From the right: Israel’s Fatal Mistake
How can Israelis have “allowed a genocidal terrorist group to reign for so long in Gaza?” wonders The Wall Street Journal’s Elliot Kaufman. “There was no mystery about Hamas’s intentions. It seeks to kill Israel’s Jews.” Yet it “never had to worry about Israel sweeping it from power,” in part since to force it out “Israel might have had to govern Gaza itself, and the usual suspects in the safe Western democracies . . . would have screamed bloody murder.” Even after Hamas’ atrocities Saturday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken initially backed a ceasefire, which is like backing one “the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.” Israel’s leaders, who’d assumed they’d managed to deter new Hamas attacks, proved “dead wrong.” Are they making “a similar mistake with Hezbollah?”
Culture critic: Dems ‘Miseducated Base’
Democrats are in “a state of rhetorical paralysis,” observes Spencer A. Klavan at Spectator World. As Palestinian terrorists streamed across the Israeli border, Dems found themselves “constrained to tread lightly around the feelings of cold-blooded murderers so as to avoid offending their deranged apologists — many of whom represent” the party’s future. Last weekend, the State Department scrambled to erase two calls for “all sides to refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks.” It’s the Dems’ own fault: “By recklessly indulging the childish arrogance and flattering the confident ignorance of their drastically miseducated base, the American left has created a situation in which the kids really might soon be running the roost.”
Conservative: Joe’s Recipe for Disaster
“Former President Donald Trump handed [President] Biden a number of domestic and international victories. The Biden team gleefully reversed them into today’s disasters,” fumes The Washington Times’ Rowan Scarborough. “Inflation sat at a soothing 1.2%,” but “Democrats’ irresponsible gluttony” moved it “to a 40-year high.” Inheriting a border that was “the most secure in decades,” Biden opened it “to anyone who drops by.” He also “kowtowed” to Russia President Vladimir Putin, and “freed up $6 billion in Iranian money, which gave them the cash liquidity to spend more on its chief objective — murderous terrorism — including its client Hamas.” “Thank Biden and the Democrats” for “Iran, Russia, gasoline, inflation, the border” and “crime-ridden cities.” “If they had just left things alone, we would all be leading better lives today.”
Eye on ’24: ‘Not Trump’ GOPers Flailing
Fearing that Trump will “run away with the Republican nomination” his critics “want the Republican field to shrink, fast,” groans the Washington Examiner’s Byron York. Trump’s lead in “the RealClearPolitics national average, at the moment, is 44.9 percentage points.” Recently, Sen. Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Paul Ryan convened a gathering of big donors “to make a plea to Republicans to unite around a single candidate to challenge Trump.” Illustrative of the problem was that “four GOP candidates — Haley, Pence, Christie, and Burgum — showed up to work the (very wealthy) room.” Romney and Ryan didn’t bring “the anti-Trump faction any closer to a single challenger.” But hoping that “the field will somehow magically reduce itself” is useless, too. A lot more must happen “before the day of a single Trump Republican opponent arrives.”
Media watch: Cheerleading as Biden Fails
Amid another foreign-policy disaster on President Biden’s watch, “the administration should be under serious pressure to answer” for its failures, contends Shane Harris at the Association of Mature American Citizens. “Mounting evidence” suggests the Bidenites’ actions “empowered” Hamas, which boasted its attacks were funded by Iran — “just weeks after Biden released $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets.” Yet the media gave Biden’s remarks on the attack “glowing coverage.” This pattern began when they “played a central role” in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story just before the 2020 election. Blame Biden for his “gross incompetence,” but don’t forget who’s “been enabling and cheerleading” his failures “every step of the way.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board