Required reading from around the web of the best, most interesting, or most though provoking things we’ve read:
Mirengoff: “Senior official in Trump administration” rips Trump in New York Times op-ed
“I want to offer the following observations about this piece. […] Sixth, the author concludes: Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation. We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.
There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.
This statement is so disconnected from political reality, and to some extent from the real John McCain, that Trump shouldn’t need a polygraph to determine the author.”
Harsanyi: The New York Times Anonymous Op-ed Pushes Electoral Sabotage
“The problem with the much-discussed op-ed isn’t only that it fails to offer a single example of officials actually ‘thwarting’ the Trump agenda or saving the republic from his capriciousness. It’s that it celebrates the idea of nullifying an election. […] Anonymous contends that a clique of political appointees have some kind of ethical obligation to ignore the president’s agenda items, not because they’re unconstitutional or corrupt, but simply because it chafes them ideologically.”
Maistros: They Can’t ‘Bork’ Kavanaugh, So Democrats Are Borking America
“The problem is, as I’ve noted before, that the Democrats know that the constant generation of artificial outrage and contrived controversy works to achieve political goals, simply by unsettling the public. The latest IBD/TIPP poll shows President Trump’s approval ratings being washed away by a wave of negative coverage, and Fox News and ABC both report that a bare majority of the public opposes Kavanaugh’s nomination.”