“Has Contrived Coarseness Jumped the Shark?”
Well, something’s jumped the shark. Under the above headline, National Review’s Noah Rothman writes:
In her bid for the U.S. Senate, Illinois Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton may have done the country a great service. Her debut campaign ad is so gratuitously obscene that it may push past its breaking point a trend in which politicians attempt to convey authenticity via the liberal use of four-letter words.
If you’re inclined to watch the spot, I’d recommend doing so with headphones.
Stratton’s campaign ad consists of a string of people saying “f… Trump.” The ad is embedded in the NR piece. Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth is one of the people facing the camera and saying, “F— Trump.” Illinois Governor and 2028 hopeful JB Pritzker appears in the ad, which he reposted on X, but doesn’t say the f-word. Stratton, who is running for retiring Senator Dick Durbin’s seat, did have a political message, overshadowed as it was by the repeated obscenity:
She added that she’s “not scared of a wannabe dictator. I’m running for Senate to stand up to Donald Trump.” Stratton said she will abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and “hold Trump accountable for the crimes he’s committed.”
I am scared of the civilizational rot that would lead to anybody’s thinking this is okay, much less a Governor and sitting Senator. Pritzker has given the Stratton campaign $5 million. Words fail me.
In other news, we are still on tenterhooks about Iran, and President Trump’s advisers are urging him to focus on the economy—but it’s difficult with the fate of Iran and other international concerns. Oh, and in response to former President Obama’s offhand remark about space aliens, President Trump is directing the Pentagon to release files related to UFOs and space aliens. Sorry, I meant to say undocumented critters from other galaxies.
President Trump may be distracted from talking about the economy, but the Wall Street Journal isn’t. An editorial headlined “The Embarrassing Truth About Tariffs” continues the Journal’s criticism of the President’s beloved tariffs:
The flap concerns the analysis we told you about last week by four economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. They found that American households and businesses are bearing nearly 90% of the cost of the Trump tariffs, contrary to Mr. Trump’s claim that foreigners will pay.
Clearly the White House is worried that voters might conclude this research aligns with their own experience. Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, took to CNBC Wednesday to pan the New York Fed research as “the worst paper I’ve ever seen in the history of the Federal Reserve System” and suggested the people who wrote and published it should be “disciplined.” Disciplined how? Put in stocks? For a tariff paper?
The Fed analysis aligns with other research into the distribution of tariff costs from Harvard economists and Germany’s Kiel Institute—and with common sense. There isn’t widespread evidence that foreign producers are cutting their prices to offset the tariffs, the main mechanism by which foreigners would “pay” for the border taxes.
The Times of London compares the impact of arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to the abdication crisis that shook the monarchy in 1936. Andrew’s arrest is the “end of reverence for the royal family,” writes a saddened Tim Stanley in the Washington Post:
The arrest on Thursday of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the fool formerly known as a prince, marks the definite end of public reverence toward the British monarchy. I write that as an Englishman who is rather fond of it. …
When the Epstein scandal spread to Britain, it looked to many of us like the moral indictment of an establishment we have long suspected of being rotten.
Rather ironically, “Randy Andy” is in trouble not for his fabled sexual adventures but on suspicion having shared secret British trade information with foreign powers (also addressed in a WSJ editorial). Thank God the late Queen Elizabeth II isn’t here to witness this is the response of many. Mountbatten-Windsor’s facial expression as he was driven away from the police station was one of extreme shock and terrible fear.
Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel writes that the Democrats plan to deploy a “secret sauce” to win in the midterms:
When Democratic operatives look at Texas state Rep. James Talarico, they don’t see just another young progressive vying for a U.S. Senate seat. They see the political equivalent of In-N-Out Burger Spread—a new secret sauce to win over voters. The party is rolling out the recipe nationwide, and the midterms will provide initial sales figures.
Mr. Talarico is an early test. In 11 days he faces progressive steamroller U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett in the Senate primary. If he’s got a shot, it’s because a growing number of Democratic money men and influencers see in the 36-year-old Presbyterian seminarian one answer to their cultural alienation from voters.
Whatever the outcome, there’s a warning here for Republicans. Democrats aren’t letting working-class voters go without a fight. This shift will tempt some GOP leaders to try to match the left’s economic pandering, in a race to see who can better stoke class warfare, or promise more subsets of voters. That’s a recipe for loss (the left always wins bidding matches), not to mention an insult to working-class Americans who are voting for the GOP because they want good policy—not for handouts, or because they like tattoos.
Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger doesn’t have tattoos (as far as I know), but she did run as a moderate. Now, she will give the Democratic affordability-themed response to next week’s State of the Union address. Larry Kudlow writes that the SOTU should be optimistic:
And that boom has already started. And it’s generating 4 percent-plus growth. I know you can’t eat GDP, but you can eat groceries, or buy essentials at the local Walmart.
Meanwhile, Liberal Patriot Ruy Teixeira says that his party has a “fraud problem:”
The specter of welfare fraud haunts the Democrats once again. Concerns about abuse of generous government programs helped power the rise of Reagan-era conservatism in the 1970s and ’80s. Could the criminal abuse of hundreds of millions of dollars in welfare costs in Minnesota, which has brought down the state’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, be leveraged to similar broad political effect today?
Another potential liability for the Dems, according to Leor Sapir, writing at City Journal, is the transgender issue. Sapir argues that “gender medicine” is shaking the general public’s faith in doctors, even ones who don’t perform gender surgeries.
News Flash. The MAGA base is not isolationist. That’s the conclusion of Mark Penn and Andrew Stein who write at the Wall Street Journal that the MAGA base backs Trumps foreign interventions. Real Clear Politics discusses whether Trump’s Board of Peace might replace the United Nations.
Rumor Mill. Will there be a Supreme Court vacancy this summer? Real Clear Politics cogitates on this matter:
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samel Alito are, by some order of magnitude, the two most principled conservative justices currently sitting on the high court. It stands to reason that they would like to be replaced by ideological fellow travelers — something that likely requires a likeminded president and a likeminded U.S. Senate majority.
Nancy Guthie’s family goes into the weekend with the case of their missing 84-year-old mother seemingly not much closer to resolution. It is being alleged that the Pima County Sheriff in charge has turned the case into an ego trip. The FBI can only take over if the family requests it.
For a heart-stopping moment, I thought the item was going to be bad news. But it was a milestone, not the obituary I feared: Larry the cat marked 15 years as the official mouser of 10 Downing Street earlier this week. Here are pictures of Larry’s remarkable career and the Prime Ministers who have served under him.
More good news from the animal kingdom: An orphaned monkey has found a cuddly pal. Awww.