MICHAEL BARONE: Toward A Trump Republicanism.

Donald Trump’s surprisingly good State of the Union speech got a record 70 to 75 percent positive poll approval from those who watched. Even if you discount (as you should) for the Trump haters who can’t bear to watch him and chose another of their 100-plus cable channels, that’s not chopped liver.

If they’d watched, their reactions would undoubtedly be as sour as those of the Democrats in the hall, who stayed slouching and frowning in their chairs even at some patriotic lines. . . .

Back in the 1990s, I wrote an article for Irving Kristol’s the Public Interest, dividing parties that have emerged over the 150 years of electoral democracies in various countries into four types — religious, liberal (classical free market liberal, that is), socialist, and nationalist.

The Bush Republican party leaned free-market liberal on economics and religious on culture, the Clinton Democratic party leaned mildly socialist on economics and liberal on culture. Both were quietly nationalist.

Trump is different. He has embraced the causes of religious conservatives, as anomalous as that may be given his persona. But you didn’t hear too much about that in the speech.

He has abandoned much of free-market Republicanism. You heard no mention of the national debt, no hint of entitlement reforms in Social Security or Medicare entitlements. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., sitting behind him, must realize with sadness these are nonstarters in the Trump presidency.

You did hear a lot about the new tax law, formerly known to Democrats and their media allies as the “tax scam,” and how it’s producing wage increases and bonuses for those at the low and modest ends of the income scale. And how paychecks will rise when the IRS’s new withholding schedule goes into effect in two weeks.

What you heard most of was nationalism. To some Democrats, including many in the chamber, the very mention evokes Hitler’s National Socialism. But to those who realize that we have no political prisons full of reporters and less government surveillance of the press than in the Obama administration, it sounds more attractive.

Read the whole thing.

OBAMA’S COVERUP FOR CLINTON WAS WORSE THAN COLLUSION: Among the least discussed facets of the Clinton email scandal has been former President Barack Obama’s obvious approval of what his Secretary of State was doing. Nobody has produced a shred of credible evidence that President Donald Trump “colluded” with Russia, yet Obama knew Clinton was using a private server and how that jeopardized national security. Charles Ortel probes deeper in LifeZette this morning.

BEN STEIN: Thank God That Trump Won.

BYRON YORK: Answering 3 key questions about the House memo. “So those are some of the objections and questions raised about the House memo. Though repeated loudly and often, they don’t have much merit, and the memo’s key assertion — that the unverified, oppo-research dossier played an essential role in securing a warrant to wiretap Carter Page — appears sound.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Kenyon professor calls off original play about cultural insensitivity amid criticism that it’s culturally insensitive.

ROGER KIMBALL: Thoughts on the Future Less Vivid, With Some Scraps of Advice for President Trump.

CITING TAX REFORM, Altria will give its employees $3000 bonuses.

Related: Best Buy to hand out bonuses to workers. “The Minneapolis-based chain says that this month it will pay one-time bonuses of $1,000 to full-time workers and $500 to part-time employees.”

Crumbs, says Nancy Pelosi. But we’re sure seeing a lot of crumbs.

UPDATE: Unexpectedly!

THEY’RE EVIL: Lawsuit Exposes Internet Giant’s Internal Culture of Intolerance.

CHANGE: A new push to deregulate America’s oceans and backcountry. “Recent decisions at the Interior and Commerce departments are opening the doors for more commercial exploitation of US fisheries and land resources. Advocates say the changes finally allow local voices to be heard. Critics say science is being ignored in favor of industry.”

PRIME MINISTER ZOOLANDER: ‘Canada turning its back on me’: Trudeau faces more heckling during Edmonton town hall.

CHANGE: John Marshall Is Fifteenth Law School To Accept GRE For Admissions.

TUBE PRE-AMP CAPTURES KEY COMPONENT OF THE BEATLES’ SOUND: For DIY music recording aficionados, I have a review of Chandler Limited’s EMI-approved Redd.47 Pre-amp, over at the PJ Lifestyle blog,

DERP STATE: Philip Mudd, ex-CIA, Repeatedly Drops The N-Bomb on CNN To Prove He’s Not Racist.

Related: CNN’s Mudd: FBI People ‘Ticked’ About Memo; Are Saying About Trump ‘Game Is Going to Be Played,’ They’re ‘Going to Win.’

(Via John Podhoretz.)

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Drinking Tea and Wine Can Keep Flu at Bay.

OPEN THREAD: Thread away!

UGH: Mutated parasite may be causing outbreak of drug-resistant malaria.

SPACE: SpaceX receives launch license for first Falcon Heavy launch.

AT AMAZON, save in Health and Personal Care.

Plus, deals in Storage and Organziation

3 MEN SENTENCED in Zaevion Dobson shooting.

THE SHINOLA HOLE:

One thing that I think might help in the discussion of the “shithole” controversy would be to consider its counterpart… the Shinola Hole.

* * * * * * * *

Shinola, as you know, was a shoe polish until 1960. Not leather. Not rubber. Stuff to make dirty shoes look clean. Dressing. preservative in a sense, sure, but mostly to make things look better. Now? It is a lifestyle brand peddling watches and other stuff. It’s based in Detroit. I guess locals work there. Good for them, I guess, but I don’t own any of their products. According to Wikipedia, the company bought the rights to the name, trading off the old “You don’t know shit from Shinola” jab. So again, the name itself is clever window dressing.

And that’s what these institutions are, and that culture is. Everybody knows that you don’t learn much more at Yale than you do at Community College. [Note: Sam M. is a Yale graduate. — RD] They don’t add a whole lot of value. They just take kids who are really smart in the first place, which allows them to signal their intelligence and work ethic. That’s the value. The downside is that the value of that signaling creates a culture of “merit” and weird striving which has, in many ways overtaken our culture’s ambition.

Read the whole thing.

OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE TO UNIFORMED OFFICER: You Can’t Bring A Gun In Here, This Is A Gun-Free Zone.

Management apologized, but what they should really apologize for is having restaurants that are gun-free for the rest of us.

UNEXPECTEDLY: A male backlash against #MeToo is brewing.

“I’m getting the feeling that we’re going back 20 years as female professionals,” said Green, who owns her company. “I fully anticipate I’m going to be competing with another firm that is currently owned by some male, and the deciding factor is going to be: ‘You don’t want to hire a female lobbying firm in this environment.’”

This kind of thinking is catching on in aggressively P.C. Silicon Valley, where men are taking to message boards like Reddit to express interest in sex segregation — sometimes labeled “Men Going Their Own Way,” or the “Man-o-Sphere.” How will that work out for women in the tech industry, where they already face substantial challenges?

Read the whole thing. On Thursday, Dr. Helen wrote, “There must be a better method that results in more true predators being brought to justice than a movement like #MeToo that results in so many false positives, but then, that may be their underlying goal. Because sadly, #Me Too thinks all men are guilty.”

And that all women are victims. Or as Megan McArdle wrote last month, “Listen to the ‘Bad Feminists’ — They’re the ones who still believe women have power.”

I’M SO OLD, I REMEMBER WHEN SPORTS WERE SIMPLY ABOUT…SPORTS: New York Daily News Prefers Socially Woke Eagles to ‘Team Trump’ in Super Bowl.

I miss the old days, when we were simply rooting for laundry.

Rooting for Laundry from Melel Media on Vimeo.

ALL THE SERVICES NEED TO DO MORE OF THIS: The Air Force Turned Off GPS To Rehearse a War Without It: Red Flag 2018 is a dry run for a war without satellite navigation.