This Trump speech leaves him on-course for 2020 victory and other commentary

Libertarian: Trump Headed For Re-Election

Reason magazine’s Nick Gillespie admits he’s no “Trump fan boy,” yet he’s convinced the president is headed for re-election, judging by Trump’s deft performance at the annual gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference. As Gillespie notes, “Trump was frequently funny and outré in the casually mean way that New Yorkers exude like nobody else,” railing against far-left Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Jeff Sessions and Never Trumpers alike. Yes, there were plenty of “fact-challenged” bits in Trump’s speech. But, says Gillespie, the 2020 race will turn on “the relative health of the economy and the large vision of the future the different candidates put forward.” On that score, Trump is “becoming sunnier and sunnier while the Democrats are painting contemporary America as a late-capitalist hellhole.”

Foreign desk: Climate Is No Reason Not To Have Kids

While dicing sweet potatoes for a vegetarian chili on Instagram last week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez riffed about climate change and asked what she called the “basic moral question” of whether it is “OK to still have children.” But as Libby Emmons suggests at The Federalist, while “no one quibbles” with the idea that we have an obligation to future generations, “there’s a nihilism inherent in the notion that procreation should or would be limited by the factor of a messed-up world.” Frankly, the world “is never not messed up.” And the question of whether to bring children into it “is as old as the messed-up world itself.” But “the approach to the climate crisis cannot be to stop life, or to stop progress.”

From the right: The Creeping Definition of Sexual Assault

Contrary to popular belief, college campuses are not more dangerous places than inner cities, notes Christine Rosen at Commentary. But “that hasn’t stopped college administrators and professional activists from promoting a culture of fear on campus.” Duke University says its latest survey found 48 percent of female undergrads say they’ve been sexually assaulted — though the definition used “could encompass a range of behavior from rape to brushing up against someone.” Yet “the narrative about women’s risk of assault on campus continues apace, in part because those who promote it can’t be bothered by questions about the integrity of statistics or definitions of assault.” Duke’s survey suggests its students “are now comfortable embracing more expansive definitions of assault than would ever pass muster in criminal law.”

Foreign desk: Bibi Won’t Soon Exit the Political Stage

Israeli prosecutors accuse Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “bribery, fraud and breach of trust,” notes Zev Chafets at Bloomberg View. Even so, “chances are that Bibi will pull off an electoral victory” come April. For starters, the longtime Israeli premier has cultivated personal friendships with President Trump and Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, and “nothing is more important to Israel than getting along with the two ­superpowers.” Then, too, Netanyahu enjoys the backing of an “unquestioningly loyal” base, while “the opposition is led by an inexperienced ex-general.” And while some of his predecessors quit in the midst of scandal, Bibi doesn’t look to those leaders for inspiration — but rather to Putin and Trump.

Culture critic: Embracing Reparations Debases Blacks

The support for reparations from three Democratic presidential candidates — Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Julian Castro — is “yet another insult to black America that is clothed in the trappings of social justice,” charges Robert Woodson at The Hill. The argument is that all white Americans should compensate all black Americans, because slavery’s legacy “explains the current wealth gap between blacks and whites.” Yet “the ownership of black slaves was not the exclusive domain of whites”: both blacks and Native Americans were “complicit in the slave trade.” Moreover, reparations “debase the determination and achievement of blacks throughout history who managed to prosper in the midst of virulent racial hostility.” Says Woodson: “Whites who seek to save us from ourselves, and black ‘spokespersons’ who embrace an agenda of racial grievance and an identity of victimization, should stand aside.”

— Compiled by Eric Fettmann & Sohrab Ahmari

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