Religion beat: Blame McCarrick, not John Paul
At First Things, George Weigel rails against “the media herd of independent minds,” which decided that the Big Story out of Vatican’s just-released report on disgraced ex-Cardinal Theodore “Uncle Ted” McCarrick wasn’t McCarrick — but Saint John Paul II’s alleged failings. Yet the failure that allowed McCarrick to rise despite his predations was the work of “a clerical caste system that McCarrick knew all too well, played all too ruthlessly and successfully gamed throughout his tawdry career.” John Paul II was thus “the victim of a deception: A man in whom he had reposed trust, Theodore McCarrick, lied to him about his true character. Saints are human beings, and saints, in their humanity, can be deceived.” That’s all the more reason to “let the focus of wickedness in this tawdry affair be identified accurately as Theodore McCarrick, not John Paul II.”
Libertarian: Voters Say No To Socialism
An increasing number of Democrats have been experimenting with far-left ideologies, but “socialism is looking like a major political loser this election cycle, with the specter of it likely costing former Vice President Joe Biden his chance at winning Florida,” cheers Reason’s Robby Soave. The GOP is likely to take the Senate, which “will kill any chances of big, lofty, leftist legislation.” Moderate Democrats have begun to realize that extreme policies drive voters away, so it may be “in the party’s best interest to at the very least stop using the word socialism.”
Biden watch: Joe’s Never-Trump Transition
Joe Biden “is setting himself up for trouble” if “he values staff for their opposition” to President Trump, “rather than their integrity,” warns Spectator USA’s Amber Athey. His “Never-Trump transition” team — which includes Cindy McCain, representative of “the old guard GOP that’s still bitter over being pushed aside under Trump” — indicates he does. So does the addition of Zeke Emanuel, Rahm’s brother, and an oncologist “who once argued in an Atlantic article that it’s not worth living past the age of 75.” For a “successful presidency,” the 77-year-old Biden “needs to consider what his legacy will be separate from Trump.”
From the right: Behind the Distrust
Bad polling and election conspiracy theories from the media and Democrats over the last four years created the perfect storm for President Trump’s supporters to reject the election results, argues Andrew C. McCarthy at National Review. Concerns over “constitutional violations in changing state voting laws and documented accounts of computer glitches, inexplicable late arrivals of ballot troves and systemic efforts to prevent transparency” all put last Tuesday night’s results into question and dragged the election into a week-long affair. It didn’t help that Democrats spent their collective energy post-2016 trying “to convince the American people that the election was a fraud,” thereby sowing doubt in the “sanctity” of election outcomes. Plus, pollsters promised a blue wave that voters did not deliver. “Half the country now worries that purple swing states in which it was anticipated the vote would be close were targeted by Democratic activist-bureaucrats.” What a mess.
Conservative: Centrist Worried About Dem ‘Brand’
Centrist Rep. Tim Ryan retained his Ohio seat this election but lost his home county by 1.5 points, giving him cause for concern about this “tough year for a lot of moderate Democrats,” reports the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito. Ryan blames waning support on the current “brand” of Democrats: “We have 70 million people who either hate us or are afraid of us or believe there is this vast spread of socialism in out party.” But Ryan hopes that if Joe Biden’s administration has “really tangible results on the economy, on COVID, a good infrastructure package, [Democrats] have the chance to head towards the midterm on a pretty good economy” and gain back some of the votes they lost. Biden has the chance to drown out the “megaphones” of the extremists and “put a new name, a new brand on the party.” Ryan is confident that “if he can do that, we can stop our losses.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
