberg of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies calls Biden’s "pay and pray" strategy of fueling the Iranian terror machine in the hope that it doesn’t go nuclear—is limited in scope, bereft of accountability, brazenly desperate, and lacking in strategic purpose. Its aims are political.

Biden wants to keep the Middle East quiet ahead of Election Day 2024. That is why his support for the Iranian rebellion was merely gestural. Why he allowed these talks in Oman to continue despite Iran’s assistance to Russia. Why his government welcomed the détente between Saudi Arabia and Iran that China brokered in April. And why he has submitted to the humiliation of paying off rogues for promises of good behavior in a few select areas.

This is partly a story of diminished diplomatic expectations. Biden’s old boss, Barack Obama, dreamed of subletting the Greater Middle East to Iran. Now Biden is left paying the bully to leave him alone. It is also another entry in the saga of Joe Biden’s incompetence. In his rare discussions of foreign policy, President Biden has portrayed international relations as a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. I am inclined to agree with him. Then I look at his actions—where he has an awful tendency to give the authoritarians the upper hand.

Appeasing Iran does nothing to further the cause of democracy. Nor does attempting détente with a China that has grown in belligerence since the spy balloon incident earlier this year. Nor does slow-walking weapons deliveries to Ukraine while hemming and hawing over Ukraine’s future in NATO. If Joe Biden wanted to preserve and promote democracy abroad, he would do more than give the occasional speech on the subject. He would mobilize hard power to confront authoritarians and deter them from hostile acts.

Biden has made a career out of misjudgment. This sure-to-fail bargain with Iran is another entry in a depressing catalogue.

The post Biden's (Iran) Deal That Dare Not Speak Its Name appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The first topic Reagan mentioned was crime. Then he discussed welfare reform and education. He brought up radicalism on campus. He called for lower taxes and fiscal discipline.

What strikes the contemporary reader is Reagan's rhetorical framework. All these individual issues, he said, were aspects of a general relationship between government and the people. As today's Republicans and conservatives grapple with inflation, crime, illegal immigration, and a culture of repudiation, they might take note of how the most popular and successful GOP president of the last century thought about the social contract.

For Reagan, the American government was not omnipotent. The Founders did not mean for government to be fickle or arbitrary. They did not intend for it to lord over subjects. They wanted the law to reflect the consensus of self-governed citizens. Rather than build a "Great Society" engineered by politicians and bureaucrats in Sacramento or Washington, D.C., Reagan evoked a "Creative Society" where "government will lead but not rule, listen but not lecture."

Reagan seems to have dropped the "Creative Society" tagline not long after taking office, but the principles behind the slogan continued to inform his rhetoric and politics. Reagan saw public officials as intermediaries between voters and government. Their job is to keep government in check. They represent taxpayers and must ensure that "no permanent structure of government ever encroaches on freedom." The tasks of office include fulfilling the basic duties of government—rule of law, administration of justice, and national defense—as well as removing obstacles to human flourishing.

Reagan restated these themes in his first presidential Inaugural Address. He tried to quell voter anxiety by distancing himself from extreme libertarianism. "It's not my intention to do away with government," he said on January 20, 1981. "It is rather to make it work—work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it." The Creative Society lived on, though not by that name.

When Reagan became president, the country was in the middle of an economic crisis. Stagflation—the combination of recession and inflation—was lowering the standard of living. Rising prices and nominal wages pushed voters into higher tax brackets, draining their discretionary income.

During the Republican primary, Reagan had adopted the program of supply-side economics. Following the lead of New York congressman Jack Kemp, he called for price stability, deregulation, tighter social spending, free trade, energy production, and a massive, across-the-board tax cut that included inflation indexing.

The supply-side agenda fit comfortably within the structure of the Creative Society. Its goal was to remove barriers to work, savings, and investment and generate economic growth through innovation. It was compatible with Reagan's mystical belief in the power of technology to improve the material conditions of life and advance the cause of civilization.

Such progress was connected, in Reagan's mind, to a public commitment to human freedom. Government's purpose was not found in remaking human nature or in divvying up resources and honors among groups. It was found in acts of self-restraint that gave space to individuals to better their condition.

"Democracy is less a system of government than it is a system to keep government limited, unintrusive," Reagan told the students at Moscow State University in 1988, "a system of constraints on power to keep politics and government secondary to the important things in life, the true sources of value found only in family and faith."

An advocate of the Creative Society in the year 2023 would agree with this hierarchy. Family and faith are seedbeds of virtue where government ought not to intrude. Meddling with the home and church is destructive and corrosive. Government should work with the people, not against them, to unlock latent potential in the earth, in schools, in labs, in factories, in cities. And the way to do this is a new supply-side economics aimed at increased productivity and abundance.

The Progressive Left is not the place for a supply-side revival. Liberal intellectuals don't understand the economics. Democratic interest groups won't like the politics. It's the Conservative Right that must map out the topography of the Creative Society in the 21st century. That picture won't look exactly like Reagan's, but it will incorporate his insights.

Spending restraint and monetary sanity would end inflation and restore price stability. Deregulation would take precedence over further tax cuts. The permitting process would be streamlined. The federal government would open more properties to oil and gas exploration and development. An all-of-government effort would promote nuclear power and enhancements to the electric grid. Research and development on hard sciences and applied engineering would increase, and the grant-making process would be made easier.

The federal government would search for ways to copy or to promote state-level workforce initiatives that abolish occupational licensing or incentivize new home construction. Immigration levels must be regularized, by finishing construction of the border wall, normalizing asylum law, privileging high-skilled workers, and creating systems to match low-skilled workers with employers before migrants attempt illegal crossings. Protectionist measures that contribute to inflation and harm our relationships with strategic allies would be repealed. (Trade with adversaries such as China would be handled differently.)

A winning Republican or conservative doesn't need to get lost in the weeds of policy detail. What's more important is his ability to situate these particulars in a larger concept of the American future. That concept would put hardware over software and national pride over group loyalty. And it would drive home the idea that traditional social practices are the bedrock of prosperity and peace.

Look for the candidate who refines Reagan's vision to meet this moment. Nostalgia or necromancy has nothing to do with it. Gratitude toward the achievements of the past, and a willingness to build upon them, is the essence of conservatism. "The Creative Society is not a retreat into the past," Reagan said back in 1967. "It is taking the dream that gave birth to this nation, and updating it, and making it practical for the 20th century. It is a good dream. It is a dream that is worthy of your generation." And ours.

The post Ronald Reagan's Path for American Renewal appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The legislation doesn't restore fiscal sanity to the federal budget—only changes to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid would do that—but it is a step in the right direction. Since becoming speaker in January, McCarthy has faced a test: Could he strike a fiscal bargain with President Biden that would earn Republican support and avoid a breach of the debt ceiling and a government shutdown? Well, the grade is in. He aced the exam.

Consider where the parties started. Biden spent much of this year demanding that Congress raise the debt ceiling without preconditions. He refused to negotiate with McCarthy. At one point the White House floated the idea of tax increases. The speaker, by contrast, said that he was willing to work with the president to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for cuts.

Now look at where the two sides ended up: The Fiscal Responsibility Act is much closer to McCarthy's original position than it is to Biden's. It doesn't hike taxes. It reduces spending. It contains measures the Left can't stand. The public supports the deal by a two-to-one margin. Most Republicans and Democrats voted for it.

The media, as usual, highlight McCarthy's internal critics. They are a distraction. The press is so obsessed with Republican infighting that it overlooks the real story: Kevin McCarthy is shaping up to be the most effective House GOP leader in decades. Biden, the Democrats, and the liberal culture have been unable to transform him into a bogeyman. To the contrary: His net approval rating has risen by double digits since January. Biden's numbers have dropped. Nor is McCarthy's favorability the result of playing to the media crowd and appeasing the Left. The Fiscal Responsibility Act is the latest piece of significant center-right legislation that the House has passed this year.

What, then, is McCarthy's secret? He succeeds because it pays to be underestimated. He's not the first Republican to surprise a Beltway media that holds him in low regard. The rap on McCarthy has long been that he's an amiable politician with no ideological core. This lack of substance was exposed, according to conventional wisdom, by the disappointing outcome of last year's midterm election. The same conventional wisdom took as a sign of weakness the unprecedented concessions McCarthy made to the House Freedom Caucus to end the agonizing, 4-day, 15-ballot vote for speaker in January.

All these assumptions were wrong. McCarthy's amiability and flexibility are not liabilities but assets. The narrow Republican majority hasn't stopped the House from moving bills on the floor. Nor have McCarthy's concessions to the Freedom Caucus hindered him. Putting Freedom Caucus members on the important Rules Committee gave figures such as Rep. Thomas Massie (R., Ky.) a stake in the legislative process. And the lowered threshold to remove the speaker is meaningless if a substitute is not waiting offstage.

McCarthy's superpower is his desire to be speaker. He likes and wants his job—a rarity for the GOP. He's the first public-facing Republican speaker since 1994 to be in sync with both his office and his conference. The talents that aided Newt Gingrich in his quest to build the first GOP House majority in 40 years did not necessarily translate to the speaker's office. Gingrich is a revolutionary, not an institutionalist. He's more interested in figuring out how America can ride the Third Wave into a technological utopia than in legislative detail and intra-party bargaining. His record of welfare reform and balanced budgets was impressive, but his tenure was chaotic.

Gingrich's successor, the disgraced Denny Hastert, avoided the limelight. President George W. Bush's compassionate conservatism and Freedom Agenda overshadowed Hastert, who delegated most of his authority to Tom "the Hammer" DeLay. By the time DeLay resigned over scandal in 2006, the Republican House majority was on the verge of collapse. Democrats took over Congress soon after. It fell to John Boehner to pick up the pieces.

Boehner became speaker in 2010, thanks in part to McCarthy's recruiting skills. The problem was that Boehner belonged to a different political era. He was a product of the 1990s and the early 2000s whose party was increasingly shaped by the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis, bank and auto bailouts, and Barack Obama's "New Foundation" for America. Boehner hated living in "Crazytown," and it showed. The Tea Party Republicans didn't care for him either. The mismatch made Boehner miserable. As soon as he brought Pope Francis to Capitol Hill, he left.

The next Republican speaker, Paul Ryan, had the title forced on him. Ryan is a supply-sider and wonk. He understands dollars and cents. He's a protégé of Jack Kemp who felt out of place in Donald Trump's Washington. His main priority was the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Once it had Trump's signature, Ryan was ready to leave. Democrats won the House the following year. Ryan was out.

McCarthy, unlike his predecessors, has no earth-shattering plans. Holding the speaker's gavel is enough. He doesn't shy away from the camera. He doesn't represent a faction of the GOP; he tries to enact the party consensus. He isn't at war with Tea Party (now MAGA) conservatives. He wants to be on the rostrum. He alone commands majority support.

Maybe McCarthy will lose his touch in upcoming fights over assistance to Ukraine. Maybe one day an alternative to McCarthy will emerge, someone who can unify the Freedom Caucus along with the rest of the GOP conference. Maybe Democrats will take back the House next year. For the moment, at least, Kevin McCarthy is the rare Republican who both understands and is satisfied by the role he's been given and the responsibilities it entails. He wants nothing more nor less. And he's winning.

The post The Secret to McCarthy's Success appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

DeSantis would make a point on some issue and then Musk would respond, calmly and commandingly, in his mellow South African accent. It was easy to forget that you were listening to a campaign launch and not the Wall Street Journal’s "Future of Everything Festival." Occasionally DeSantis would fall silent, and Sacks and Musk carried on without him. Musk might as well have been the candidate—and there is reason to think that, but for the Constitution, he would be.

The Twitter glitches got most of the attention, but what fascinated me were the exchanges between DeSantis, Sacks, Musk, and others. The dialogue not only revealed aspects of DeSantis’s primary strategy. It also clarified some of the animating ideas behind DeSantis’s corner of the New Right. For the contest between former president Donald Trump and DeSantis is not just over who will lead the GOP. It is also a struggle between two concepts of the New Right, pitting the former president’s MAGA populism against the Florida governor’s institutional culture war.

No one needs a lesson in Trump’s impulses and grudges. They have been at the center of our public life for six years. What’s important to recognize is that, despite his personal idiosyncrasies, Trump is an archetypal American figure.

Tribunes of the people have sprung up to rail against the Eastern elites for centuries. Jackson, Bryan, Wallace, Buchanan, Perot, Palin—the list is long. All of them have identified scapegoats, indulged in conspiracy theories, and cultivated personal followings. All of them have spoken in straightforward, declarative language. All of them have drawn huge crowds by telling the dispossessed that social status can be reclaimed by throwing out the corrupt elite and replacing it with the leader’s steady hand. Their nationalism and traditionalism have been leavened by a folk libertarianism that distrusts centralized power and is individualistic and entrepreneurial in spirit.

Populists may criticize institutions as dysfunctional and debased, but they don’t really know what to do with them. Populists are rarely put in charge. When they do find themselves in positions of authority, the result is often confusion and disarray. They possess neither the expertise necessary to manage a bureaucracy nor the professional networks where they might find such expertise. Populists must incorporate parts of the establishment into their government just to make it function. The clash of priorities and interests within this populist-elitist coalition would be difficult to harmonize for any chief executive. If the person in charge is ill-tempered, thrives on conflict, and easily persuaded, problems are made worse.

The populist’s main strength is rhetorical. Trump always is on message, and the message is simple. MAGA, build the wall, lock her up, USA, USA, let’s go Brandon, and the nicknames stick with you. Agreeing or disagreeing with them does not require much reflection. There is no jargon. Nothing is obscure. Everything relates to the binary of Trump is good and non-Trump is bad.

DeSantis is more esoteric than Trump. Listening to him on Twitter Spaces was not easy. First you had to figure out what Twitter Spaces is, then how to log on, then how to get back on when the servers kicked you off. The back-and-forth between DeSantis and Musk was no less complicated. They weren’t talking about how the elite has shipped jobs to China or how the war in Ukraine can be resolved in one day. They were talking about how government, tech platforms, and corporate media work together to suppress freedom and entrench progressivism. I hadn’t heard the word "collude" so much since I last tuned into MSNBC. This wasn’t Russian collusion. It was collusion involving Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden, YouTube, and Twitter’s previous owners.

Musk and DeSantis aren’t fighting Democrats so much as they are fighting the media narratives that Democrats promote to stigmatize the Right and push the country to the left. The latest in this string of narratives is the NAACP "travel advisory" warning African Americans to stay away from Florida. DeSantis rightly knocked it down as condescending drivel. He also pummeled the narrative that he's banning books. Shouldn’t parents have a right to remove pornographic material from school libraries, he asked? What about the progressives banning outright classics of American literature such as Huckleberry Finn and To Kill A Mockingbird? DeSantis went after the "medical authoritarianism" that imposed and maintained lockdowns, social distancing, masking in schools, and vaccine mandates long after these public health measures were revealed to be useless or harmful.

DeSantis's attitude isn't the "LOL nothing matters" or "burn it all down" mentality you find among some MAGA devotees. He isn't anti-institutional. He wants to use the institution he controls—government—to rescue or defang other institutions consumed by wokeness. He came across less as a populist than a shrewd technocrat. The choice of topics highlighted his culture war against progressives. Musk and DeSantis delved into the coronavirus pandemic. They talked about DeSantis’s fight with Disney and his educational reforms. (There was a moment of unintentional hilarity when Musk admitted that he thought DeSantis really did ban books.) Christopher Rufo said that DeSantis was an effective fighter against Critical Race Theory. A radio talk show host asked about the border. Another talked about guns and de-banking. Sacks wanted to know DeSantis's opinions on cryptocurrency.

DeSantis went into details. He brought up the intricacies of college accreditation. He focused on culture and the law, at one point mentioning "Chevron Deference," which most people might assume is a premium gasoline. Trump, by contrast, continues to speak on the level of generality. He emphasizes economics and foreign policy. DeSantis avoided both subjects on Twitter Spaces.

For all the oddity and embarrassment of the launch event, I couldn’t help thinking that it might be a sign of the future. This was the post-2020 Right on display. The events of 2020 radicalized a portion of the New Right and sped up its rejection of politics-as-usual and its embrace of state power. The aftermath of 2020 sent Elon Musk on a journey from Biden voter to staunch Republican.

This is a Right shaped by the government response to the pandemic, by the "mostly peaceful protests" over George Floyd, by the tech suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story. It is a Right that distrusts every word it hears from its left, because it believes official narratives are by nature false. For the post-2020 Right, free speech is more than a political principle. It is a way to tick off the wine moms. It's a rallying cry against institutional arrangements dedicated to American decline.

This Right is more willing to use state power than 20th century conservatives, because it believes the state to be its only remaining leverage against decadent institutions. The key media figures in this post-2020 Right are not Rupert Murdoch and Rush Limbaugh, but Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson. Indeed, I half expected Carlson to make a cameo appearance because his worldview is so like Musk’s and DeSantis’s. "This moment is too inherently ridiculous to continue," Carlson said in a statement on Twitter after Fox News Channel canceled his show. "And so it won’t."

Ron DeSantis is betting that he will bring this ridiculous moment to a close. He's betting that his institution-based culture war will prove more attractive to GOP voters than MAGA populism. It’s not just a wager on his own talents. It’s a gamble that 2020 changed the Right as much as the Left—and that Donald Trump belongs to a receding past.

The post The DeSantis Doctrine appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Yet Trump is far and away the leader for the 2024 Republican nomination and is neck-and-neck with Joe Biden in general election matchups. In the RCP average he has a 30-point lead over the next closest GOP competitor, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, and is essentially tied with the incumbent president. Both the primary and general contests are a long way away, of course—but early GOP frontrunners tend to win the nomination, and Biden's age and economic record are reasons for Democrats to worry.

Why is Trump doing so well? Is it because he has constructed "an impenetrable political force field," as National Review editor in chief Rich Lowry suggests? I'm skeptical. Polls are not the same as elections, and Trump's electoral record is not especially impressive. Most voters do not like him, have voted against him, and more likely than not will vote against him again. Nor has Trump’s force field repelled attacks from his fellow Republicans. There haven't been attacks to repel. Trump is advancing toward the GOP nomination and looks competitive against Biden for a simple reason: He faces no resistance.

This has been a truly invisible primary. Historically, the frontrunner comes under attack from his or her rivals. Think Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton in 2008, Mitt Romney in 2012, Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton in 2016, or Joe Biden in 2020. The rivals make the case that they, not the frontrunner, should lead their party in the next election. They base their arguments on policy differences. They share their concerns about the frontrunner's character. They draw specific contrasts between candidacies, and they are not afraid to say that the frontrunner is wrong or incompetent or unelectable. Republican primaries since 2008 have been especially raucous. Candidates all but fling themselves at each other.

Not this year. It's as if we have two incumbent presidents in this race, and neither faces a serious internal threat. Besides Trump, at present there are four declared Republican candidates with 1 percent or more of the GOP primary vote. Only one, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, has said that the verdict in the E. Jean Carroll rape and defamation case "should be treated with seriousness and is another example of the indefensible behavior of Donald Trump."

Radio talk show host Larry Elder responded to the Trump news by naming women who have accused President Biden and former president Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct. Entrepreneur and author Vivek Ramaswamy defended Trump and said that Carroll's suit was politically motivated. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley told radio host Hugh Hewitt that "I'm not going to get into that," that "we've gotta leave the baggage and the negativity behind," and that "it's not my case, it's his case."

Most of the Republicans who might launch presidential bids in the coming months are just as evasive. They mix praise of Trump while lamenting his weaknesses. They pretend that he doesn't exist while dropping implied criticisms of his effectiveness and demeanor. Only former New Jersey governor Chris Christie slams Trump in the manner that you would expect from a competitor. Responding to Trump's refusal in a CNN town hall to say which side he preferred to win the war in Ukraine, Christie told Hewitt, "I think he's a coward, and I think he's a puppet of Putin." Now them's fightin' words.

And they are rare. Trump's closest rival, DeSantis, seems to be moving toward a June campaign launch. His book rollout, international trade mission, and successful legislative session have not reversed his decline in the polls. Nor have the millions of dollars a pro-DeSantis super PAC has spent in TV ads highlighting his biography. Other than a sly remark ahead of Trump's indictment over hush money payments to a stripper, DeSantis hasn't gone after the former president either directly or indirectly. His pre-announcement strategy has been to out-MAGA Trump on foreign policy and the culture war while avoiding a one-on-one clash with the frontrunner.

The results have been disappointing. Trump's positions appear closer to the center of the electorate on entitlements, abortion, and the economy, while his ferocious political and personal attacks on DeSantis have been left unanswered. His lead over the Florida governor has grown.

Maybe that will change when DeSantis makes his candidacy official. An anti-Trump tweet and statement from the DeSantis-supporting super PAC after the CNN town hall suggests that things may get spicy; we don't know. The point is that DeSantis will have to go high on the Scoville scale if he wants to catch up with Trump. His current approach is not working.

The reluctance of the Republican field to confront the frontrunner has created a weird situation in which Trump inadvertently delivers the arguments both for and against his candidacy. Trump's political cunning, rhetorical talent, and gut connection with the grassroots are evident in his public appearances and speeches. His serious liabilities are on display when he is the subject of legal action or defends his remarks on the infamous Access Hollywood tape.

We are so used to Republican presidential candidates praising, ignoring, or appeasing the former president that it came as a shock when Sen. Todd Young of Indiana told CNN on May 11 that he won't support Trump and, when pressed for a reason, said, "Where do I begin?" It's hard to imagine a candidate other than Hutchinson or Christie saying the same. Which is why Trump looks untouchable.

He's not, though. It's at least plausible that a Republican could consolidate college-educated GOP voters and make inroads into Trump's non-college coalition, especially if that Republican narrows the field to two candidates. First, though, that Republican would have to explain why he or she should be the nominee instead of Trump.

The Democrats understand that Joe Biden's best—perhaps sole—chance for a second term is to remobilize the anti-Trump coalition that has appeared in every post-2016 cycle except 2021. This primary may end up an exercise in obeisance, but the general won't be. Contrasts will be drawn. Memories will be jogged. Fears will be revived. If Republican challengers won't say why Donald Trump should be denied the presidency, Democrats will.

The post The Very Invisible Republican Primary appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The article previewed the day’s meeting between Vice President Kamala Harris and the CEOs of corporations at the forefront of artificial intelligence research and production, including Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI.

Harris planned to announce funding for "seven new AI research institutes" and outline the government’s next moves on this important topic, according to the story. "The government leaders’ message to the companies," wrote correspondent Josh Boak, "is that they have a role to play in reducing the risks and that they can work together with the government."

That’s what shook me awake. Since ChatGPT was released last November, there has been a lot of debate over the potential consequences of artificial intelligence. All the talk has been speculative, and most of it catastrophic in outlook. It was presumably inevitable that at some point lawmakers would become involved in the regulation of such groundbreaking technology. But does it have to be Kamala Harris? Does it have to be President Joe Biden who tackles the problems and dilemmas arising from Generative AI? Haven’t Harris and Biden caused enough harm?

The hubris of Progressives never ceases to amaze. They flit about, from issue to issue, never bothering to consider the real-world effects and unintended consequences of the policies they take up and impose at whim. What’s been happening on the border since Biden took office, for example, is the definition of a man-made disaster. By overturning Trump-era enforcement policies, and by raising the prospect of a comprehensive immigration reform that would provide amnesty for illegal immigrants, this administration contributed to record-levels of unauthorized border crossings and to a spiraling humanitarian crisis that affects not just the southwest but also far-flung cities like Chicago and New York.

In March 2021, Biden said that Harris would run the government’s response to the border meltdown. More than two years later, on the same day that Harris planned to meet with the tech executives, the Pentagon was busy deploying military personnel on the southern border to brace for the coming surge in illegal immigration when emergency protocols end on May 11.

No one at the White House seems to have noticed the jarring, continent-sized disparity between the president’s goals and his vice president’s competence. One can only imagine the scene earlier this year, when Biden, reviewing the deteriorating situation along the Rio Grande, turned to his second-in-command and said: Heck of a job, Kamala. Now go figure out this AI thing.

No matter how long the unfinished to-do list, no matter the evidence of public sector failure, Biden, Harris, and the Progressives in the executive branch press on, searching for additional causes to adopt, and exploring novel ways to intervene in America’s economic, social, and cultural life. Consider the efforts of Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who on May 2 declared that "loneliness and isolation" is an "epidemic," an "underappreciated public health crisis that has harmed individual and social health."

Murthy issued an 82-page public health advisory on the subject. He warned that loneliness can be as physically damaging as cigarette smoke. He described "six pillars to advance social connection." A "lightbulb moment" on a listening tour in benighted America, he wrote, convinced him that "we have an opportunity, and an obligation, to make the same investments in addressing social connection that we have made in addressing tobacco use, obesity, and the addiction crisis."

Left unmentioned are the returns on these "investments." Tobacco use is down, to be sure, thanks to decades of punitive and regressive taxation and the paternalistic regulation of public spaces. That’s the success story. There aren’t many others.

The federal government took up obesity as a cause during George W. Bush’s administration, but American waistlines, like the cosmos, keep on expanding. As for addiction, drug overdose death rates continue to climb. Alcohol-related deaths are on the rise, as well. Somehow excessive drinking, which surely is worse for your health than feeling lonesome, is not as urgent a priority for the surgeon general as the abstract concept of "social connection."

But I don’t want to give Murthy ideas. He might start to meddle with cocktail hour. His report on loneliness is noteworthy for its total lack of self-consciousness, its determined refusal to take responsibility for the public health establishment’s conduct during the coronavirus pandemic. "The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated trends in declining social participation," writes the surgeon general, but it wasn’t the pandemic that closed schools, shuttered churches, drove people from offices and downtowns, and instructed the citizenry that outdoor gatherings were okay so long as you were engaging in mostly peaceful protest. It was the government. A government taking direction from—and hiding behind the credibility of—public health experts.

The very week that the surgeon general launched his war on loneliness, we learned that America’s eighth graders earned the lowest-recorded scores on the history assessment portion of the "Nation’s Report Card." Civics test scores were also down, for the first time since the subject began to be assessed in 1998. The dismal news followed catastrophic drops in reading and math. Again, Biden officials blamed the "pandemic" in general, thereby excusing the specific teachers’ unions and public health authorities that collaborated to keep children away from places of learning and "social connection."

Having made a hash of the border, reintroduced inflation into the economy, allowed the Taliban to reconquer Afghanistan, and excused and catered to the organizations responsible for the greatest learning loss in American history, Biden and his team look to the horizon, toward future exercises in ineptitude. If past is precedent, by the time Biden and Harris have "solved" Generative AI, ChatGPT will be running the executive branch. We could do worse. Artificial intelligence is intelligent, after all. The same can’t be said of America’s Progressive elite.

The post Biden Finds New Ways to Fail appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

McCarthy had beaten expectations. Again. And he wanted to let the world know it. "Every question you continue to raise," he told the media, "you guys have been wrong. You’ve underestimated us."

Many people have. Conventional wisdom is set against McCarthy, who presides over a 222-213 Republican majority and can afford to lose only four votes on a given bill or resolution. His bid for speaker appeared doomed right up until the moment that he won the office on the 15th ballot. Press coverage focuses almost entirely on divisions within the GOP conference, leading to a sense of surprise in the Beltway whenever the House comes together to rescind funding for additional IRS agents, incentivize oil and gas exploration and production, repeal onerous environmental and financial regulations, broaden parental rights in education, and hike the debt limit.

Meanwhile, the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party is off to a strong and bipartisan start. Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R., Ohio) Judiciary Committee won its fight with Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg. Rep. James Comer’s (R., Ky.) Oversight Committee is building its case against Biden family influence peddling. Compared with past Congresses, the legislative and investigative process under McCarthy may be slow and unpredictable. But they are working.

Indeed, on two occasions Speaker McCarthy has outplayed Biden and the Democrats. In February the House voted 250-173 to overturn D.C.’s incorrigible criminal justice reform. The next month, the resolution passed the Senate and Biden signed it into law. Also in February, the House voted 229-197 to end the national COVID emergency. And again, the next month, the resolution passed the Senate and Biden signed it into law. House Democrats were outraged that Biden ultimately sided with these House Republican initiatives. But the politics were on McCarthy’s side. And the same was the case last year, when then-minority leader McCarthy forced an end to the military’s COVID vaccine mandate.

The Limit, Save, Grow Act may not become law, but it holds symbolic value for the speaker. For months, McCarthy has wanted to enter negotiations with Biden on raising the debt ceiling. The president has refused. McCarthy wants to follow the precedent of earlier GOP Houses and leverage a debt ceiling raise for spending cuts and budget reforms. Biden doesn’t want to play that game. The standoff persists. Default on U.S. government obligations draws near.

McCarthy understands that his negotiating position will improve if House Republicans appear to be doing what they can to avoid default. He wants Biden, not his conference, to look obdurate and uninterested in the potential economic fallout. Two weeks ago, McCarthy traveled to the New York Stock Exchange and pledged that the House would vote on a bill that raised the debt limit while reducing spending. It did. By demonstrating unity and seriousness of purpose, House Republicans have put the ball in Biden’s court. And congressional Democrats from swing districts and battleground states—who are given to low-level political anxiety on the best of days—will tell the White House that talks with McCarthy may well be in order.

The situation could have been much worse for Republicans. If the Limit, Save, Grow Act had failed, then the GOP would have been in disarray, McCarthy would have looked hapless, Biden would have been able to tell Democrats that his strategy is working, and pressure would build on Senate leaders Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) to figure out a compromise. McCarthy avoided that scenario. How? By following the method that won him the speakership.

Call it "concede to lead." To become speaker, McCarthy gave the House Freedom Caucus enormous influence over committees, floor activity, and the legislative calendar. By drawing the Freedom Caucus into the inner circle—and by giving its members seats on the prestigious Rules Committee—McCarthy turned outsiders into insiders. His conservative outreach delivered results when outside groups normally opposed to GOP leadership, such as Heritage Action and the Center for Renewing America, came onboard the Limit, Save, Grow Act.

Similarly, when Republican members from corn states demanded that ethanol subsidies remain untouched in the debt ceiling bill, McCarthy agreed with them. And when conservatives wanted more stringent work requirements, he said yes again. McCarthy knows that the bill won’t become law. There’s little cost in such concessions. He’s willing to accommodate practically everyone, so long as it helps him attain his desired end. In January, his goal was becoming speaker. This week, it was passing Limit, Save, Grow. McCarthy is practicing a Republican form of diversity, equity, and inclusion that encompasses the moderates in the New York delegation, conservatives from Texas, and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.).

Success is far from assured. The Limit, Save, Grow Act is an opening gambit, not part of the endgame. No number of concessions may be enough to persuade 218 Republicans to back a deal this summer that lifts the debt ceiling for a few budget victories but not much else. Some in the GOP may want to see just how much a default would really hurt.

Right now, though, Speaker McCarthy can enjoy another win. Don't underestimate him again.

The post The Underestimated Kevin McCarthy appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Rosen was 16 years ahead of schedule. Not only was his essay on the political and legal consequences of overturning Roe v. Wade prescient. Its speculative insights apply to today’s post-Roe world.

The lengthy and complex piece defies summary. It demands a fair reading. One of its major arguments is that the electorate’s view of abortion has long been consistent: As a whole, most Americans support abortion access early in a pregnancy. But they are increasingly willing to entertain restrictions on the procedure as a fetus develops—so long as exceptions are made for cases of rape, incest, and life of the mother. They also oppose taxpayer funding for abortions.

This consensus is reflected in the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 and in the "Hyde Amendment" barring direct federal funding of abortion. Put down the U.S. Code, however, and things become complicated.

State law is lopsided. There are no-restrictions states such as California and New York, and there are no-exceptions states such as South Dakota and Idaho. Many states had "trigger laws" banning abortion that went into effect when Roe disappeared.

The difference between the federal government’s mushy middle ground and state governments’ extreme landscapes is a paradox of abortion politics in America. And it’s not the only paradox.

For example: If we distinguish between abortion policy at the federal and state levels, so must we also distinguish between direct democracy and representative democracy. The two systems produce divergent outcomes.

Wisconsin recently elected a State Supreme Court judge, Janet Protasiewicz, who based her campaign on opposition to the no-exceptions ban that has been in place in her state since June 2022. Yet the same day as Protasiewicz’s big win, voters in Wisconsin’s eighth state Senate district narrowly elected a conservative, Dan Knodl. That gave the GOP a pro-life legislative supermajority. And in November 2022, pro-life senator Ron Johnson (R.) also won a narrow reelection.

What’s going on? Where voters are given the opportunity to vote up or down, they will vote in favor of abortion access. That’s what happened with the Protasiewicz race. It’s what happened last year with ballot initiatives in six states, including in red states such as Kansas and Montana.

However: When voters are asked to choose between alternative candidates, other factors come into play. Pro-choice candidates might have an advantage if, like Protasiewicz, they turn their contests into pseudo-referenda on abortion or if, like Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D., Va.), they define or expose their opponent as outside the national consensus.

If neither condition applies, then abortion becomes one of many variables in a voter’s electoral calculus. Abortion loses its "salience." The economy, crime, the border, education, health care—these subjects become just as, or even more, important than abortion access. Incumbency and candidate quality matter too.

Those who argue that the GOP is doomed post-Roe forget that Republicans won a majority of the House popular vote last year. They overlook the fact that, prior to Election Day, Republican governors Brian Kemp of Georgia, Greg Abbott of Texas, Kim Reynolds of Iowa, and Mike DeWine of Ohio signed into law first-trimester abortions bans—so-called heartbeat bills. And they won reelection by 7 points, 11 points, 18 points, and 25 points, respectively.

You can understand, then, why Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R.) signed a six-week abortion ban, including some exceptions, into law. The cost of thwarting or vetoing the bill would have been much higher than in following the path set by fellow GOP governors. What’s more difficult to gauge is how abortion referenda will interact with non-abortion-focused campaigns. What would have happened, for example, if Protasiewicz had been on the ballot in 2022? Would Ron Johnson still be in the Senate?

We do know that Michigan’s Proposition 3, establishing a state constitutional right to abortion, ran ahead of incumbent governor Gretchen Whitmer (D.). And Whitmer won by 11 points. Prop 3 carried the Democrats into a state legislative majority, as well.

It would be in the Democrats’ interests, therefore, to hold referenda in key states next year. Which is exactly what they want to do in states such as Ohio.

If Democrats use pro-choice referenda to boost turnout for their presidential nominee, it would be a historic irony. Their strategy would be the same as opponents of same-sex marriage in 2004. Back then, initiatives forbidding gay marriage appeared on ballots in 11 states. The bans won everywhere. And George W. Bush won in 10 of the 11 states.

Bush’s two Supreme Court appointments occurred during his second term. They became the news hook for Jeffrey Rosen’s Atlantic article. "For what it’s worth," Rosen said at one point, "I wouldn’t bet on Chief Justice Roberts's siding unequivocally with the anti-Roe forces." Indeed. "Republicans," Rosen observed later, "might get too many Court appointment opportunities to prolong this exquisite balancing act, and Roe could indeed fall."

The fall was the result of former president Donald Trump’s three appointments to the Court. Yet Trump, a crucial agent in the demise of Roe v. Wade, has been critical of the pro-life movement since the 2022 election. Republicans failed to win larger majorities, Trump wrote in January, because the "‘abortion issue’" was "poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters."

More recently a (thinly sourced) report in the Guardian suggests that Trump is opposed to federal abortion legislation such as the 15-week ban sponsored by Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) and backed by former vice president Mike Pence.

On abortion, as on entitlements, Trump is closer to the center of the general electorate than is Pence, or for that matter DeSantis. What would it mean if Trump, the Republican presidential frontrunner, opposes federal abortion restrictions, or runs against the pro-life wing of his party? Which force would prove more powerful—Trump’s personality or institutional tradition?

I think we know the answer. Trump has modified the GOP before. And there is nothing written in stone that says the Republican Party must be pro-life. When Roe was decided, George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford were ambivalent about abortion. First Lady Betty Ford was outspokenly pro-choice. It wasn’t until 1980 that the Republican platform became firmly pro-life.

That commitment lasted for more than 40 years. In 2020, however, there was no GOP platform. And if Trump is the nominee, there probably won’t be one in 2024. Donald Trump is the platform. He’s what you’re going to get if you vote Republican.

And by November 5, 2024, Trump’s views on abortion may be at variance not only with the historical legacy of the pro-life movement but with what the movement is saying at this very moment. And pro-life Republicans could well vote for him anyway. And he could well win a second term. In which case, not only would Donald Trump be partly responsible for ending Roe. He also would end up fundamentally revising the alliance between the pro-life movement and the GOP. On his terms.

Jeff Rosen didn’t see that coming.

The post The Paradoxes of Post-Roe Abortion Politics appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Kelly had been rejected by voters before, in 2020, and hadn't exactly spent the intervening years moderating his views or improving his favorability rating. The Badger State, of course, is as swingy as you can get: It went for Trump in 2016 by about 23,000 votes and Biden in 2020 by about 20,000; boasts a Democratic governor and a Republican legislative supermajority; and has a U.S. senator from each party. Its House delegation is 6-2 Republican—partially thanks to congressional maps Protasiewicz may soon throw out.

Protasiewicz defeated Kelly by a whopping 11 points. She successfully framed the election as a referendum on Wisconsin's current no-exceptions abortion ban, which went into effect last summer when the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade. Wisconsin governor Tony Evers has challenged the ban in court. Protasiewicz has made it clear that she's ready to strike it down. Her state's electorate is too.

The election reinforced two political trends. The first is that if voters believe abortion is on the ballot, they will mobilize to protect access to it. That is what happened in Kansas last summer and, among other places, in Michigan last November. The centrality of abortion is what explains the difference in outcome between this week in Wisconsin and last November's Senate race.

Both contests took place after the end of Roe. And yet, six months ago, Republican pro-life senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin was narrowly reelected over his state's then-lieutenant governor, Democrat Mandela Barnes. Why did Johnson win by 1 point while Kelly lost by 11? Because Johnson had plenty else to talk about, including President Biden's job performance, inflation, and crime.

The judicial election presented a binary choice on a single issue. Nor did it help Kelly that the Wisconsin abortion ban is total. Even pro-choice polling data show that voters are willing to restrict abortion—as long as provisions are made for rape, incest, and life of the mother. Remove those conditions, and the public veers in a pro-choice direction. "What you have to do is argue for protections that the American people see as reasonable versus the extremism of no exceptions, even late-term abortion," GOP strategist Frank Cannon told the AP recently. "And if you do that, it's a winning combination."

Winning combinations are proving difficult for Republicans these days. Republicans still flourish in a post-Roe world—look at the GOP House, and Governors Ron DeSantis, Brian Kemp, Glenn Youngkin, and Mike DeWine, for starters—but only if they draw support from middle-class voters in the suburbs.

Which is why the second trend underscored by the Wisconsin Supreme Court race ought to alarm the GOP. Kelly failed to mobilize the Republican vote in Wisconsin's "WOW" counties: Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington. While Kelly did win these historically Republican Milwaukee suburbs, he did so by considerably smaller margins than Johnson in 2022. Johnson, for example, won Waukesha County by 25 points; Kelly won by 16. Johnson won Ozaukee County by 16 points; Kelly won by 4. And Johnson won Washington County by 42 points; Kelly won by 32. The drop-off cost him the election.

If Republicans dominate in rural precincts and Democrats in urban enclaves, then the suburbs are majority makers. Yet the suburbs have been receding from the GOP since the dawn of the Trump era.

Consider: In 2014, the last election before Trump descended on his escalator, Republicans won the suburban vote 55 percent to 45 percent. They won both the white non-college vote and the white college vote by double digits. They won voters making between $50,000 per year and $100,000 per year by 10 points.

By the end of Barack Obama's presidency, majorities among suburban white voters near the middle of the income distribution fueled the GOP's greatest electoral strength in close to a century. Unease over Trump shrank this coalition in 2016: Republicans won the suburbs by 5 points, white non-college voters by 39 points, white college voters by 4 points, and middle-income voters by 4 points. That gave Trump the Electoral College, but not a popular vote majority.

Then Trump entered office. He retained his support among white voters without college degrees in 2018. But the remaining pillars of Republican rule crumbled beneath him. White voters with college degrees voted for Democrats by 4 points. Middle-income voters went for Democrats by 2 points. And the suburbs turned against Republicans, voting Democratic by 11 points.

The same pattern was visible in the 2020 results: Trump won non-college white votes (though by a smaller margin than four years earlier). White college voters went for Joe Biden by 7 points. Middle-income voters split evenly between the parties. And the suburbs voted for Biden by 10 points.

In 2022, non-college white voters turned out for Republicans once more, but Democrats won white college voters by 1 point and the suburbs by 1 point. Middle-income voters returned to the Republican column, 52 percent to 45 percent. The narrowing demographic gaps produced the mixed result of a Republican House and Democratic Senate.

If Republicans were serious about winning Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin in 2024 and thus the White House, they would try to add white voters with college degrees and suburban America atop their non-college rural base. To do so, they would have to replace Donald Trump as party leader. They would have to find a nominee who is pro-life and who can speak about abortion restrictions—with exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother—in a nonthreatening way. They would have to learn the lessons not only of Wisconsin this week, but of every election cycle since 2016. And they would have to move quickly, before 2024 escapes the GOP's grasp.

The post What's the Matter With Wisconsin? appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

On March 27, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that his government would pause the progress through the Knesset of a controversial judicial bill until later this spring. Netanyahu’s decision came after weeks of mounting street protests over the reform, which would allow the legislature to rein in the judiciary. Military reservists stopped reporting for duty. Israel’s largest union declared a general strike. U.S. officials were critical.

So, when Netanyahu suspended the measure, U.S. ambassador to Israel Tom Nides welcomed the move. Asked when Netanyahu might visit President Biden in the White House, Nides said: "I’m sure he’ll be coming relatively soon."

Nides didn’t check with his boss. He extended an open hand to Israel’s elected leader. Biden slapped it down. On March 28, during a visit to North Carolina, the president spoke to reporters. Calling himself a "strong supporter of Israel," Biden said he was nonetheless concerned that Israelis "get this straight. They can’t continue down this road"—the road, presumably, of a democratic majority following due process of law. A reporter asked Biden if he’d be welcoming Netanyahu in Washington. "Not in the near term," Biden replied.

Some friend. No matter your opinion of the judicial reform—and there are plenty of committed Zionists who are leery of it—there is no question that Biden’s rebuke of Netanyahu was a breach in U.S.-Israel relations. Americans and Israelis scrambled to repair the damage. Netanyahu posted a Twitter thread underscoring his commitment to the alliance, while reminding Biden that Israel is a sovereign nation that will determine its own course. Or, as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir put it: "Israel is an independent country, not another star in the American flag." On March 29, White House national security spokesman John Kirby played down the differences as best he could.

This is why the White House keeps Biden away from the press. When he lacks a script, he goes haywire. Biden spoke his mind—what’s left of it—and caused an international incident. The double standard he applies to Israel is glaring. It is also offensive. Israel accommodated protesters. Iran murders them. Where is Biden’s outrage at the butchers in Tehran?

Every democracy has its internal debates. In recent weeks Paris has been the site of violent demonstrations over French president Emmanuel Macron’s unilateral hike in the retirement age. Farmers in the Netherlands have taken direct action against environmental regulation. In Mexico, where President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has gutted the electoral commission, democratic backsliding is not theoretical. It is happening in real time. Then there are the nondemocracies worthy of condemnation: Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, to name a few in our hemisphere. Maybe Biden could find time to meddle with them.

Yet Israel is singled out. Israel is where pressure is brought to bear. Why? Three reasons:

PERSONAL. Media coverage has focused on the long history between Biden and Netanyahu. "There is no love lost between the two leaders, despite their polite façade when it comes to their decades-long relationship and their common commitment to Israel’s defense," wrote Katie Rogers and Michael Crowley of the New York Times. The White House, meanwhile, suggested that Biden’s familiarity with Netanyahu gives him the freedom to be intrusive. "These two gentlemen have known each other for 40-some-odd years," John Kirby said this week. "And the great thing about a deep friendship is you can be that candid with one another."

Biden assumes that his past with Netanyahu will help him now. He’s wrong. For one, the idea that he and Bibi are pals who enjoy Grotto slices on the Rehoboth boardwalk or smoke hookah along Aviv Beach is ridiculous. For another, personal diplomacy does not work. No world leader ever made a concession because the other guy was nice. Successful politicians believe that charm counts most. It doesn’t. Charm fades when it reaches the world stage.

POLITICAL. Compare Biden’s stalwart posture toward Netanyahu with his kindness toward the previous Israeli government, led by Naftali Bennett and then Yaïr Lapid. The last coalition was an oddity—it included parties of the right, center, left, and Arab sector—formed around opposition to Netanyahu. Biden left it alone. He was cheery when he visited Israel last summer. He worked with Lapid to negotiate an energy deal with Lebanon meant to boost the coalition ahead of elections. It didn’t work. Netanyahu joined forces with a united bloc of the Israeli far right and won a substantial victory.

Biden is constrained. Pro-Israel Democrats have grown tired of Netanyahu, whose ruling coalition is too nationalist and too religious for them to stomach. Biden’s favorite newspaper columnist has embarked on a barely literate anti-Bibi jihad. According to public survey data, Democrats as a whole sympathize more with Palestinians than they do Israelis. And the Progressive Left is outright hostile to Israel and to the very idea of a Jewish State. What better way for Biden to shore up his base than to confront Netanyahu—even if he destabilizes Israel as a result?

GLOBAL. Biden’s comments make a successful negotiation between Netanyahu and the opposition less likely. After all, opposition leader Lapid knows Biden is on his side. He will therefore make maximalist demands. The goal isn’t to scuttle the judicial reform. The goal is to collapse Netanyahu’s coalition and drive him from office.

Biden has wasted his hand. The year began with Israel’s first stable government in years, Iran in a prerevolutionary situation, and a stable Iraq. The Iran nuclear deal was a dead letter, the Saudis were interested in diplomacy with Israel, and the Abraham Accords were a model for economic and security cooperation in the region.

Look at what’s happened since. Israel has been consumed by infighting. China brokered a détente between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Iranian-backed militias have attacked U.S. personnel in Syria, killing one American and injuring others. Iran suppressed the protest movement. It could produce enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb "in about 12 days."

Our response? Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed the Iran-Saudi deal. Biden retaliated against the Iranian-backed militia—but because the strike was limited in size and scope, it will fail to restore deterrence. The administration continues to say that it’s ready to sign a nuclear deal with Iran. And it spends more time using a magnifying glass to read the fine print of Knesset bills than it does applying hard power to the brutal realities of the Greater Middle East.

America needs to bolster her traditional allies in the region—not bully or shun them—to prepare for a confrontation with Iran. A true friend would know that. He’d know the difference between partners and adversaries. And he’d know when to hold his tongue.

The post Biden’s Mideast Mess appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Still: One can’t help thinking, at this point in the cycle, the race for the presidency is remarkably static and fixed. An election with the potential to reshape American politics has drawn few polling leaders and opened no new battlegrounds. The stakes of the election expand while the presidential field, the number of swing states, and the pool of persuadable voters all contract. This should be the moment when our choices grow. They’re not.

The incumbent president is unpopular. Most people don’t want President Joe Biden to run for a second term, but he’s expected to do so anyway. Biden has said he is a transitional figure—and the transition may last a while. A Democratic primary remains an option, though an unlikely one. Inertia is a factor. So is the lack of a plausible alternative.

Biden is a known quantity. He doesn’t thrill voters, but in 2020 they considered him preferable to the alternatives. Not much has changed. The Progressive Left grumbles about Biden’s stances on crime and the southern border, but who would it put forward to replace him? And why would that candidate do any better than Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) did four or eight years ago?

As president, Biden is the leader of his party. The nomination is his if he wants it. He clearly does. That’s typical. What’s atypical is the situation in the GOP.

A defeated president hasn’t tried to retake the White House since the 19th century. Former president Donald Trump’s presence in the 2024 campaign for the Republican nomination—as I write, he is one of three declared candidates—has turned a potential free for all into a slow-rolling gut check for a party that has lost five of the past eight presidential elections.

The GOP race looks as if an incumbent president were facing down a significant primary challenger. Except Trump isn’t the incumbent and his main threat, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, hasn’t announced for president. However, recent interviews and fundraising suggest that DeSantis will join the campaign later this spring.

For months, DeSantis has been the sole non-Trump Republican to enjoy consistent double-digit support in polls of GOP voters. No other declared or potential candidate comes close to either man. In February, Republican consultant Jeff Roe told Fox News Sunday that the GOP primary was a two-person race. On March 22, Roe joined a DeSantis-aligned Super PAC.

Obviously, candidates not named Trump or DeSantis would like this dynamic to change. What they aren’t clear about is how it will change. One of them will have to rocket from the bottom tier to the top tier by the end of summer. Otherwise, this primary will continue its long-established trajectory: a fight to the finish between two Florida men.

The presidential field is smaller than anticipated. The map is too. Back in November, political writer Ron Brownstein observed that the midterm results "will likely leave control of the White House in the hands of a very small number of states that themselves divided almost exactly in half between the parties."

Ohio, Iowa, and Florida were once swing states. They alternated between Republicans and Democrats at both the presidential and state level. No more. Since voting for former president Barack Obama in 2012, these three states have veered to the right. They are not realistic targets for Democrats in 2024. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania and Michigan are back in the Democrats’ column. And Arizona and Georgia have become purple.

The 2024 election, according to Brownstein, will be decided in four states: Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Nevada. Arizona and Georgia are GOP fixtures that developed severe MAGA allergies around 2018. Wisconsin went from a narrow Trump victory in 2016 to a narrower Trump loss in 2020. Nevada hasn’t backed a GOP presidential candidate since 2004.

The Republican path to the White House runs through Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. If the GOP nominee adds these three states to the states Trump won in 2020, he or she will win more than 270 Electoral College votes and thus the presidency. It’s simple in theory—and difficult in practice. Losing just one of these big three would hand the Democrats a second term (and winning Nevada wouldn’t make up the difference).

Such is life in our constricted political landscape. It’s possible, of course, that this equilibrium won’t last. Something—or someone—may overturn the status quo and broaden the realm of political possibility. Health scares, legal jeopardy, dramatic encounters on stage, and third-party bids could shake up the race. For now, though, the 2024 election has a few players and a tiny gameboard. It’s shrinking.

The post The Shrinking 2024 Election appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The next day, March 9, panic began to spread. Ratings agencies downgraded Silicon Valley Bank’s credit. Its stock plunged. A run on the bank—with depositors demanding their money back—took off. On March 10, Silicon Valley Bank collapsed.

Silicon Valley Bank is the largest financial institution to go under since the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. Its sudden demise shocked investors into reexamining the financial sector. The largest banks may rest on firm capital cushions. What about regional banks? Fear of instability caused depositors to flee these midsized firms. Shareholders did too. Signature Bank of New York was caught in the whirlpool. It drowned.

To stop the contagion from spreading further, on Sunday, March 12, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Martin Gruenberg of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell made the following announcement: The federal government would guarantee deposits at Signature and Silicon Valley Bank. Until last weekend, the FDIC insured deposits up to $250,000. No longer. The ceiling was blown away in a cyclone of panic.

President Joe Biden was quick to assert that the backstop is different from the Troubled Assets Recovery Program, or TARP, the controversial bank bailout of 2008. The new Federal Reserve facility won’t support creditors or shareholders or executives, just depositors. And tax revenue won’t pay for the guarantee directly, an FDIC fee will—a fee levied on banks and passed on to consumers, who also happen to be taxpayers.

Biden and Yellen won’t say it’s a bailout. Of course it’s a bailout. In some ways this bailout is worse than in 2008. After all, Congress passed TARP. Congress is a bystander here. And TARP set economy-wide rules and qualifications. Biden’s intervention is discretionary and selective. When she appeared before Congress on March 16, Yellen admitted that the unlimited deposit guarantee doesn’t apply to every bank. It applies to systemically important banks. Who decides which bank is systemically important? She does. As circumstances dictate.

Yellen tried to sooth Congress. She tried to project strength. "I can reassure the members of the committee that our banking system is sound, and that Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be there when they need them," she told Senate Finance. "This week’s actions demonstrate our resolute commitment to ensure that our financial system remains strong and depositors’ savings remain safe."

Feel better?

Authorities have struck similar notes of confidence during previous emergencies—the pandemic, the crash of 2008, the first hours of September 11, 2001. Subsequent events proved them wrong. Yellen and Biden may end up looking just as foolish. They are playing Whack-A-Mole, concentrating on financial varmints as they pop up. They should be addressing underlying causes.

The chaos in the banking system is the result of decades of low to zero interest rates and $6 trillion in fiscal stimulus since 2020. That flood of money and credit produced the worst inflation in four decades. In 2022 the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates to restore price stability. The Fed should have acted sooner. It waited because it assumed that inflation would be temporary.

That assumption was false. The Fed’s complacency made the situation worse. By the time it started raising rates, inflation expectations were fixed. The past year of Fed hikes may have slowed inflation. What they haven’t done is kill it.

Biden, Yellen, and the Federal Reserve want a "soft landing." They are after a magic formula that will quell inflation and avoid a recession. They will be disappointed. No one likes inflation: It lowers the standard of living. But the Federal Reserve’s solution—a contraction of the money supply through higher interest rates—is nasty too. High interest rates can cause a recession. Or something worse.

Now Biden and the Fed are caught in a stimulus trap: Higher interest rates increase the likelihood of financial instability, while keeping rates pat—or cutting them—will prolong the inflation. Doing nothing will perpetuate the current mix of declining standards of living amidst periodic chaos.

Biden has ruled out other options. Supply-side measures such as deregulating energy and reducing means-tested income transfers are off the table. Legal immigration won't be made easier. Trade barriers won’t be reduced.

Biden, Yellen, and Powell have gifted America with another "emergency" measure that will last long after the crisis subsides. Republicans are eager for a piece of the action—why do Gavin Newsom and Silicon Valley tech giants get this guarantee, while midsized banks in rural areas do not?

Rather than limit and sunset the deposit backstop, enforce market discipline, and reassert the Fed’s commitment to price stability, the same team that brought America the worst inflation in a generation is entangling itself further in a key sector of the economy. It would be foolish to trust in their judgment. Look at the record. Practical wisdom is scarce in an administration populated by academics and partisan fixers.

Soft landing? Afraid not. Brace for impact.

The post There Will Be No Soft Landing appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

One year into the war, Russia has yet to establish air supremacy over Ukraine. This failure speaks to the dilapidated state of the Russian military. It also gives Ukraine an opportunity to reclaim the skies and provide her ground forces with air cover. All Ukraine needs are the tools—tools that Biden and America’s NATO allies have been providing slowly, in dribs and drabs, in fear of provoking the Russian bear.

Zelensky is more aware of Ukraine’s defense needs than Biden, who isn’t sure if he’s called the mayor of East Palestine, Ohio, in the past month. And Zelensky has a keener appreciation of the complicated social, political, economic, strategic, and tactical conditions on the eastern front, where Russia is making incremental gains, at incredible cost in manpower and materiel, in a savage war of attrition. A true statesman would recognize that Zelensky is the better judge of Ukraine’s requirements and move heaven and earth to satisfy them so that the war ends, and deterrence is restored. Biden is not that man.

Yes, the president has said, correctly, that America ought to and will help Ukraine for "as long as it takes." What he’s neglected to mention is how long that will be. Nor has he acted to move forward the day when Russian forces leave Ukraine and Ukraine is integrated into the West’s institutional architecture. These are questions Biden doesn’t take up, decisions he’d rather not make.

Biden’s primary interest is U.S. domestic politics. And though he has been right to support Ukraine, he has also put NATO unity ahead of Ukrainian success. He has played into Vladimir Putin’s nuclear gamesmanship by preemptively ruling out measures that the Russian despot might consider escalatory. Biden’s self-deterrence has contributed to the situation Zelensky and the Ukrainian people face now: They are strong enough to control some 83 percent of their territory, but lack the capability to win back the rest. And the war goes on.

Biden gave Ukraine a fighting chance. But his policy is unsustainable. By practicing self-deterrence, and by resisting calls to dramatically expand defense production and ramp up weapons transfers, Biden has reproduced the conditions of past "forever wars" that America and her allies have stalemated or lost.

Biden permits the invaders to operate from a sanctuary, just as past presidents allowed in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, by denying Ukraine the means to strike inside Russian territory. His provision to Ukraine of enough resources to survive, but not enough to thrive, erodes U.S. domestic support for intervention by prolonging the conflict. A similar dynamic took hold during the Iraq war, when failure to devote sufficient manpower at the outset of the campaign and for several years thereafter had calamitous effects.

The price of Biden’s ambivalence is high. Putin is unmoved. An increasingly provocative China may supply Russia with lethal aid. U.S. weapon stocks are depleted and there is no plan to rush production. Ukraine remains a charnel house while other areas—the Persian Gulf, the Korean peninsula, the Taiwan Strait—may erupt at any time.

The elite consensus in favor of continued support for Ukraine holds. But popular approval is falling. And public opinion is what matters. Where voters go, elites will follow. Especially Republican elites involved in the 2024 presidential campaign, and in the effort to redefine the GOP as a nationalist-populist entity that hides behind Fortress America. If Biden assumes his current approach to Ukraine is good politics, if he believes that he is upholding American values without courting a backlash, then he is mistaken. The trendline is not headed in a favorable direction. The "humble" foreign-policy candidates tend to win. And the electorate may opt for the man or woman who offers peace.

But peace comes in two forms. You can have it, temporarily, through appeasement. Or you can achieve a lasting peace through victory. And for victory there is no substitute. What America needs, then, is a strategy for victory in Ukraine: a plan to scale up our manufacture and provision of weapons, to rebuild the arsenal of democracy, to impose steep costs on Russia and deter the rest of the axis—China, Iran, North Korea—from aggression.

Give Zelensky what he needs, and when he asks for it. Invoke the Defense Production Act. Propose a significant defense increase weighted toward procurement, research, and development, and the revitalization of the defense industrial base. Remind voters that defense jobs are manufacturing jobs—and that these jobs can’t be shipped overseas. Write multiyear procurement contracts that reassure contractors who worry America will abandon its global responsibilities. Treat the war in Ukraine not as a distraction but as the central front in the fight for freedom and prosperity. And remember that the party that delivers peace—a real peace—will be rewarded.

The post Biden’s Self-Defeating Ukraine Strategy appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

No one died, people are back home, the Environmental Protection Agency says the air and water are safe, and it’s unusual for a transportation secretary to visit the site of a trainwreck. Yet a savvy MAGA pressure campaign, including an onsite inspection by former president Donald Trump earlier in the week, left Buttigieg no choice. Reluctantly, he traveled to Columbiana County, Ohio, where Trump won in 2020 by 45 points. He donned a hard hat and goggles. And he tried to convey sympathy toward the East Palestinians.

The episode highlighted a dilemma for Buttigieg’s party: The Democrats are led by an 80-year-old president with no clear successor. And while Joe Biden plans to run for reelection, a twist of fate could upend the 2024 race and send Democrats scrambling to enter a primary. The outcome would be unpredictable and potentially unbearable.

Biden is the one person who’s defeated Trump. The rising stars in his party, such as Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, Maryland governor Wes Moore, Senator Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.), and Representative Abigail Spanberger (D., Va.), aren’t ready for national campaigns. The Democratic bench is filled with retreads—Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—and duds.

Like Buttigieg. He’s immensely overrated. His glib, know-it-all style may impress some in the media, but his crisis management skills are awful. In 2021 he went on paternity leave despite supply chain bottlenecks and negotiations over the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. In the summer of 2022 he went on vacation to Portugal as rail workers threatened to strike. He was out of his depth last December when Southwest Airlines canceled thousands of flights and scrambled holiday travel plans. In January the Federal Aviation Administration halted air traffic due to a computer glitch. Buttigieg was caught unawares.

His handling of the East Palestine train disaster was just as sloppy and ineffectual. For more than a week, Buttigieg said nothing on the crash, while complaining about the demographics of construction workers. Then he blamed the Trump administration for lessening regulations on rail carriers. Next, he said train derailments happen often, but East Palestine has been getting the attention. Finally, he took a hard line on Norfolk Southern and relented to demands that he go to Ohio.

His shifting responses played right into the hands of Trump, Senator J.D. Vance (R., Ohio), and television host Tucker Carlson. They turned East Palestine into a conservative version of Flint, Michigan, and Jackson, Mississippi—impoverished and neglected communities whose populations suffer from environmental contamination.

Buttigieg’s aloof sensibility became evidence that the Biden administration is more interested in the goings-on in Ukraine than in what’s happening at home. And his eventual capitulation to MAGA's demands strengthened the perception that his critics were right. Buttigieg might have been the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. But East Palestine mayor Trent Conaway has much better political instincts.

If you compare him with Kamala Harris, though, Buttigieg is another FDR. The vice president hasn’t recovered from a devastating Feb. 6 New York Times story on the "painful reality" that she has squandered her political future. "Even some Democrats whom her own advisers referred reporters to for supportive quotes confided privately that they had lost hope in her," reported Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Katie Rogers, and Peter Baker. Indeed, Democrats are so fearful that Harris will lose the 2024 or 2028 election that they are trying to figure out how to "sideline her without inflaming key Democratic constituencies that would take offense."

Best of luck.

Clumsy Kamala, pedantic Pete—without Biden the Democrats have few good options. Of the senators who have run before, Amy Klobuchar has potential, I guess, but is anyone really excited for her candidacy? The veteran governors are a mixed bag: Gavin Newsom and Jared Polis have strengths and weaknesses, and J.B. Pritzker combines the worst of progressivism and limousine liberalism (he’s a billionaire) with an absence of charm.

Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer, who won reelection last year by 12 points and gained unified control of the state legislature, probably has the brightest future. Biden must regret not selecting her as vice president in 2020. Still, Whitmer is untested.

And no, Michelle Obama is not going to descend from the rafters to save the party.

Biden remains. His approval rating has improved slightly in recent days, he’s favored to win reelection, but he is no sure bet. Trump is knocking on his door. If Biden wants to give the rising generation of Democrats more time to develop, the American standard of living needs to improve and the Ukrainian Army needs to make gains. And he and his administration need to demonstrate the proper concern for the people of East Palestine, and places like it.

The post Pete Buttigieg Is Not Ready for Primetime appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Understandably so. Democrats must defend three seats in states that backed Donald Trump by considerable margins in both 2016 and 2020. The Democrats also must defend five seats in states that President Joe Biden won by less than 5 percent. In contrast, there are no Republican incumbents from Biden states and just two whose previous election margins were below 5 percent. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida come from states that Trump won twice and are more than likely to be red next year as well.

At first glance, then, Republicans are on their way to capturing the Senate. But looks can be deceiving. The last election cycle also seemed promising for Senate Republicans. They held 50 seats, enjoyed a favorable political environment, and eyed potential pickups in three states that Trump lost narrowly in 2020. They ended up losing one seat and have been squabbling with each other ever since.

Senate Republicans want to avoid a repeat. They know that they will be on defense in both 2026 and 2028, and that fewer seats will be in play. They also know that the Senate follows the presidential returns. Only five current senators belong to a different party than their state’s most recent choice for president—and most of them are Democrats who are up for reelection this cycle. Hence, unless the coming presidential election radically reshapes the map, the 2024 campaign is a make-or-break moment for Senate Republicans.

Seizing this opportunity won’t be easy. As always, candidate quality will be essential. A good candidate is likable, telegenic, fluent in the issues, quick on his feet, and appropriate to the culture of his state. Since the 2010 campaign, however, Republican Senate chances have run aground on the shoals of bad candidacies. The party has a knack for nominating individuals who strike voters as extreme or odd or blatantly unqualified.

To avoid a replay of 2010, 2012, and 2022, Republicans will not only have to put up a presidential nominee who can win the battlegrounds of Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin. They will also have to choose Senate candidates whose personal traits and policy preferences don’t send independents screaming for the hills.

Consider the four races that the University of Virginia Center for Politics classifies as Lean Republican or as Tossups. The most vulnerable incumbent is Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, whose seat is rated Lean Republican. The GOP hopes that the 75-year-old Manchin will announce his retirement, guaranteeing a pickup and freeing money for other contests. If Manchin does run, he faces an uphill battle, but the degree of difficulty depends on his opponent. For example, according to a poll released this week by the Senate Leadership Fund, Manchin would lose to Governor Jim Justice. But he would defeat congressman Alex Mooney as well as the state’s attorney general Patrick Morrissey, whom he bested in 2018. West Virginia is no slam dunk.

The new head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), Steve Daines of Montana, has a keen interest in defeating his fellow Montanan Jon Tester. At this writing, Tester hasn’t said if he’ll run for reelection, but he sounded like a candidate when he made loud and angry criticisms of the Biden administration over the Chinese spy balloon.

Don’t underestimate Tester. Behind his good-ol’-boy persona is a shrewd politician who has impressed me since I first met him in 2006. The GOP primary is expected to draw in candidates such as congressman Matt Rosendale, who lost to Tester in 2018, and Governor Greg Gianforte. Be on the lookout, though, for a fresh face who could defuse Tester’s attacks and successfully tie him to the national Democratic Party.

Sherrod Brown of Ohio, like Manchin and Tester, is a Democrat who has thrived in a red state thanks to talent and luck. Brown’s talents include a knack for retail politics, an economic nationalism that appeals to populists of all stripes, and a constituent service program that is well-regarded on Capitol Hill and much appreciated at home. Brown’s luck is his timing. All three of his Senate campaigns took place in Democratic years. He draws opponents who lack personality and carry baggage.

Still, every winning streak ends. For that to happen to Brown, Republicans would have to nominate a strong presidential candidate, and Brown’s Senate opponent would have to replicate, at the least, Senator J.D. Vance’s 2022 coalition. Vance defeated congressman Tim Ryan by 6 points in an open-seat race.

State senator Matt Dolan, whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball franchise, has announced his candidacy against Brown. Others will follow. Dolan surged late in the 2022 U.S. Senate primary and placed third. He is less like Vance and more like Governor Mike DeWine, who won reelection last year by a whopping 26 points. Former state treasurer Josh Mandel, who came in second place in the Senate primary to Vance and who failed against Brown in 2012, has said he won’t run.

The final tossup, Arizona, features some familiar faces. Last December, incumbent Kyrsten Sinema switched her party affiliation to independent, though she caucuses with the Democrats and hasn’t said if she will run for another term. Congressman Ruben Gallego, a member of the left-wing Progressive Caucus, has entered the race for the Democratic nomination. He’s the favorite.

The GOP doesn’t have a frontrunner. Tech executive Blake Masters, who lost to Senator Mark Kelly last year by 5 points, is contemplating another bid. Former news anchor Kari Lake, who lost the governor’s race to Katie Hobbs last year by less than 1 point, met with NRSC officials in Washington in early February. A lot of Republicans and conservatives, including me, would love to see former governor Doug Ducey run for Senate. He isn’t considering it.

An OH Predictive Insights poll from this week illustrates the Republican dilemma. Gallego is winning. And the GOP candidate who performed best in a head-to-head matchup against Gallego and in a three-way fight against Gallego and Sinema is Ducey. Who’s not interested in the job.

Complicating matters further is Sinema’s cheering section within the business community and among some Republicans, who like her independent spirit and opposition to tax increases. If the Arizona GOP nominates Lake or Masters or another Ultra-MAGA social media personality, a chunk of the party is likely to back Sinema. And the Democrats would be one step closer to keeping their Senate majority.

You can be sure, too, that Democrats will run ads for pro-Trump candidates in Republican primaries who they see as unelectable in a general election. They pursued the same strategy of reflexive control in 2022, and the strategy worked.

If Republicans are serious about winning the Senate, and potentially gaining unified control of the federal government, they need to select candidates for office who appeal not only to the grassroots but also to independent voters, and who understand that Americans want common-sense answers for pressing economic and social problems, not conspiracy theories, harsh rhetoric, and spite. If Republicans are serious about winning the Senate, they need to get serious about who represents their party. They’ve blown it before. Will they blow it again?

The post 2024 Is Make or Break for the Senate GOP appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Sanders pointed out that while she is the youngest governor in the country, Biden is the oldest president in history. She noted that while she is the first woman elected governor of the Natural State, prominent Democrats have trouble saying what a woman is. She likened Biden's speech to a child's tall tale and lambasted the president for his bungled response to the crisis on the southern border, for his inattention to crime, and for his delay in shooting down the Chinese spy balloon. "President Biden is unwilling to defend our border, defend our skies, and defend our people," she said. "He is unfit to serve as commander in chief."

Conservatives praised Sanders's indictment of President Biden and her call for a new generation of GOP leaders. A few people said it was the best State of the Union response they'd ever heard. She cleverly framed today's politics as a competition between normal and crazy—with the Democrats acting cray-cray. "Every day," she said, left-wing culture warriors tell Americans that "we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols, all while big government colludes with Big Tech to strip away the most American thing there is—your freedom of speech."

Such lines are catnip to the populist grassroots. But I'm not convinced that they will persuade the independent voters who decide elections. Governor Sanders's punchy and well-delivered remarks followed the Republican playbook from a disappointing midterm campaign. If the GOP wants to win in 2024, its candidates will have to confront, seriously and substantively, topics that Sanders avoided: abortion and the economy.

Sanders neither mentioned nor alluded to the most significant Supreme Court ruling in decades. Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ended the constitutional right to abortion in a remarkable victory for both the conservative legal movement and the pro-life cause. This prominent pro-life woman did not bring it up.

To be fair, Biden hardly touched on abortion in his own speech, devoting a measly five sentences to the issue. He did, however, say what he was for—writing an abortion guarantee into federal law—and what he was against—restrictions. His advocacy won't be as muted on the trail.

Sanders may have avoided the right to life because the pro-life movement, not to mention the Republican Party, has not settled on a post-Dobbs strategy. Many members of the GOP consultant class are pro-choice and believe that the Dobbs backlash was responsible for the party's losses. Every candidate has been left to fend for himself, either by stating plainly and holding to his pro-life convictions, or by curling into a ball and pretending voters won't notice.

Well, voters do. And they are as likely to reject a candidate who is mealy-mouthed or defensive as they are to oppose a candidate whom they perceive as extreme. Hiding behind the 10th Amendment, and saying abortion is best left to the states, is an evasion, if for no other reason than abortion activists follow a national plan of action that merits resistance. Whether they like it or not, Republicans must parry Democratic attacks, make the case for pro-life measures, and face the consequences.

The most energetic and boisterous elements of the Republican coalition have organized themselves against far-left "woke" ideas on race, gender, and American exceptionalism that, since 2020, have gained strength within the country's educational, cultural, legal, medical, corporate, and media institutions. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that anti-wokeness serves the same unifying function for today's conservatives that anti-Communism did for their 20th-century forebears.

The comparison is instructive. Students of history will recall that, while the American people are instinctively anti-Communist, voters nonetheless rejected conservative anti-Communism for decades because they found it too aggressive and too conspiratorial. Republicans must be careful lest their anti-woke messaging trigger the same response.

Focus, execution, and competence are what's important. When Republicans champion parental rights in education, or challenge and constrain politically correct institutions, they tend to succeed and be rewarded. When they veer into details unfamiliar, strange, and off-putting to most Americans, or when they act like a character in a post-apocalyptic television drama, voters run in the other direction.

Some anti-Communists became monomaniacs, and for understandable reasons. When a threat is that large, that consuming, it tends to crowd out everything else. Anti-wokeness encourages similar behavior. Once your eyes are open to woke subversion, it is hard to close them. The problem with monomania, however, is that it distorts reality and prevents you from seeing the world in its full complexity. It hobbles your capacity to recognize and to meet different challenges from the one you can't stop noticing.

Americans tell pollsters that the economy is their number-one priority. They give President Biden low marks on the economy because the inflation that his policies helped to unleash has eroded their standard of living. They prefer the Republicans. Yet, last year, independents who said the economy is poor and disapproved of Biden voted for Democrats. That's why Kevin McCarthy's House majority is small, and why Chuck Schumer remains Senate majority leader. If Republicans are not careful, nothing will change in 2024.

Governor Sanders barely discussed the economy. She said the words "inflation" and "high gas prices" and "jobs" once each. "Woke" she uttered twice. Rather than outline an economic plan addressing the paramount concern of the American people, Sanders described her anti-woke agenda. "Upon taking office just a few weeks ago," she said, "I signed executive orders to ban CRT, racism, and indoctrination in our schools, eliminate the use of the derogatory term 'Latinx' in our government, repealed COVID orders, and said never again to authoritarian mandates and shutdowns."

I applaud Governor Sanders for these actions. I also know what she's talking about. Most Americans, however, have not heard of CRT, have neither used nor encountered the ridiculous expression "Latinx," and behave as if the pandemic did not happen. Most voters are not political junkies. Woke discourse is incomprehensible to them, thank the Lord. What's real to them is education, health care, public safety, and wages.

Sanders was on the right path when she went through her education bill and said, "Republicans believe in an America where strong families thrive in safe communities. Where jobs are abundant, and paychecks are rising. Where the freedom our veterans shed their blood to defend is the birthright of every man, woman, and child."

This passage echoed what Ronald Reagan speechwriter Bill Gavin deemed "the litany" that shaped the 40th president's oratory: family, work, peace, neighborhood, and freedom. Sanders's version identified what Republicans see as the ends of political life. What about the means? How do we get from here to there?

Anti-wokeness is just part of the answer. To avoid the mistakes of 2022, Republican candidates not only have to attract more voters than they repel. They also must present to the country a full-spectrum governing program that spans abortion, education, health care, the economy, and foreign policy. A central plank of the domestic agenda will be raising the standard of living by re-creating the low-inflation, tight labor markets of the Clinton and Trump eras through border control, trade deals, cheap energy, and reduced taxes, spending, regulation, and income transfers.

Lamenting the condition of the world under Joe Biden is not enough. Voters want to hear what Republicans are going to do about it. And they prefer a party with bad answers to a party with none.

The post The Missing GOP Agenda appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The sprightly, eloquent, friendly, and intense married father of three whom I encountered the following year was animated and fearless. We discussed his life, parenting, and mutual acquaintances. He said that he enjoyed the Washington Free Beacon. Having admired from a distance his courageous stand for freedom, I marveled at Kara-Murza’s ability to connect with strangers, his generosity, his humor. Nor was I alone. The world is filled with people who share my gratitude for his example and my hopes for his future in a democratic Russia. One such person was the late senator John McCain (R., Ariz.), who before he died asked Kara-Murza to serve as a pallbearer at his funeral in September 2018.

Now Kara-Murza sits in prison. He was arrested in Moscow on April 11, 2022, for criticizing the Russian invasion of Ukraine in a speech to the Arizona House of Representatives. He was punished with 15 days in jail. Subsequently, he was accused of spreading false information about Putin’s army and remained in captivity. Last August, the Russian authorities slapped on an additional charge of working with an "undesirable"—that is, pro-democracy—nongovernmental organization. Kara-Murza’s detention continued. Then, last October, he was accused of high treason. The maximum sentence is 20 years.

Let’s be clear about what is going on here. Kara-Murza is no oligarch. He is not a foreign agent. Nor is he a saboteur. He is a writer and a filmmaker who holds British and Russian passports. He’s an activist who committed the "crime"—one flinches at calling it that—of stating his views in public on a matter of global concern. In Russia today, voicing a dissenting opinion makes you an enemy of the state.

For pointing out the illegality and barbarism of Putin’s unprovoked aggression against the sovereign nation of Ukraine, Kara-Murza joined the ranks of at least 19,535 fellow citizens of the Russian Federation who have been detained for protesting the war. Their acts of defiance express a universal will to freedom, a desire for religious and civil liberty, for self-government and rule of law, that remains alive in even the most barren and hostile environments. Kara-Murza is a voice of this other Russia. He is a spokesman for the free society buried beneath the fear.

And, remarkably, he has kept up his work. Kara-Murza communicates with family, assistants, and allies from lockup. His professional team maintains his Twitter account. The dateline on Kara-Murza’s columns for the Washington Post read, "Pretrial Detention Center 5, Moscow," but his ability to write them at all is both reassuring and inspiring. Last autumn, while he was under arrest, Kara-Murza’s wife Evgenia began exhibiting his third documentary to Western audiences.

My Duty to Not Stay Silent: A Film About Father Georgy Edelstein—click the link to watch it on YouTube—is the incredible story of a philologist turned Orthodox priest whose refusal to participate in Bolshevik doublethink antagonized civil and religious bureaucracies. Born in 1932 to a Jewish-Christian family in what is now Ukraine, Edelstein and his wife chose a life of poverty and service when he sought holy orders. After he became a priest, Soviet apparatchiks grew so annoyed with Edelstein’s push for religious freedom that they denied him a parish church.

Edelstein’s son, Yuli, who was raised Jewish, was denied an exit visa to migrate to Israel. He became a refusenik and was sent to the Gulag. President Ronald Reagan took up the cause of both father and son, pressing Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev for Yuli’s release and Georgy’s rehabilitation. Yuli was freed in 1987, went to Israel, and entered politics. In 1988, when Reagan visited Moscow, Georgy was invited to meet the president. Uninterested in politics, he grudgingly went to the home of the American ambassador. He shook Reagan’s hand. The Soviets watched carefully. Afterward, they gave him a church.

Central to Father Georgy Edelstein’s ethical system is the duty to speak. He practices the injunction of another great Soviet dissident, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who said not to live by lies. Edelstein’s contrary nature, his resistance to political interference in pastoral life, his abhorrence of silence, continues to this day.

When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Father Georgy spoke to his congregation. "We cannot shyly close our eyes and call black white, evil good, and say that Abel was probably wrong and provoked his older brother," he said. "The blood of the people of Ukraine will remain on the hands of not only the rulers and soldiers who carry out orders. Their blood is on the hands of each of us who approved of this military operation or simply remained silent."

Watching My Duty Not to Stay Silent at the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute this week, one couldn’t help noticing certain parallels between Father Edelstein’s life and Vladimir Kara-Murza’s. Evgenia Kara-Murza was visibly moved when, during a panel discussion after the film, Ambassador Andrew Bremberg of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation said that in telling Edelstein’s tale, her husband had in some ways prefigured his own. Mrs. Kara-Murza is as eloquent a champion of freedom as her husband. She told the audience, "The fight against evil, no matter what form or shape it may take, is never hopeless."

She also said that court proceedings against Vladimir Kara-Murza are expected to begin soon. They will be a farce. Real justice will be served when Kara-Murza is freed, and Putin is punished for his crimes against mankind.

The post Putin’s Political Prisoner Refuses to Stay Silent appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Now those chances are brightening. Trump continues to dominate in polls of Republicans. He's drawn even with President Biden in head-to-head matchups. He lobbied successfully for Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) to become speaker of the House of Representatives. His loyalists on the House Judiciary, Oversight, and Weaponization of the Federal Government committees will be sure to advance his interests. He's plotting his return to Facebook, Instagram, and possibly Twitter, and his connection with the Republican base remains strong.

Most important of all, Trump's rivals in both the Democratic and Republican parties are repeating the mistakes they made in the run-up to the 2016 election. The Democrats assume that there is no way for Trump to become president, while Republicans believe he will fade from the scene. Their failure to learn from history has made it possible not only for Trump to win the GOP nomination for the third straight time, but to pull another inside straight in the Electoral College and return to the White House. For decades, Trump has said that the political class is corrupt, insular, and incompetent, and that Republican leaders lack guts. Washington is doing its best to prove him right.

Trump's recovery began on January 9, when news broke that classified documents had been found months earlier at a D.C. office President Biden used from 2017 to 2019. Biden, who had called Trump irresponsible and worse when the FBI recovered classified material from Mar-a-Lago last summer, was exposed as a hypocrite. Attorney General Merrick Garland came under intense pressure to appoint a special counsel for Biden, since he already had appointed one to investigate Trump for mishandling classified information and for subverting the last presidential election.

Garland relented on January 12 and tapped U.S. Attorney Robert Hur to lead the inquiry. On January 20, the FBI searched Biden's Wilmington, Del., residence (though not his home in Rehoboth Beach) and unearthed more secret papers. A few days later, former vice president Mike Pence disclosed that classified documents had been found at his house, too.

This chaotic and ridiculous situation is a boon for Trump. Politically, there is no way Garland can indict the sole declared candidate for the presidency in 2024 while exonerating Biden, who's expected to announce his own reelection campaign soon. If Garland were to do so, Trump would portray himself, reasonably, as the victim of a double standard. Biden's boneheaded handling of the documents also reinforces one of Trump's core beliefs: Everyone in politics behaves corruptly, but he alone does so without pretense.

Trump still must worry about separate inquiries, in D.C. and Atlanta, into his conduct after losing the 2020 election. The fight with the National Archives over his papers is a sideshow. If anything, it's Biden who ought to be concerned. The president's changing statements on the subject, and the drip-drip-drip of stories about the material in his possession, raise additional doubts about his honesty and competence.

House Republicans plan to scrutinize the Biden family's influence-peddling business. They are desperate to find a connection between Hunter Biden's laptop from hell and the government intelligence in Joe Biden's garage. Democrats with long memories remember how Hillary Clinton's mishandling of classified information dogged her in 2016. They don't want to go through that mess again.

They may not have a choice. Whether it's the document drama or the looming presidential campaign, history seems to be following a path it traveled once before. Not only has Trump frozen the GOP field, with potential challengers not expected to announce their candidacies for months, if ever. Trump also benefits from the same dynamics that helped him in 2016: His opponents think he will just disappear, a multi-candidate primary gives him an edge, and no Republican wants to attack him directly.

Recently, a few high-profile Republicans have predicted that Trump won't be the GOP nominee. These prognosticators share certain traits: None of them thought Trump would win in 2016, they said Republicans would win big in 2022 (yes, I did too), and they no longer hold elected office precisely because of the changes Trump made to their party. Trump inspires a form of wishful thinking among certain groups of people, a collective illusion that, despite all evidence to the contrary, someday his behavior will change, and he will be content playing golf. Well, it won't, and he's not. The way to thwart Trump is for voters to choose someone else.

That outcome is less likely in a multi-candidate race. In 2016 the non-Trump vote divided three ways among Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and then-governor John Kasich (R., Ohio). The fracture allowed Trump to capitalize on the winner-take-all structure of GOP primaries and win significant contests, and eventually the nomination, with a plurality of votes. The same thing is happening in polls today. As Nathaniel Rakich observes at FiveThirtyEight, when pollsters offer Republicans several choices, Trump wins by a huge margin. But, in head-to-head matchups with Florida governor Ron DeSantis, Trump tends to lose.

At this writing, DeSantis presents the biggest obstacle for Trump. He sits atop the field in state-level polls of New Hampshire and South Carolina. He's a proven winner and fundraiser who knows when to pick high-profile cultural battles that endear him to conservatives and the MAGA crew. His crusade against wokeness is a way to unify the party behind a tough and competent executive who hasn't alienated suburban independents in his home state. If nominated, he'd represent a rising generation for change against an 81-year-old incumbent who has been in politics for half a century.

Naturally, other Republicans have begun to attack DeSantis. That's to be expected. No one is entitled to a party's nomination, politics ain't beanbag, and running for president ought to be, and is, an arduous task. Potential GOP candidates are probing for weaknesses in DeSantis's stance on abortion, his hardball tactics with big business, his national appeal, and his personal demeanor. Notice, though, whom these Republicans are not criticizing. His initials are DJT.

As happened seven years ago, Republicans are avoiding Trump either because they believe he will pack up and go home or because they are afraid of incurring his wrath and the animosity of his most devoted supporters. They are falling back into formation as a circular firing squad that hurts everybody but the former president.

The presidential campaign is just beginning. No one knows what lies ahead. The Trump rebound may soon pass and won't come again. There's a sleeper candidate or two out there who will make this race interesting.

For now, though, Democrats and Republicans are gambling that they can behave in 2024 just like they did in 2016, but produce a different result.

You willing to bet?

The post How Donald Trump's 2024 Campaign Bounced Back appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.