I understand the impulse for Trump to pick Pence — an experienced pol, in good standing with conservatives, and not much of a lightning rod, at least not yet (the Left tends to make any GOP pick a lightning rod). But Trump’s running mate will have to be extremely deft at explaining away and deflecting Trump controversies. There is no reason to believe that Pence will be good at this, and I’m guessing he won’t be. Christie (comfortable at defending anything) and especially Newt (one of the most glib politicians of the last 30 years) would be much better by this metric. They both have downsides. No one will be excited by Christie, certainly not conservatives. Newt is famously ill-disciplined. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the Trump team thinks it’s getting a safe choice in Pence and then when he inevitably has trouble defending Trump (he has never operated on this kind of national stage), it won’t look so safe anymore.
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Jussie Smollett Changes His Story Again
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Smollett told GMA that the ...
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McConnell: Trump Will Sign Spending Bill and Declare National Emergency to Fund Wall
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday that President Trump will sign the homeland-security-spending bill pending before Congress while simultaneously declaring a national emergency in order to fund his long-promised border wall.
The spending bill, which provides just $1.35 billion for the construction ...
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We’ll Regret This
Mitch McConnell says the president will sign the budget deal and he will also declare a national emergency to build the wall, as I expected.
We’ll see the legal justifications he uses, but as a political and constitutional matter this is a long-term disaster. Oh, it might be good for Trump according to the ...
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How the Democrats Went Nuts in Three Months
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Green New Deal: Reality Continues to Leak from American Life
In 1994, the Clinton administration decreed a bright shining future for education. Its Goals 2000 legislation proclaimed that by that year America's high-school-graduation rate would be 90 percent and American students would lead the world in math and science achievements. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D., N.Y.) ...
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Capitalism’s Cold War
The story of capitalism since the 1980s has been that of a kind of cold war between capital and politics.
In the decade prior, American government was at the nadir of its prestige and credibility. The so-called War on Poverty, launched with great fanfare and idealism in the late 1960s, quickly collided with ...
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