Tuesday roundup

Allahpundit's take at Hot Air on why Marco Rubio is dissing the tax-reform bill Congress passed a while back is excellent analysis:

What game is Rubio playing? Or is he playing a game at all? Remember, he tangled with leadership in December over the tax bill because he wanted the child tax credit for poor families to be larger. At one point he even threatened to tank the bill if McConnell didn’t comply. He won that fight, sort of. The credit was expanded but only modestly, which is less due to McConnell’s stinginess than to the realities of trying to hold together a razor-thin majority that includes dogmatic conservatives who frown at the idea of tax credits on principle. The point, though, is that Rubio was willing to make a minor fuss to “pour back into the American worker.” It’s not just talk.

The easy (and probably accurate) read is that he’s already thinking about 2024 and where the party’s likely to be. He’ll never be the populist choice in the primaries, particularly given the suspicions about his immigration policies after the Gang of Eight, but there are things he can do to make himself less offensive to populists and more appealing to the general electorate. Being the “blue-collar champion” among prominent Republicans is one thing. I don’t want to sell him short, though, by dismissing his interest in this subject as purely electoral. Rubio has always been suspect among doctrinaire righties for not being as doctrinaire as he was cracked up to be when he emerged as a star in 2010. He surfed the tea-party wave to victory that year; dogmatic conservatism was the path to populist support so he took that path and pulled a momentous upset in Florida. But even then, Rubio was cautious about not letting himself be too closely identified with the tea party. He didn’t thank them by name in his victory speech, the way a Ted Cruz might have. He’s always been more center-right domestically, most famously on immigration but not just on immigration, as today reminds us.

I think the Trump presidency has liberated him a bit in that regard. It feels strange to say that given how bitterly Rubio criticized POTUS during the primaries but Trump gave him a political gift by severing the connection between dogmatic conservatism and populism. Rubio’s not going to take nearly as much damage for his departures from conservative orthodoxy now as he would have even four years ago so long as errs in the direction of populism and, most importantly, remains on Trump’s good side. He has freedom to maneuver legislatively that he’d never have had under, say, President Cruz or even President Hillary. Now he needs to cross his fingers and hope that Trump doesn’t turn on him for badmouthing his big tax cuts win.

Condi Rice says - correctly - that we'll be just fine if we pull out of the Iran deal. She says - correctly - that it was garbage and never should have been signed. (I'll have an entire post on the latest on the Iran deal later.)

Facebook tried out an "internal test . . . to understand different types of speech." It put a question at the bottom of any and every public post, asking if the viewer saw any hate speech in it. Big oopsie: they hit the "go live with it" button and caused a major dustup.

Today's must-read" Dennis Prager's NRO piece, "Fear of the Left: The Most Powerful Force in America Today."

Peter Heck knocks one out of the park at The Resurgent with his explanation of the vital distinction between social justice and Biblical justice.

Consider the church preaching against abortion.

• The sin is objectively stated: killing an unborn child is wrong. 
• The sinner is specifically identified: the one who kills an unborn child or has their unborn child killed. 
• The action is quantifiable: an exact and precise offense was committed – the killing of an unborn child. 
• The sin is individualized: this isn’t guilt by association, it is guilt by chosen action.

Now contrast that with the often-cited injustices from those preaching social justice race reconciliation: unemployment disparity between blacks and whites, infant mortality rate disparity between blacks and whites, violent crime disparity between blacks and whites, incarceration rate disparity between blacks and whites. 

While there is certainly no questioning that racial disparities exist, notice the obvious distinction between these concerns and the Biblical understanding of injustice as demonstrated with abortion. With these injustices: 

• The sin is not objectively stated: no cause for the disparities is given or explained. 
• The sinner is not specifically identified: who is to blame specifically for these disparities? 
• The action is not quantifiable: there is no indication that any of these disparities were the result of sinful behavior. 
• The sin is not individualized: the implication is guilt by association (you’re part of a society where this happens), not guilt by chosen action.

With abortion, a sinner in the congregation could be made aware of what they have done, how it offended God, the redemption found in the Gospel, and Christ’s promise of a renewed mind. The intended objective appears to be repentance and a new hope. With social justice, the congregation is confused as to what they have done, how they are to blame, and they are left with either a vague feeling of white guilt or a stinging black resentment.

The American Enterprise Institute's Mark Thiessen on what Democrats could learn from Emmanuel Macron about how to respectfully and constructively work with someone with whom you have some sharp disagreements instead of playing gotcha at every turn.