"What is the Democratic agenda? What does the party have to offer besides disunity, obstruction, incoherence, obsession, and obliviousness? They haven't rallied behind a plan to fix Obamacare or an alternative to the president's tax proposal. They seem dead set against enforcement of immigration laws, they seem opposed to any restrictions on abortion, they seem as eager as ever to regulate firearms and carbon dioxide. It's hard to detect a consensus beyond that. Banks, trade, health care, taxes, free speech, foreign intervention -- these issues are undecided, up for grabs.

"For eight years President Obama supplied the Democratic message, provided the Democrats answers to public questions. Now Obama himself is under fire for agreeing to deliver a $400,000 speech to Cantor Fitzgerald. He is already a figure of the past: His hair gray, his legacy under siege, his time spent lounging on Richard Branson's yacht or listening desultorily to Chicago undergrads. The energy is with Bernie, with the identity-politics movements, with the paramilitary 'antifa' bands, and each one of these overlapping sects are outside the party establishment Obama represents.

"That establishment is just as befuddled as its Republican counterpart at the current political scene. 'I don't know what's happening in the country,' Hillary Clinton is said to have told a friend at some point during the recent campaign. This apprehension of distance between herself and the everyday lives of her co-nationals is one of the most perceptive observations Clinton has ever made. Her problem was she never figured out the answer, never came to realize that the various guesses she and Obama and other professional Democrats have wagered about 'what's happening in the country' -- racism, sexism, nativism, gerrymandering, Citizens United, Fox News Channel and talk radio, Russia -- are insufficient. What the Democratic party has yet to understand is that its social and cultural agenda is irrelevant or inimical to the material and spiritual well being of their former constituents. And until the Democrats recognize this fact, their next 100 days will be no better than their first."

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"The president's tax proposal -- a big, swashbuckling vision for enacting pro-growth principles -- offends many on the left by its very nature. Within a few minutes of its release, liberal economists, politicians and pundits were ripping it as a payoff to the wealthy, a deficit buster, regressive, unrealistic. That alone is proof Mr. Trump is getting the policy right.

"Yet what Mr. Trump may be doing best is the politics of tax reform. The president's proposal marks not only a triumph of ideas, but a savvy acknowledgment of the Washington landscape. After a rocky first few months, Mr. Trump is playing to win.

"Start with the fact that this proposal is substantive. It didn't have to be. In the wake of the health-care meltdown, Republicans on Capitol Hill began debating whether they ought to throw out messy, complicated tax 'reform' in favor of easy, straightforward tax 'cuts.' That wasn't what they campaigned on; they had promised to slay the tax-code beast. Moreover, targeted rate cuts wouldn't deliver for the economy. But this crew argued to the White House that a slimmed-down approach would at least deliver a quick, symbolic legislative victory.

"Mr. Trump's plan rejects that retreat. Instead of going weaker, it goes stronger, compiling into one document all the tax-reform ideas that most inspire conservative movers and shakers. Simplify the brackets? Check. Lower rates? Check. Harmonize rates between corporations and small businesses? Check. Move to a territorial corporate-tax system? Check. Kill off the estate tax, the alternative minimum tax, itemized deductions, and corporate loopholes? Check. This is the sort of stuff that think tanks, congressional reformers and business groups have been salivating over for years."

"President Trump moved Wednesday to fulfill one of his key campaign promises, outlining a dramatic plan to slash taxes for nearly all individuals and businesses and give the tax code its biggest overhaul in three decades. ...

Predictably, Democrats like Sen. Chuck Schumer instantly dismissed the proposal with their usual mantra of 'a tax giveaway to the very, very wealthy.'

Well, let them propose an alternative that genuinely boosts economic growth and cuts taxes for a broad swath of Americans.

Plenty of political horse-trading is ahead; the final product may look very different. But Trump was elected on a promise to jump-start the economy and produce 'jobs, jobs, jobs' -- and his opening move puts that goal at the heart of the tax-reform fight."

"A full decade after voting to construct a secure barrier along the U.S. border with Mexico, Congress continues to refuse to lay out the money required to build the damned wall.

"This, even after the stunning upset in last year's elections by the juggernaut presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, who won the presidency on a clarion vow to voters that he would once and for all build a wall along the border. Mr. Trump's historic upset came after years and years of both Democrat and Republican politicians talking tough about illegal immigration and promising to crack down on the porous border, yet refusing to actually fix the problem.

"Because they are politicians. If you fix the problem, then you can no longer campaign on the problem."

"What if Donald Trump had unilaterally shut down every investigation into Russian espionage, released over 20 suspected Russian spies, struck a deal to get rid of sanctions against Russia -- in return for honoring deals that had been signed years before -- and then lied to the American people about the entire episode?

"That's the Obama Administration's Iran deal. It might have been the first time the United States has offered extensive concessions to a nation that has continued to destabilize its interests, for nothing in return. But Barack Obama didn't just support Iran's position over our allies like Israel (no surprise there, considering his antagonism) or Sunni nations -- he supported it ahead of his own Justice Department's 30-year counterproliferation efforts.

"According to an over 8,000-word investigation by Politico, Obama's efforts to placate Iran includes releasing genuine spies (not the type we see behind every bowl of borscht these days) to a terror-supporting theocracy that has American blood on its hands and threatens the stability of the entire Middle East. Obama released Iranians who were allegedly part of an 'illegal procurement network supplying Iran with U.S.-made microelectronics' that would help create surface-to-air and cruise missiles. Information that will come in handy. In seven years, 'all the sanctions, even arms embargoes and missile-related sanctions would all be lifted,' Hassan Rouhani correctly noted during the post-deal Iranian celebration. ...

"It seems increasingly plausible that Obama was hamstrung to act in Syria by the overriding need to avoid upsetting the Iranians (and Russians). That alone should be enough to count the Iran deal as a massive disaster. Yet, considering how little we know about what was in the deal, who knows what ugly things we'll find out in the coming years."

"The Justice Department on Friday sent letters to eight cities, threatening to withhold federal grant money if they don't demonstrate cooperation with immigration enforcement.

"President Donald Trump has promised to force 'sanctuary cities' to follow the federal government's lead on enforcement of immigration laws. Hundreds of jurisdictions across the U.S. limit to varying degrees their cooperation with federal authorities.

"The letters were sent to New York City, Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Milwaukee and Sacramento, as well as Cook County, Illinois. DOJ asked these local governments to provide documentation that they're complying with a federal law that requires information-sharing by local, state and federal authorities on citizenship and immigration status."

"House Republicans are reportedly ready to return any day now to health-insurance reform after the spectacular failure in late March of the American Health Care Act, the resoundingly unpopular bill to 'replace' the long-unpopular and misnamed Affordable Care Act. This time, they need to deliver: After seven years of promises to repeal Obamacare root and branch, the party can't go back to the voters with nothing more than a participation trophy. ...

"Most all of us have our own preferences for a better health-insurance system. But the path of conservative wisdom and political reality suggests that Republicans need to find a way to enact reforms that are incremental, modest, tested by experience, and sustainable, but also subject to modification over time. Ironically, the nature of the political process in Washington may require a bold and dramatic stroke in order to create the conditions for that kind of lawmaking. But doing so would send a powerful message that the business-as-usual of the past few decades (in which each side has sought to impose unilateral and sweeping changes by means of massive legislation) has given way to a system that looks more like how laws are supposed to be made: one step at a time."

"We started worrying in early February when House Speaker Paul Ryan put tax cuts on the back burner. We're more worried now that Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has admitted Congress won't get the job done before it goes on recess in August.

"How many deadlines will they miss? A few more, and the delays may add up to failure.

"Yes, President Trump can do a lot without Congress on fronts such as deregulation -- but the main payoff there is long-term. The US economy needs a push now. ...

"In Wednesday's New York Times, Larry Kudlow, Steve Moore, Steve Forbes and Arthur Laffer echoed points made in these pages by Betsy McCaughey several weeks ago: At this point, the best bet is to do corporate-tax reform now. Put off the more complicated battles (including the confusing 'border adjustment tax') for later. ...

"The voters chose the guy who promised to deliver jobs, and nobody thought that meant 'sometime in 2018.'"

"In today's academy, truth is an invention. Expecting people to show up on time is racist. Censorship is good. Silencing opposing viewpoints imperative. Violence to enforce safety is natural.

"For the last 25 years, under the guise of 'political correctness,' we've been watching the inexplicable flow into our culture. The idiotic demands of political correctness in the 1980s, ironically relying on the decency of the American people for their acquiescence, was just the prep course, an amuse bouche before the main course of creating social chaos and destruction.

"It sounds dramatic, and it is, and it's also the only way the left maintains power -- brainwashing people into believing that social norms must be destroyed in order to create a more perfect society. From the ashes would emerge the great collective phoenix.

"Just ask the Soviet Union, Cambodia, Cuba and Venezuela how well that works out."

"Alpharetta, Ga. -- As we enter the final day of the special election to replace Representative Tom Price, the nation's attention is fixed on Georgia's sixth congressional district. Even at this late stage, the outcome of this race remains highly uncertain. But one thing is certain: The Democrat in the race has convinced much of the country that he will pull off the first big win for his party since the Republicans swept last November's elections. That candidate, 30-year-old Jon Ossoff, is a former Democratic staffer who has managed to rake in over $8 million in donations over the course of the race. Heading into Election Day, Ossoff appears to be playing with the house's money. He has come out on top of his Republican rivals in every poll for the past two months, and surveys indicate that he led the two weeks of early voting by a wide margin. Here, one hears a common refrain: 'Could he really do it?'

"Perhaps. Nevertheless, the format of this race will make it difficult for Ossoff to manage an outright victory tonight. Because neither party held a primary, the race features a total of 18 candidates. If no candidate reaches 50 percent of the vote, the top two candidates will face each other in a runoff in June. ...

"The district's long history as a Republican stronghold also seems to suggest that Ossoff will have a tough time snatching this seat from the GOP. Georgia's sixth congressional district -- which is made up of the eastern part of Cobb County, as well as the northern parts of Fulton and DeKalb counties -- has been represented by a Republican for nearly four decades straight, since 1979. For about two of those decades, the district's congressman was Newt Gingrich; he was followed by Johnny Isakson (who is now one of Georgia's two senators), and then Price. None of these candidates ever had any difficulty holding on to the seat."

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