SO ONE OF THE INTERESTING THINGS ABOUT TRUMP’S SPEECH LAST NIGHT is how it seemed calculated to demolish all the standard anti-Trump tropes from the media and from the left and to do so with compelling imagery. Consider:

Trump’s a Nazi: Praise for Holocaust survivors, and a touching rendition of “Happy Birthday.” (With Trump waving his fingers like a conductor).

Trump hates minorities: Brags about record low black, Hispanic, and Asian unemployment — while white-clad Democratic women, overwhelmingly white themselves, sat prune-faced.

Trump’s a Russian tool: Withdrawing from the INF Treaty.

Trump’s a warmonger: Without me, Trump says, we’d be at war on the Korean peninsula. Also, I’m looking at pulling out of Afghanistan.

Trump hates women: Except he got even the prune-faced white-clad Democratic women up dancing (and chanting “USA! USA!”) when he talked about record female employment in and out of Congress.

And his rebuke to socialism was designed to strip the glamour that the media have tried to imbue it with by tying it to the abject misery of Venezuela.

In debate, I think this is called cutting across your opponent’s flow. And I think it’s Trump’s opening shot at 2020, as well as an effort to undercut the “Resistance” in and out of Congress. Plus, as Ann Althouse notes, despite the predictions of lefties like Robert Reich (see below) it was all wrapped in optimism and sunny American exceptionalism. Genuinely Reaganesque.

And, of course, the sour, shallow responses from the lefty apparat just underscore that:

But outside the apparat, it played well even with a lot of people who didn’t vote for Trump:

Ouch, indeed:

UPDATE: I remember when Robert Costa was supposed to be a conservative:

THE PURGE: 32 Religious Groups on Probation for Alleged Discrimination at University of Iowa.

OUT: POLICE. IN: SENSITIVITY POLICE. Don’t Embarrass the Criminals! Andrew Cuomo’s latest sop to the progressive Left is to ban mugshots.

VIDEO: Sour Ocasio-Cortez refuses to applaud ‘cooperation, compromise, common good.’

ROBERT REICH, ONE DAY BEFORE #SOTU: Democrats must not give in to Trump’s hateful speech. “Trump discussing the state of the union is like pyromaniac discussing lighter fluids. His goal is, and has always been, disunion. The man thrives on divisiveness. It’s how he keeps himself the center of attention, fuels his base and ensures that no matter what facts are revealed, his followers will stick by him. There’s another reason Trump aims to divide – and why he pours salt into the nation’s deepest wounds over ethnicity, immigration, race and gender.”

Most columns have a short shelf life, but this one aged faster than a fruit fly.

IF I WERE IN CONGRESS, I’D COUNTER WITH A 50% EXCISE TAX ON ABORTION: Connecticut Dem introduces 50 percent tax on ammunition, calling it ‘public health measure.’

I address why this stupid idea violates the Second Amendment in my Second Amendment Penumbras piece.

HOWIE CARR: Elizabeth Warren in heap big trouble now. “No confusion anywhere. You are an utter fraud.”

MATT MARGOLIS: 9 Liberal Celebrities Who Have a Blackface Problem. “It’s no wonder Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel have been silent about Gov. Northam.”

SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY HIRED THE FORMER UC-DAVIS VICE CHANCELLOR FOR STUDENT AFFAIRS AND CAMPUS DIVERSITY TO BE THEIR PRESIDENT: This is what they are getting for it.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Remodeling America: The Jacobins of today take up the tools of France’s 18th-century radicals.

Soon executing the clerisy en masse was logically followed by Jacobins guillotining thousands of surviving aristocrats and fellow revolutionaries for supposed counterrevolutionary sympathies.

Most of the leaders of the Jacobins were themselves finally guillotined, largely because their ascendant revolutionary zeal could end only in a sort of cannibalism — given that no revolutionary could possibly meet their accelerating purist demands. Mao’s Cultural Revolution was similar, though he slaughtered millions, not thousands.

In less melodramatic terms, we are watching a rare revolutionary phase in American politics as leftists have devoured Democrats. Progressives ate liberals. And progressives are now being devoured by socialists, and soon no doubt socialists will be eaten by hard leftists, Communists, anarchists, and nihilists. In such revolutionary logic, perhaps only Antifa will emerge as pure.

Well, then the rest of us will know who to guillotine.

HERE WE GO: Watch Bernie Sanders’ Red, Frowning Face as Trump Slams Socialism During SOTU.

ROGER KIMBALL: Donald Trump chooses greatness — and so should we. “Shouldn’t Democrats as well as Republicans rejoice that unemployment is at a generational low and that Black and Hispanic unemployment is at an historic low? Shouldn’t Democrats as well as Republicans rejoice that economic growth, well north of three percent, is at a level declared impossible under the anemic leadership of Barack Obama? Shouldn’t Democrats as well as Republicans rejoice that manufacturing is flooding back to the US? Shouldn’t Democrats as well as Republicans rejoice at the president’s attack on the regulatory state, the monstrous regime of Title IX fanatics, and other efforts to transform ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave’ into a safe-space chest-less pajama boys? Shouldn’t Democrats as well as Republicans rejoice that wages are rising, that inflation is stable, that the stock market is booming? Shouldn’t Democrats as well as Republicans rejoice that 2018 marked the first time in 46 years that that cost of prescription drugs dropped? Shouldn’t Democrats as well as Republicans rejoice that the president is endeavoring to rationalize our immigration policy and enforce our immigration laws? Shouldn’t Democrats as well as Republicans rejoice that the president has made historic inroads in negotiations with pariah states like North Korea and adversarial states like China? Shouldn’t Democrats as well as Republicans rejoice in his rebuilding and modernizing the US military? The answer to all these questions is ‘Yes, they should.’ But will they?”

Outlook not so good.

AT AMAZON, Bargain Finds for Men, and for Women.

ANN ALTHOUSE ON TRUMP’S SPEECH: “That was damn near perfect. So upbeat, full of optimism.”

TYLER O’NEIL: Speculation Over What Nancy Pelosi Is Reading During Trump’s State of the Union.

MICHAEL WALSH: “This entire speech is a reproach to the Democrats. And they’re just as smirking and surly as you knew they would be.”

NICE TO SEE A GUY HITLER TRIED TO KILL BEING SUNG “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” DURING THE STATE OF THE UNION.

Though I gotta say, worst Nazi president ever.

LOVING THE ZOOM-IN ON BERNIE SANDERS as Trump slams socialism for coercion, domination, and control. “America will never be a socialist country.” Pretty sure the people chanting “USA, USA!” this time weren’t the women in white.

UPDATE: CNN cameras suddenly can’t find AOC in the crowd when POTUS promises we will never be a socialist country.

Plus: “Trump’s anti-socialist, pro-liberty rhetoric is, dare I say it, Reaganesque. That’s as high praise as I know how to muster for a politician.”

MORE: Nancy Pelosi Blinks ‘Please Send Help’ In Morse Code.

STILL MORE:

Trump is the Great Clarifier.

SORRY, BUT CONGRESS LACKS CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY to regulate abortion.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Kentucky MAGA teen targets Warren for potential libel suit.

Maybe that’s why Liz is looking so sad at the State of the Union.

CULTURE OF NARCISSISM:

UPDATE:

LOOKING AT TED CRUZ WITH THE BEARD, I WONDER WHY HE DIDN’T GROW IT BEFORE THE ELECTION. I’ve seldom seen a face more improved by a beard.

OPEN THREAD: So, whaddya think?