Winning World War III, ‘vision thing’ dooms Democrats and other commentary

Foreign desk: Winning World War III

“In August, while standing alongside President Trump in Alaska, Russian President Vladimir Putin chuckled” at the B-2 stealth bomber flyover, note Mark Toth & Jonathan Sweet at The Hill. Yet Trump’s bombing of Iran’s nukes two months later made the message even clearer: He’s looking to transform Eastern Europe as well as the Middle East. “Moscow is reeling,” and Trump is “building on the momentum,” as with Friday’s meeting with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump’s “message for Hamas was delivered via B-2 bombers in Iran; Putin’s could be delivered by Tomahawks.” The Iran strike was a “good start to winning World War III.” But now to “win the Indo-Pacific and deter Beijing” from moving on Taiwan, “Trump must win in Eastern Europe” as decisively as in the Middle East.

Liberal: ‘Vision Thing’ Dooms Democrats

Just as President George H.W. Bush had trouble defining “the vision thing,” Democrats now lack “a recognizable vision for the country,” as they offer “a purely negative politics” opposing Trump, grumbles The Liberal Patriot’s Ruy Teixeira. A survey looking at party supports attaining “a good life” has “terrible” news for Dems, exposing “Democrats’ extraordinary inability to inspire ordinary Americans.” Three issues voters see as “most important to Democrats — climate change, abortion, and LGBTQ+ issues — are least important to voters.” Tellingly, Dems’ professional-class voters lean toward “abundant clean energy,” while working-class voters prefer an “abundant life.” Democrats’ agenda “is more technocratic than inspirational in the way a proper vision should be.”

From the right: Stealth UN Global Tax

“Voters are showing their opposition to the net-zero climate agenda whenever they get the chance,” thunders The Wall Street Journal editorial board, yet the UN International Maritime Organization is still “poised to impose what amounts to a global tax on carbon emissions” — taxing ships, up to $12 billion a year. Team Trump fears that’ll boost costs to Americans and has threatened to sanction nations that back it. Yet “climate-obsessed” pols back the move, hoping to “entrench their agenda before voters in democracies can kill it.” It’s just such “abdication of decision-making to international bodies that has spurred populist rebellions.” Trump will “do Americans and the entire democratic world a favor if he can scare the IMO into thinking twice about this global carbon-tax plan.”

Conservative: McConnell’s Stalwart Service

As some mocked Sen. Mitch McConnell this week, Josh Holmes tweeted some of his old boss’ major wins: Mitch “was relentless” in making the First Amendment “a litmus test in Republican politics and in the judiciary.” And noobies “have absolutely no idea how bad things could’ve been during the Obama years” without McConnell: “Climate, immigration, taxes, our entire economy, foreign policy, it could’ve been unrecognizable. They tried it all. There’s a reason Obama hates him the most.” Plus: “The Left invested much of their attention in the early 2000s to hijacking the federal judiciary. McConnell was adamant about not letting that happen.” Whatever the Trump-McConnell “disconnect,” “there was a time when neither could accomplish their goals without one another. They had a mutual appreciation for each other’s game.”

Campus watch: Defund Intolerant Universities

“The higher-education establishment” has offered a “mixed” response to the White House “compact” granting “funding preferences” to universities that “commit to basic educational goals,” observes City Journal’s Christopher Rufo. MIT claims the compact would “jeopardize” the “free marketplace of ideas.” But universities are already “some of the least free institutions in America.” Their “ideological imbalance” is enforced by a “cartel-like ideological system” that filters out conservative opinion and research. And they’re not “independent institutions” as they receive “enormous taxpayer largesse.” Team Trump “should accept these realities” and “increase both the rewards for entering into the compact and the punishments for refusing.” If MIT feels too constrained by the compact, “the president should free it from the bondage of public subsidy.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board