Political scribe: Democrats Have a Comey Dilemma
President Trump 💜isn’t the only one upset by fired FBI Director James Comey’s book tour. As , “it’s also inducing a bit of post-traumatic stress disorder among Democrats.” Many still consider him “the villain of the 2016 election” fo🦩r his handling of the Hillary Clinton investigation. Now they’re incensed anew by his admission that he announced the probe’s re-opening before the election because he was convinced she would win and was concerned about “making her an illegitimate president.” Yet they’re also counting on Comey to be “a credible witness in the Robert Mueller investigation when it comes to whether the president obstructed justice” by firing him. As one Democratic strategist puts it: “It’s a complicated relationship.”
From the right: Time to Take Cynthia Nixon Seriously
Defeating Andrew Cuomo in a Democratic gubernatorial primary “was never going to be easy,” . But all of a sudden, Cynthia Nixon’s victory is “looking more anಌd more possible,” thanks to her backing by the Working Families Party, which netted 155,000 votes for Cuomo in 2010. And while the race likely will be decided by issues, “leveling straight-talking critiques at Cuomo’s record” from the left, “has proven one of Nixon’s greatest strengths.” Moreover, compared to the corruption-ridden Cuomo team, actress/activist Nixon “looks pure as the driven snow.” She’s also displayed “deft messaging and masterful command of audiences” who remain “hungry for inspiring idealism and neat narratives.”
Security writer: Trump Is Surprisingly Clintonian
by the “Bill Clinton déjà vu” watching President Trump “lunge and wobble from s🐽candal to crisis.” Indeed, suggestions the missile strikes in Syria were meant to distract from the FBI raid on his lawyer’s home and office were reminiscent of Clinton’s 1998 airstrikes against an aspirin factory in Sudan — the same day Monica Lewinsky appeared before a grand jury. Trump and Clinton are hardly alike. But they do share “character flaws that rise to the surface and curdle their presidencies,” manifesting themselves in two ways: “how they lie and how they are corrupted.” Clinton “didn’t cash in while in the White House, but his fundraising after leaving office has tarnished American politics.” Now “the US꧂ must brace for the nightmare” that Trump may be “monetizing his presidency” through public policy.
Culture critic: Barbara Bush Was One of the Very Best
Barbara Bush was probably “the only living former resident of the White House” with whom he “should have been glad to spend an afternoon.” For three decades, “she was the most amusing, witty, outspoken and, in her way, unabashedly reactionary figure in American public life. She was also extraordinarily beautiful even, indeed perhaps especially so, in her old age.” Walther suspects he is “not the only American for whom the death of our greatest modern first lady calls forth the memories of deceased relations from a generation whose greatness we have really only begun to appreciate.” Which is why “the Bush family’s loss is [also] the country’s.”
Economist: The Folly of the ‘Millionaire’s Tax’
New Jersey and othe🥃r states considering a “millionaire’s tax” have fresh reason to be cautious in the wake of the new federal law that limits the deductibility of state and local taxes — but it was already a bad idea, , chief economist at the American Legislative Exchange Council, and Ross Marchand at National Review. It ignores “the damaging impact that excessive tax rates have on incentives for individuals to engage in economic activity,” which is illustrated by ALEC’s research comparing high-income-tax states to the nine no-income-tax ones: “The ꧙no-income-tax states have outperformed their high-tax counterparts in terms of personal-income growth, migration, and even tax-receipt growth for decades.” And people vote with their feet: It looks like “the 2020 census will bring five new U.S. House seats to the no-income-tax states” thanks to population growth, while “high-tax states such as Illinois and New York are set to forfeit seats.”