AP Photo/Alex Brandon
From the right: The ‘Recess’ Delusion
National Review’s Andrew McCarthy dumps on talk of an “outrageous recess-appointment scheme” to let President Trump “install any unconfirmable nominees, such as Matt Gaetz.” First problem: The scheme requires the House or Senate to vote to adjourn, and not enough Republicans in either chamber will go along.
More important, Hamilton’s Federalist No. 76 cites the Senate’s role in confirmations to “prevent the appointment of unfit characters” who wouldn’t serve “the public interest,” while Justice Antonin Scalia warned “that a scheme against the Constitution’s advice-and-consent role is an attack on liberty.”
Fact is, recess appointments are an 18th century anachronism; advances in “communications and travel technology” mean the Senate “is never more than a few hours from being able to convene.”
Elex desk: Inside the Gen-X Break for Trump
“One of the biggest headlines to come out of the recent election is that Gen X — hardly nationalist or populist — broke for Trump,” notes The Free Press’ Peter Savodnik.
Witness 1980s sitcom “Family Ties” star Justine Bateman, whose anti-woke tweets caused a firestorm.
Bateman “hated the rise of the progressive mob” after 2020. But the “progressive scolds” seem to be losing to “the anti-Democrat vibe. Anti-scold, anti-pronouns, anti-‘woke army.’ ”
Gen X (and many others) are “done with being told how to think” and with “the travesties of the past four or eight or 10 years, or whenever you mark the beginning of the Great Awokening: the cancel culture, the pronoun fetish, the war on supposed ‘disinformation,’ and all the rest of it.”
Pollsters: Why Harris Flopped
Exit polls reveal “the overarching reason behind Donald Trump’s victory,” observe Douglas E. Schoen & Carly Cooperman at The Hill: Harris and fellow Dems “doubled down on progressive social issues while largely neglecting the economy.”
They assumed “2024 would resemble 2022,” when abortion “drowned out other concerns,” boosting their candidates.
Big mistake: “In 2022 abortion (27 percent) was the second most important issue for national voters” but “just 14 percent said the same in 2024, per CNN exit polls.”
Also “president elections are almost always referenda on the economy and the incumbent.”
Yet Harris “never clearly outlined an agenda for her presidency” or “defined herself” as different from “unpopular” President Biden.
Bottom line: Harris and Dems “prioritized the wrong issues until it was too late.”
Conservative: Lose the Pronouns, Not the Harm?
“RIP AOC’s pronouns,” cheers Spiked’s Brendan O’Neill. She “has binned ‘she / her’ from her bio on X.”
But it’s possible she “dumped ‘she / her’ as far back as May,” as she was gearing up for reelection in working-class Queens and The Bronx.
“I bet she didn’t say the word pronoun once to the Latino construction worker or African American deliveryman whose support she courted.”
And while “I fully support the freedom of apostasy” for those who abandon wokeness, “we must not forget the horrors carried out in the shadow of this new religion.”
“If the elites really are quietly exiting the pews of the trans religion, especially now that Trump’s returned, it is essential the rest of us loudly remind them of the social carnage they left in their wake.”
Libertarian: Social Security Is a Dying Scam
Social Security is “a scam that is rapidly approaching collapse,” warns Reason’s J.D. Tuccillle.
“Until 2010, Americans paid more in Social Security taxes than the program paid out in benefits. The extra money” was “passed on to be spent by the rest of the federal government in return for IOUs.”
And as “the ratio of workers to retirees dropped,” the “difference between revenues and expenditures” has been made up by cashing in those IOUs, now “expected to start running dry” in 2033.
To keep Social Security afloat, “benefits could be lowered, taxes could be raised, the retirement age could be adjusted,” among other things.
But bottom line: “Americans should prioritize planning for their own futures rather than relying on a nonexistent ‘trust fund’ made up of nothing but debt and empty promises.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board