On the Left: Hillary 2020? Say It Ain’t So
Ed Kilgore of New York Magazine finds the thought of a Hillary Clinton-Donald Trump rematch in 2020 “a preposterous idea.” Or at least it was until this month, when “HRC’s name started coming up again” and Hillary herself likely fanned the flames by sending allies onto big TV shows to say she has “not ruled” out a run. But Clinton can’t fix 2016. And how, exactly, is she supposed to win the nomination? “Please, Ms. Clinton,” Kilgore begs, “don’t keep this right-wing fantasy in play, and don’t make admirers (like me) have to recite the reasons you should not run for president in 2020.”
From the right: Washington’s Wise Shift in Syria
The “US foreign-policy establishment” had a “meltdown” after Trump announced the withdrawal of troops from northern Syria,” claiming he made his decision after a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Yet Turkey, argues Lee Smith at the Federalist, has seen Syria’s Kurds as its “most serious national-security threat for five years” because it views them as the Syrian franchise of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Marxist outfit that has been at war with Turkey since 1984.” Trump’s critics seem to think “backing a Marxist splinter group” in its “war against a NATO ally is sound policy.” Yet the president’s move should be viewed “in the context of his efforts to undo Obama administration policies, particularly its initiative to tilt away from traditional US allies, like Turkey” and toward the Islamic Republic of Iran. It demonstrated “more strategic clarity than the foreign-policy establishment,” which Trump deserves “credit” for taking on.
Impeachment beat: Fearing Trump’s Re-Election
“The walls are closing in again on Trump!” screams Roger Kimball at The Spectator, sarcastically. “This time, finally, at last, we have the fatal ‘bombshell’ that will destroy him.” Kimball mocks the left’s reaction to envoy Bill Taylor’s claim that Trump demanded Ukraine probe Hunter and Joe Biden in exchange for $400 million in US military aid. In fact, the real “motor” driving the impeachment inquiry is what Democratic Rep. Al Green says concerns him: “If we don’t impeach this president, he will get re-elected.” Dems hope their “talk of impeachment” will “inspire” voters to “revisit their support” for him, but more likely, insists Kimball, they’re just desperate to “distract from the troubling reality of Trump’s extraordinary success.”
Conservative: Missed Shot at Health Reform
Health care remains a top issue for voters going into the 2020 election. Too bad the Democratic field and party are unprepared to tackle the crisis, sighs Katy Talento at The Washington Examiner, “because it would require them to side with and partner with their nemesis: President Trump.” The president is determined to bring price transparency to the industry’s opaque and mysterious processes, but “hospitals and insurance companies are fighting back, arguing that an end to secretive pricing practices could actually cause prices to increase — a point thoroughly refuted by hundreds of years of economics.” By refusing to work with Trump, “Democrats are now siding with the ‘ruling class’ when it comes to health care” and thus “giving hospitals and insurance companies a pass on price transparency.”
Foreign desk: Don’t Make the UK Like the US
“Brexit is not simply a contest over Britain’s ties to Europe,” argues Augustus Howard at First Things. “It is also an existential struggle over the very nature of the British state,” which can be seen in the UK’s “adoption of facets of the American system.” Witness the UK’s “faux Americanization,” for example, removing “its court of final appeal from the House of Lords” and setting up a more Supreme Court-like system. Or how it’s been bitten by the “American bug of personality politics.” Britain should stop such “piecemeal” importation of US practices, because “an American-style, gridlocked government, minus American checks and balances, is destined to fail.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board