GOP Could Be Courting Disaster on Obamacare and Abortion

[SUBSCRIBE - Get Print and Full Digital]( [open] [View in your browser]( December 19, 2017 [The Substandard on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (with Spoilers)]( On this special year-end episode, the Substandard reviews (criticizes), dissects (tears limb from limb), and discusses (goes off on) Star Wars:... [Read More]( [Editorial: GOP Could Be Courting Disaster on Obamacare and Abortion]( As Republicans prepare to celebrate their tax reform victory, a potential disaster lurks right around the corner. Mitch McConnell said Monday... [Read More]( [Trump's Ukraine Envoy: '2017 Has Been the Most Violent Year of the Conflict']( Ukraine is living through its bloodiest year in the conflict on its eastern border since it began in 2014, the Trump administration’s envoy for... [Read More]( [TWS CRUISE 2017 FALL]( [Tuesday Morning Quarterback: Black Monday Firings Are Already Here]( Santa hasn’t even begun to pack his sleigh and already an NFL head coach, two general managers, and three coordinators have been shown the door,... [Read More]( [The Politics of Tax Reform]( Today on the WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast, senior writer Tony Mecia talks with host Eric Felten about the House vote on the tax bill. This podcast... [Read More]( [Free Flag Pin]( Afternoon Links Shame worked in Alabama. That's what Tom Nichols [argues over at the Washington Post]( These voters are, indeed, angry. And their feelings are not entirely unreasonable: They fear — rightly — that much of the culture of political correctness is aimed at squelching their participation in public life. And, yes, they have legitimate concerns about globalization and changes that have both improved their standard of living and put many of them out of work. But if these were really the issues at the bedrock of Trump’s support, more of these voters would care about values and policy than actually do. The same people who blasted the Clintons — again, rightly — for sex, lies and elitist corruption are rallying behind a cast of characters in Washington who make the “swamps” of previous administrations look like experiments in good government. In their world, Michael Flynn is a hero and Robert S. Mueller III the enemy. The FBI is worse than the KGB. None of this is rational, and it cannot be remedied with reasonable argument. These are the politics of resentment. Although inevitably poisonous, resentment feels good. It gives meaning to a life in turmoil. It allows voters to dismiss facts at will. It’s a great rationale for staying put and staying mad. It gives focus to an otherwise inchoate rage. Why is your life less than you want it to be? It’s all Don Lemon’s fault. The only response to such irrational and even hateful politics is to bypass pointless arguments and instead try to rouse a sense of basic decency. Are you arguing that black families were better off under slavery? Shame on you. Do you really believe America is no better than Russia? Shame on you. Shame may have worked in Alabama, but it didn't work everywhere on the right, where defenses of Roy Moore went from misguided and wrong apologia to outright conspiracy theories. There's still a lot of work to do. Have you done your job today? That was [the reaction]( of our own Chris Deaton to damn fine reporting by the Huffington Post's [Matt Fuller](. Before the House of Representatives passed tax reform, [he asked]( Republican members about the new tax brackets in the bill. He found that 17 members couldn't or wouldn't answer, but [Utah's Chris Stewart was able to answer](. Scotch tape X-rays!? They're a thing, the MIT Technology Review [reports]( When you bite down on wintergreen-flavored LifeSavers candies in the dark, they glow. The production of light by some materials when under friction or pressure, a phenomenon called triboluminescence, has been known for centuries, mostly as a novelty. Now researchers have shown that rapidly unwinding a roll of Scotch tape inside a vacuum generates not only visible light but also enough x-rays to image a human finger. [Check out the whole story](. No, HHS did not 'ban words.' That's what Yuval Levin [writes at]( In other words, what happened regarding these other terms (“transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” and “science-based”) was not that retrograde Republicans ordered career CDC officials not to use these terms but that career CDC officials assumed retrograde Republicans would be triggered by such words and, in an effort to avoid having such Republicans cut their budgets, reasoned they might be best avoided. With regard to “evidence-based” and “science-based” in particular, I gather the reasoning was simpler than that, and that the group thought these terms are so overused in the CDC budget documents they were discussing as to become nearly meaningless and that their use should be limited to where it actually made a point. This suggests two significant caveats to the Post story and the firestorm that has followed it. First, the question of these terms (both those in the style guide and those that came up in last week’s CDC meeting) relates only to a distinct subset of budget documents and not to the general work of the CDC or other agencies. No one is saying people can’t use these terms at HHS, though some people clearly think they shouldn’t be used in budget requests sent to Congress. And second, the most peculiar and alarming of the reported prohibitions on terms were not prohibitions at all and did not come from higher-ups in the department but emerged in the course of an internal conversation at CDC about how to avoid setting off congressional Republicans and so how to maximize the agency’s chances of getting its budget-request approved. If all of that is correct (and I can only report what I gather from the HHS officials I’ve spoken with) it does make for an interesting story. But it’s not nearly as interesting as the Washington Post made it seem, and it doesn’t point to quite the same lessons either. In fact, it probably tells us more about the attitudes and assumptions of the career officials in various HHS offices than about the political appointees of the administration they are now supposed to be working for. Read the whole thing, as Yuval [makes an interesting case](. —Jim Swift, Deputy Online Editor Please feel free to send us comments, thoughts and links to dailystandard@weeklystandard.com. -30- This email was sent by: The Weekly Standard A MediaDC Publication 1152 15th Street, NW, Suite 200 Washington, DC 20005 We respect your right to privacy - [View our Policy]( [Manage Subscriptions]( | [One-Click Unsubscribe](