Lessons from Georgia and other commentary

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From the right: Lessons From Georgia

After Republicans lost both Senate seats in a runoff that will go down as “the most consequential in history,” the party must “have the courage to face the depth and scale” of what happened in Georgia, advises ex-Speaker Newt Gingrich at Fox News. President Trump’s polarizing leadership and “allegations of a corrupt election process” distracted voters and “reduced the opportunity to have a campaign dialogue.” Also, “Republicans must study” Democrat Stacey Abrams and the “powerful first-class voting machine” she established in Georgia. The GOP senators’ campaigns failed to do the same, choosing to “run almost entirely negative ads” and failing to “follow up on President Trump’s success with Latino voters.” Republicans must turn from failures that “put the GOP victory at risk” and learn from this “nightmare from which we will spend years recovering.”

Centrist: The Elex-Review Commission We Need

Though most federal commissions “work like placebos for political fevers,” Jonathan Turley at USA Today says we need “an honest-to-God, no-holds-barred federal commission to look into the 2020 presidential election” — a thorough review of the “unprecedented” mail-in voting and new voting systems “down to the smallest precincts and hamlets.” And Congress must conclusively settle the claims of fraud to restore “the faith of the electorate.” Recognize the real problems, even though they weren’t expansive or systematic. Can Congress appoint bipartisan members to such a commission when “the stakes are too high to allow even a dust particle to tip the difference on the ultimate findings”? If not, “the public will be the loser. So, let’s have a commission, but let’s make it a real one.”

Conservative: Media Brown-Nosing China

Stories like The New York Times’ “grotesque puff piece” praising Communist China’s “version of freedom” and pandemic response has the Washington Examiner’s Becket Adams wondering if newsrooms are “competing to see who can lick China’s boots harder.” The Times story “goes to astonishing lengths to repackage the Chinese Communist Party’s brutal reign into something palatable and even admirable,” ignoring Beijing’s “efforts to suppress the sharing of relevant pandemic information.” It paints China as “a safer, better and more liberal country than the US” since “Trump and those darned red-state voters” are the real villains. The “unbelievable” piece exposes the “fad right now for Western newsrooms” to “run defense for China amid the pandemic. The Chinese Communist Party thanks you all for your service, comrades.”

Political scientist: A History of Violence

Congress’ enactment of the Whiskey Act in 1791 soon brought “the United States of America’s first tax revolt,” writes Darel Paul at First Things. “Tax officers were stripped naked, tarred and feathered,” and “armed men broke into the homes of tax officers and assaulted them and their families” — setting off a long history of US political violence. “The breaching of the United States Capitol on Wednesday by a mob of pro-Trump demonstrators-cum-rioters joins this long procession of American ignobility.” That disgrace wasn’t nearly as violent as its predecessors across more than two centuries, but the “symbolic” damage was no small beer. And it reflects a dark part of our national character, contra Joe Biden’s assurance that “the scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not reflect a true America.” Sadly, they do.

Gadfly: The Bane of Urban Public Education

The Chicago Tribune’s John Kass sums up what’s wrong with big-city public education: “militant teachers’ union bosses” who “dictate urban school policy and politics.” Chicago union official Sarah Chambers, for one, sent a clear message to parents: “Their children don’t count.” She posted entries on her since-deleted social media accounts “telling teachers to stay out of classrooms and thwart Chicago school officials’ plans to reopen” then got caught taking poolside selfies “in sunny Puerto Rico,” exposing the truth about union claims that “it is all about saving lives during the pandemic.” No wonder “parents are leaving shutdown cities like Chicago to find places where their children can benefit from in-classroom learning.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

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