Amateurs do their annual awards issues in December; the pros step up and deliver at the end of January.
THE 2023 WIDE WORLD OF NEWS ANNUAL AWARDS
BEST NEW TAYLOR SWIFT VIDEO
* “Lavender Haze” (just released at midnight ET)
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MOST UNDERCOVERED 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN STORY
* All of the secret meetings Ron DeSantis has been having in Florida (and around the country) with donors, pols, activists, and strategists to talk (explicitly and implicitly) about 2024.
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BIGGEST UNKNOWN ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS PROSPECTS OF KEEPING THE WHITE HOUSE
* Is there going to be a recession – or not?
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MOST IMPORTANT TWO PARAGRAPHS REGARDING DONALD TRUMP’S SATURDAY EVENTS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE AND SOUTH CAROLINA AND, ACTUALLY, ABOUT THE ENTIRE TRUMP CAMPAIGN, VIA REUTERS:
Multiple Republicans interviewed for this story, who were granted anonymity to discuss internal party dynamics, said they would be watching to see whether Trump can deliver a forward-looking message, or will resort to personal attacks or false claims of election fraud that many blame for a poor Republican showing in the November midterm congressional elections.
"The fundamental question is: is he going to talk about the future or is he just going to talk about the 'stolen election,'" said a Republican official familiar with the inner workings of the Trump team. "You have to pivot to being future oriented."
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MOST UNDER NOTICED TRUMP EXCLUSIVE STORY, VIA POLITICO:
Former President Donald Trump is unveiling a 2024 education policy plan, one focusing heavily on the culture war components that have animated conservatives.
The plan, shared in advance with POLITICO, calls for cutting federal funding for any school or program that includes “critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto our children.” It also calls for opening “civil rights investigations into any school district that has engaged in race-based discrimination,” particularly against Asian American students, and promises to “keep men out of women’s sports.”
The proposals are not focused solely on social policy and school curriculum. In a video unveiling the plan, which was shared by his campaign, Trump also calls for making significant cuts to administrative personnel and the end of teacher tenure and the election of school principals.
“As the saying goes, personnel is policy and at the end of the day if we have pink-haired communists teaching our kids we have a major problem,” Trump said. “We’re at the end of the list on education and yet we spend the most, but we’re going to be tops in education no matter where you go anywhere in the world.”
Though large swaths of education policy are dictated by state and local governments, Trump’s proposals still represent a radical departure from long-standing approaches. Taken in full, they represent an attempt by the former president to put his own imprint on debates around the nation’s school systems that have popped up across state capitals.
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MOST SIGNIFICANT OF THE MANY NEW YORK TIMES STORIES INTENDED TO ILLUSTRATE TRUMP’S DECLINING INFLUENCE IN THE PARTY
* The New York Times survey of RNC members, who are somewhat surprisingly not interested in another Trump term.
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THE BEST EXPLANATION, FOR THOSE WHO DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW DIFFERENT SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS ACTUALLY WORK IN POLITICS, FOR WHY TRUMP’S EXPECTED RETURN TO FACEBOOK IS A BIG DEAL
* The Washington Post’s romp through the facts, including the fundraising piece.
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THE BEST EXPLANATION OF WHY WIDE WORLD OF NEWS COVERS TRUMP SO MUCH
* As a corrective of sorts to all the coverage elsewhere that gives off the impression that Trump can’t be nominated or win a general election (both almost as true now as in 2016).
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THE CLEAREST VOICE GIVEN TO EXACTLY WHAT THE GANG OF 500 IS SAYING ABOUT JOE BIDEN, DONALD TRUMP, AND THE DOCUMENTS WITH CLASSIFIED MARKINGS CONTROVERSY
* Peggy Noonan’s essential reading column will be echoed widely at Lauriol Plaza this Sunday.
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MOST HONEST EXPLANATION OF THE RECENT HISTORY OF REPUBLICAN DEFICIT HAWKS AND SUGGESTIONS ABOUT WHAT THEY SHOULD DO NOW
George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism was an implicit rebuke of Newt Gingrich’s bomb-throwing majorities that tried to balance the budget at all costs. Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again populism was a rejection of Paul Ryan’s debt-obsessed majority that hoped to move the goal posts on entitlement reform.
The problem is that Ryan was right about the substance and Trump is right about the politics, and that dilemma is why the country’s debt-to-gross-domestic-product ratio is nearly 100% and is projected to keep climbing…..
Republicans should seek limits on discretionary spending (although it’s tricky because now is not the time to cut back on defense spending); push some technical, not particularly important savings on entitlements; and embrace the TRUST Act that would create bipartisan committees to at least get the conversation going on how to keep Social Security and Medicare from going insolvent and/or overwhelming the budget.
More important than what happens over the next few months is whether the party can nominate and elect a president in 2024 who, unlike Bush and Trump, is in sympathy with the fiscal conservatism of House Republicans.
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RIP, the great Billy Packer.