"LONDON -€” He was a skilled communicator and a celebrity. She was strong-willed and shared his disdain for big government.

"They were the power political couple of the 1980s: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Now a similar pairing is emerging three decades later in President Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May, who meet at the White House on Friday.

"May arrives in Washington as the first foreign leader to meet Trump as president. Before their sitdown, she will have the rare privilege of addressing congressional Republicans in Philadelphia on Thursday.

"The two leaders are expected to discuss terrorism, ending Syria's civil war, relations with Russia, NATO cooperation and a bilateral trade deal once the United Kingdom leaves the European Union, probably by 2019. Trade between the two countries is worth about $187 billion, and the United States is the largest single investor in the U.K."

"President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State John Kerry just couldn't resist taking one final, sneak parting shot at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"The administration sent the Palestinian Authority $221 million in funding that members of Congress had blocked over the PA's rogue diplomatic moves. ...

"But the real intention here was less to aid the Palestinians and more to stick it to Netanyahu. What a tawdry final move."

"In truth, we are on the cusp of a great experiment. For decades, conservatives, both traditional and pro-growth supply-siders, have preached that deregulation, reasonable and predictable Federal Reserve interest rates, reduced government, a radically simplified and pruned-back tax code, new incentives for investment, an open energy market, and a can-do psychological landscape that encourages entrepreneurship will make the economy soar at rates of 4 percent GDP and more.

"We shall soon see. If Trump unleashes American know-how and strengthens the economy, then his cultural and domestic agendas, as well as his personal demeanor and language, however radical and jarring, will probably be accepted. In contrast, if he blows up the deficit and sees interest rates spike at Carter levels and the cost of debt service soar, if he allows unemployment to grow -- while never exceeding Obama's dismal economic growth rates -- then the Trump agenda will stall and the media will be liberated to obsess over the tweets, gaffes, and bombast of every nanosecond of his presidency.

"Economic growth cuts through political orthodoxy; economic stagnation intensifies it. Regrettably or not, prosperity, not character per se, determines a president's political fate."

"To this day, most of the professional scoffers still write off Trump's stunning upset as the revenge of an angry white working class stewing in hate. Journalists who bother to sojourn to red-state hinterlands approach his supporters as if they are visiting the zoo.

"Trump knew his audience from the start. Just as his genius for selling his brand made him rich, his genius for reading the electorate made him president.There was a desperate hunger among millions upon millions of Americans for a bold leader and he aimed to feed it.

"He was all brass bands and bare knuckles and exactly what Republicans and many independents wanted. He didn't take crap from anyone and said what those voters were thinking about jobs, trade, immigration and so much more.

"His slogan, Make America Great Again, was so in-your-face that there was no mistaking its meaning. It was nationalist and populist, and the fact that those ideas offended the tender sensibilities of the political and media elite was a bonus. Trump's no-bulls-€“t approach struck a deep chord in the hearts of Americans who felt abandoned by both political parties and their government."

"Not since 1980 --” or perhaps 1932 -- has such a political revolution hit the banks of the Potomac River.

"Donald Trump comes into the White House with a bright, clear mandate to make wholesale changes to every aspect of the federal government.

"From the darkest corners of the bloated federal bureaucracy to the bright marble columns of the Supreme Court, Mr. Trump's mandate is as broad as it is dramatic. Illegal immigration, international trade, education, Obamacare and America's war against terrorism are all on the table for complete overhauls.

"Refreshingly, Mr. Trump's mandate is not a partisan one. He owes very little to the Republican Party and absolutely nothing to the Democratic Party. He handily defeated partisans on both sides of the political aisle. ...

"As a result, Mr. Trump stands poised to reinvent the entire federal government in favor of the American people alone. He is a tireless agent of disruption and an unbending force for creative destruction."

"The controversy over the nomination of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education has been, if nothing else, clarifying. We now know that working to give poor kids more educational opportunities is considered a disqualifying offense for the Left.

"For decades, DeVos has devoted herself to creating alternatives to a public-school establishment that fails its most vulnerable students, and she earned the eternal enmity of defenders of the status quo in doing it.

"The assault against her by the teachers unions and their allies speaks to a certain desperation. They have been steadily losing ground in the debate over educational choice at the state and local level, and now DeVos threatens to occupy the commanding heights of federal policy at the Department of Education. ...

"The ideological war over educational choice won't be settled anytime soon. What's clear is that poor parents value it, and that they have a friend in Betsy DeVos. The unions will never forgive her."

"When I was leading soldiers in Afghanistan, Private Manning was undermining us by leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks. I don't understand why the president would feel special compassion for someone who endangered the lives of our troops, diplomats, intelligence officers, and allies. We ought not treat a traitor like a martyr."

"The Clinton Foundation has confirmed that it always was what we and many others said it was.

"Its latest tax filing declared that the Clinton Global Initiative is closing its offices and sacking 22 staff. This comes amid reports that donations dried up after Hillary Clinton lost the election November 8.

"It was always obvious that the Clinton Foundation was not simply a charity. As Hillary's opponents but also neutral observers discerned, Hillary was a coin-operated policymaker and the Clinton Foundation and CGI were toll collectors for access to her State Department and a future Clinton administration."

"In the substantive debate between the American left and right, a debate which really does exist, the basic question is 'What is the proper purpose of government?' Those who are not on the political left object to greater or lesser degrees to the redistribution of wealth from those who earned it to those who didn't.

"I do indeed object to a hard-working middle class (or upper-middle class or upper-upper class) having their earnings raided on behalf of the undeserving. But neither I, nor the dollar taken from me, nor my accountant, nor the IRS agent scanning my tax return, gives a whit whether the recipient of my dollar was white, brown, purple, or plaid. (Well, I do have a big problem with plaid, truth be told.)

"Obama imagines our national political conversation as one in which 'every economic issue is framed' as minorities pilfering whites when in fact no economic issue is framed that way. So what is the purpose of his framing the issue this way? To cause gullible Americans to assume that any objection to income redistribution specifically and big government generally is due to racism. It is the very essence of the 'dog whistle' politics that Democrats so often accuse Republicans of.

"It is past time for Americans of all stripes to stand up to this outrageous demonization. It is past time to call out the left, aggressively and publicly, for this libel which imputes to good people the unacceptable and politically disqualifying trait of racism."

"The Justice Department's inspector general has announced that his office will conduct a review that will focus principally on FBI director James Comey's public statements regarding the Clinton e-mails investigation during the 2016 campaign. ...

"It is undoubtedly appropriate for Michael Horowitz, DOJ's inspector general, to consider whether these actions departed from law-enforcement protocols -- as I have previously explained. But it is worth noting what the IG will not be reviewing: the Justice Department's conduct.

"The IG's press release makes no mention of the Justice Department's decision not to open a grand-jury investigation, despite significant concrete evidence of criminal wrongdoing -- the decision that deprived the FBI of the use of subpoenas to compel the production of evidence. Neither will the IG be reviewing the multiple irregular immunity agreements granted by the Justice Department in a case in which no criminal charges were filed, including agreements that reportedly called for the destruction of evidence (laptop computers of top Clinton aides) after a strangely limited examination of their potentially incriminating contents."