From the best: Repeal and Replace . . . Eventually
Republicans could possibly repeal ObamaCare immediately. Senate Democrats could filibuster any full-repeal bill, so Republicans will need to use budget reconciliation – a procedure that allows for any simple majority vote for budget-related items. Explains Michael Warren at The Weekly Standard: “This process, however, also limits what Republicans can repeal. ObamaCare's taxes and penalties (what are muscle behind the person and employer mandates), Medicaid expansion funds, subsidies for health-insurance exchange customers, and taxes on the health-care industry are all on the reconciliation chopping block.” Warren points out that removing these features soon after new insurance plans go into effect Jan. 1 could be too chaotic. Thus, repeal could be only set in motion, not completed, right away.
Campaign Scribe: Dems' Laughable Bench
Hillary Clinton's election loss made plain the Democratic Party's shockingly shallow bench, writes Chris Cillizza at The Washington Post. At the federal level, he states, Dems “may be effectively locked from power in all three branches of government for years. In the state level, after last month's elections, they'll control only 16 governorships and 13 legislatures.” Indeed, while the 17-candidate GOP primary field was mocked, Cillizza turns it around: “Democrats simply didn't have the political talent to place forward 17 candidates (or perhaps seven).” It's partly because “[Nancy] Pelosi (Calif.) and Reps. Steny H. Hoyer (Md.) and James E. Clyburn (SC) have experienced a death grip around the party's top congressional slots for a very long time.” And since Clinton's own machine scared off potential challengers.
Think-tanker: 2021 and also the Great-Man Theory
Donald Trump is a great man. So declares The Week's Pascal-Emanuel Gobry, who clarifies he doesn't mean “great” as with “good,” but “great” as with one figure who moved historical events. Gobry admits that “Trump benefited from strong social forces.” But it “seems inconceivable that anyone but Donald Trump could have performed what he did.” And it is not only Trump: “Great-man theory” holds in quality value the options of people. “At every step of the way, individuals could have made choices that might have remaining us with a President-elect Rubio, or Cruz, or Clinton, with significant historical consequences,” Gobry writes. “Meanwhile, people who confidently plotted out trends and figured Trump couldn't win have been proven wrong.”
From the Left: Liberal Bubbles Getting Worse
The disbelieving outrage on campuses across America at Donald Trump's victory was both proof of liberals' ideological bubble and the fact that it's poised to obtain worse, argues The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof. “To be fully educated, students should encounter not only Plato, but additionally Republicans,” he states. Yet they are not – or otherwise enough, and schools create this type of “hostile” environment for conservatives their mere existence on campus could be in doubt. Of course, students should “stand up to the bigots,” Kristof says. But he counsels caution: “Do we really want to caricature 1 / 2 of Americans, some of whom voted for President Obama twice, as racist bigots? Maybe when we knew more Trump voters we'd be less inclined to stereotype them.”
Foreign-affairs Experts: Mideast's Convenient Truths
If Donald Trump really does would like to try to bring about Israeli-Palestinian peace, suggest Elliott Abrams and Uri Sadot in Foreign Policy, he is able to avoid the pitfalls of his immediate predecessor – especially President Obama's dependence on Israeli settlements. “Outside the five major block townships, as many as 6,818 housing units were approved for construction in West Bank settlements between January 2009 and June 2021. That would suggest a population increase of up to 34,000 people.” Quite simply, Israel's settlement human population is growing mostly because of natural growth of families already there. Trump, then, could proceed if you don't take his eye off the ball: Trump “should discourage Israel from investing in and populating isolated settlements . . . But much more important would be to focus on the final status issues that actually matter most.”
