Now violence-wishing pols win, it’s still ‘the economy, stupid’ and other commentary

From the left: Now Violence-Wishing Pols Win

“There was a time when suggesting that your opponents should watch their children die would have automatically cost you an election,” recalls Slate’s Molly Olmstead. “That era appears to be over, after Democrat Jay Jones was elected to be Virginia’s next attorney general.” Text messages Jones sent a colleague three years earlier called for Republican Todd Gilbert to get “two bullets to the head”; he also wished Gilbert’s wife could watch her own child die in her arms so he might reconsider his gun-control views. His words “showed distasteful sides of Jones’ private personality,” but his victory “is a snapshot of a hyperpolarized nation, where voters are willing to look past their own candidates’ failures because they see the alternative as an existential threat.”

Iconoclast: It’s Still ‘the Economy, Stupid’

Voters on Tuesday “spoke with one voice: they don’t feel like they can afford the good life,” observes The American Saga’s Zaid Jilani. “Democrats were able to capitalize on that message because they ran campaigns about it” while Republicans “were stuck with the unenviable task of defending the Trump administration” amid a “mediocre economy.” Virginia Republican Winsome Earle-Sears “blanketed the airwaves with ads about transgender sports issues” and suffered a “double digits” defeat. So much for claims that we’d entered “an era of post-economic voting” where “the culture war is all that mattered.” That may be a factor, but people still “care about whether they can put food on the table or afford a roof over their head.” Republicans learned “it’s still the economy, stupid.”

From the right: GOP Rebuffs Its Jew-Haters

Some “right-leaning pundits” grumble that “internecine fighting over Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes” impedes the GOP, notes Commentary’s Seth Mandel, yet: “Any political movement worth its salt can multitask.” Indeed, “conservatives who oppose white nationalists’ inclusion in politics” should “keep up the fight” — “and they are”: Ben Shapiro “dedicated his latest show” to it; Sen. Ted Cruz and President Trump stood up. Commentary’s Abe Greenwald calls it “the right’s immune system” kicking in. Compare that, notes Mandel, to Barack Obama’s praise for the antisemitic Zohran Mamdani. Democrats have taken “Jewish support for granted” for so long that their “partisan Jewish infrastructure atrophied.”

Eye on DC: Arctic Frost = Partisan Witch Hunt

“It looks like Arctic Frost was a fishing expedition that targeted not just those involved in” the 2020 Donald Trump campaign’s “fake electors scheme,” but “the Democratic Party’s opponents more generally,” laments The Free Press’ Eli Lake. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley just “released hundreds of pages” of documents showing “the FBI wanted bank records, communications, and fundraising data on more than 400 Republican and conservative individuals and entities” in the course of the probe. The Arctic Frost team also got “ access to the telephone metadata of Republican lawmakers,” though “as a general rule, the feds are never supposed to surveil members of Congress.” Arctic Frost was a big step downward in the “vicious cycle” of eroding “the norms that protected our justice system from the vicissitudes of executive power.”

Conservative: Affordable Health Care, GOP-style

The shutdown standoff over Obamacare subsidies points to a choice, argues Merrill Matthews at The Hill: “Keep pouring taxpayer dollars into a failing, unaffordable health care system, or take this opportunity to fix the structural flaws driving costs ever higher.” Obamacare costs will keep rising as its enhanced subsidies soon “require enhanced subsidies to the enhanced subsidies.” Organized fraud rings see Medicare and Medicaid “as a cash cow.” And stop paying extra for the same care when it’s in a hospital to help close the “legal loopholes fueling” some Medicaid ripoffs. “Create economic incentives that encourage individuals to be value-conscious consumers in the health care marketplace.” To reduce health-care spending, Republicans need only “allow the insurance and drug markets to work again.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board