From the right: What’s Behind Rash of Anti-Semitism?

Anti-Semitic incidents are on the rise in the United States — and that’s “even more troubling” than Europe’s dramatic recent increase in such attacks, says Ian Tuttle at National Review. But while “commentators have been quick to pin the blame on Donald Trump,” the “extent of the increase,” let alone Trump’s possible role, “remains unclear.” Fact is, US anti-Jewish incidents in 2014 — in which Trump clearly played no role — were up 21 percent from the year before, largely due to the war in Gaza. Likewise, in New York City, “from 2011 to 2012, hate crimes increased by 54.5 percent.” Again, Trump “obviously . . . had nothing to do with this.” Lesson: “Accusations warrant evidence, and that should be the case no matter who is in the White House.”

Security expert: A New Shift in the War on Terror

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and his ousted predecessor, Michael Flynn, “are very different in their assessment of America’s relationship with Islam and how this influences the long war on terror,” reports Eli Lake at Bloomberg. Flynn focused “on defeating the ideology of radical Islam.” But McMaster’s emphasis is “on getting radical Muslims to turn on al Qaeda and other terrorists.” He “helped rewrite the Army’s counterinsurgency doctrine during the Iraq war,” which means “he learned how to make allies out of Muslim fighters who had killed Americans” and considers “ideological purity . . . a hindrance.” That “could be an asset if Trump seeks to reassure the Middle East that America is not in a war against Islam.”



Policy wonk: Cuomo’s Public/Private Tuition Disconnect

Gov. Cuomo likes to claim his father, Mario, was a product of New York’s public-education system, but Bob McManus at City Journal notes that “as is all too often the case with the governor’s orations, it essentially [isn’t] true.” Worse, “the ‘free tuition’ scheme that Cuomo the Younger is advancing could do substantial damage to New York’s highly regarded, and economically critical, network of private colleges and universities — the path that his father really took to Albany’s Executive Mansion.” That’s because “private schools are already operating on the razor’s edge as they compete against one of the nation’s lowest public-university tuitions — which Cuomo means to subsidize further at the expense of the privates.” Says McManus: “It’s hard to imagine that Mario Cuomo, proud private-college grad, would have approved.”

From the left: Dems Should Reject Their Fat Cats

The well-publicized race for chairman of the Democratic National Committee doesn’t really matter, contends former DNC finance director Lindsay Mark Lewis at The Daily Beast, because the DNC “cannot be the instrument for the party’s revival.” It’s “basically a fundraising committee that throws one hell of a party it calls a nominating convention every four years.” Real power resides “in a growing ‘progressive network’ lavishly funded by a handful of super-rich individuals, mostly in New York and California.” But Democrats can’t “get back on a winning track” unless they “rebuild state operations and reclaim their party from the liberal donor class” that constructs “ideological silos of interest groups that silence the dialogue elected officials need to engage in.”

Ex-candidate: Will GOP Succumb to Beltway Disease?

At Fox News, former GOP presidential candidate Steve Forbes warns his party against “Beltway-itis,” in which “policymakers, politicos and bureaucrats too often forget or even show disdain for the people they supposedly serve.” That’s why he opposes the establishment’s push for a border-adjustment tax, which “will inflict American working families — the very people critical for Donald Trump’s election — [with] a whole lot of hurt.” BAT imposes a 20 percent sales tax on imports, costing US consumers $125 billion a year on everything from cars to groceries. It’s “absolutely unnecessary to attract businesses and capital to our shores.” A better step: “Cutting the profits tax to 15 percent and minimally taxing, or not taxing at all, overseas earnings.”

— Compiled by Eric Fettmann