Conservative: Alabama and the Folly of Angry Populism
What’s the obvious lesson of Roy Moore’s defeat in the Alabama Senate election? According to Robert Tracinski at The Federalist, it’s that “angry populism fueled by resentment against the bogeyman of supposed ‘elites’ is not the basis for a political party or movement.” Moore has always thrived “by pandering to the ‘deplorables’ whom normal candidates wisely choose not to pander to.” In short, he copied Donald Trump’s playbook. But with a candidate as flawed as Moore, “the obvious downsides of that approach are becoming obvious. He may have retained the loyalty of his die-hard, core supporters, but at the expense of alienating everyone else.” And that, says Tracinski, is what happens “when fighting the enemy becomes more important than what you’re fighting for.”
Foreign desk: Media, Experts Wrong on Mideast Chaos
Surprise, surprise: Despite warnings from all the so-called experts, notes Noah Pollak at the Washington Free Beacon, the Middle East has not been set on fire by President Trump’s formal recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Yes, he says, “there have been protests and a few instances of violence. But nothing close to what opponents presented as the risks” that the entire region would be plunged into violent chaos. In unison, the foreign-policy establishment, news media and former Obama and Clinton administration officials “predicted violence, killing, terrorism, rioting, protests, instability, blowback and general catastrophe.” Indeed, having spent decades warning against just such a declaration, their real fear “wasn’t so much the announcement” but “that Armageddon would not follow it.”
From the right: GOP Just Dodged a Bullet
The populists truly are miracle workers, declares Jim Geraghty at National Review: “They’ve managed to elect a Democrat in Alabama,” thanks to the GOP fielding “the worst Senate nominee for any major party in American history.” But the Republicans’ loss of the seat may prove to be “a long-term victory,” sparing its senators the barrage of constant embarrassing questions on whether they agreed with Roy Moore’s latest contention. In fact, Sen. Cory Gardner and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, “who understood that Moore was politically toxic, even in Alabama” and cut off his funding, are looking “pretty smart” right now. It also means that Al Franken “has to go ahead with his resignation.”
Numbers cruncher: What Happens to High-Tax States?
Now that Senate and House Republicans have agreed on a tax plan, New Yorkers and other high-tax states “must realistically ponder its impacts,” warns Nicole Gelinas at City and State. Capping state and local tax deductibility at $10,000 disproportionately hits the tri-state area: “New York, with just 6.1 percent of the country’s population, comprises 13.3 percent of state and local tax deductions.” The grim reality is that “the states that depend the most on these tax deductions are broke” and most face huge pension-fund shortages. Proponents suggest that eliminating the deduction will force those states to address the liabilities, but “the opposite may be true: Congress has now given the public-sector unions that resist any and all changes to benefits, and the politicians who depend on them, a fresh enemy to attack.”
Professor: We’re Better Off Without College for Everyone
Economics Professor Bryan Caplan, writing in The Atlantic, says 40 years in academia as a student and teacher have convinced him that higher education “is a big waste of time and money.” From kindergarten on, “students spend thousands of hours studying subjects irrelevant to the modern labor market.” Moreover, “if schools aim to boost students’ future income by teaching job skills, why do they entrust students’ education to people so detached from the real world?” Conventional wisdom “assumes that the typical student acquires, and retains, a lot of knowledge.” But “human beings have trouble retaining knowledge they rarely use.” And “students who excel on exams frequently fail to apply their knowledge to the real world.” Fact is, says Caplan, “the vast majority” of students “are philistines” and the vast majority of teachers “are uninspiring.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann