WHICH WAY, KEVIN MCCARTHY? Like handing a starving man half a Whopper is one way of describing House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s four-point platform for 2022. But Rachel Bovard’s analysis of the California Republican is much more bracing, including this (emphasis added):

“If you’re sensing shades of elections ranging from 1984 to 2012, you’re not alone. Minus the aberration that was Trump, the Republican Party has been promising the exact same set of goals for my entire lifetime, regardless of what is actually happening in the country. One suspects that a nuclear winter could befall the entire North American continent and Republicans would struggle mightily through the fallout to declare they have the solution to the problem: the reauthorization of the Keystone Pipeline.

“It’s not that these policies are wrong or even misplaced. They’re simply mis-prioritized. Yes, more enforcement at the border, making life better for small businesses, securing American energy independence, and enforcing parental choice are good and absolutely necessary policy goals. But they also represent the absolute baseline expectations that voters should have from an even marginally competent Republican party.”