FRIDAY short TAKES.

Confound it, can't we get through a Super Bowl or two, let alone establish the composition of the incoming Congress, before we focus on the next presidential election cycle?  Absurd. <bangs head against wall repeatedly>.  For what?  "GOP voters should give up on the idea that Trump is a winner."  The correlation of forces is not favorable.  "Biden has been a disaster. ... Trump is politically toxic and a serious electoral drag."

The weekly round-up of pithy elaborations of traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

1.  Pivot.  "The president and congressional leaders should ignore the left of the party which loudly proclaims that cost of living issues and public safety are fake issues cooked up by the right."  I don't care what the party label is if the policy bundle is satisfactory.

2.  Emulate this, Democrats.  "Republicans interested in winning majorities should own the idea that government-mandated lockdowns, soft-on-crime policies, lax election security, and ideological excess in public schools are all moral failures. A large slice of the American electorate agrees."

3.  Now put something substantive in that bundle.  "Personality had fully triumphed over policy." Thus, "It's time for Republicans to rediscover the value of actually having ideas."

4.  Their most valuable weapon will be gridlock.

5.  There is still work to do.  "Never underestimate the power of envy, the beating heart of the Democrat party."

6.  Practice, practice.  "There’s just no substitute for the experience of running for office — even unsuccessfully."

7.  The fruits of wokism.  “Everything in the world has got significantly worse since we gave women the right to vote. So I honestly think we should just lower gas prices.”  No, seriously.

8.  Losing politicians blame the voters.  "Trashing a group of voters for not voting your way is not a great way to bring them over to your side."

9.  It does not follow that the voters get everything right.  "Great job, voters. Enjoy the abortions."

10.  Condorcet, call your office.  "Georgia requires a candidate to win 50 percent of the vote or face a runoff, a vestige of the South’s racist, segregationist past during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era." Seriously. "White people who were in control of the legislatures used the runoff to ensure that if there were multiple candidates in the first election and a Black person ran first or even second, the White vote could consolidate in the runoff and defeat that Black candidate."  Good grief.

11.  Tradeoffs, everywhere.  "Yale can can maintain its racial diversity by sacrificing its elite status."

12.  Markets fail.  Use markets.  "I think that the best protection from naive realism is having ideas tested in the market rather than imposed by monopoly government. The market will expose and weed out misconceptions. Government will not."

13.  Troll level, DeSantis?  "This product was made in a country known to the State of Florida to employ slave labor."

14.  Reform, if you would preserve.  "If Democrats get serious about containing urban crime, if they get serious about instituting a sensible border policy, if they get serious about tamping down racial demagoguery in their party, then I might have a hard decision to make when it comes time to cast my ballot."

15.  Nonexistence of equilibrium begets gridlock.  "The reason why the party that controls the presidency does poorly in midterms is that voters are trying to balance out policy change by creating divided government."

16.  Meals rejected by elementary schoolers.  "It starts with the food itself."

17.  Eyes on the prize.  "Sears is right: our mission is to save America, not defend Donald Trump."

18.  And this is news?  "A Wisconsin voter integrity team found, after reviewing scores of counties and localities, that the number of ballots and votes cast lined up."

19.  E-T-T-S.  "The quality of both undergraduate and graduate training in economics is getting worse."

20.  Waco becomes Wuhan.  "But in her pretrial essay, which required her to admit guilt and remorse, Wallace thanked the officers for teaching her how wrong she was to have her son walk half a mile on a warm day in his own neighborhood. From now on, Wallace wrote, 'I will continue to grow more as a parent and a person.'"

21.  Weimar America.  "No tattoos for kids -- sex-change drugs are OK."  Parents make all sorts of debatable decisions.  A reckoning is coming.

22.  Ferroequinologist wisdom.  "I spent a lot of time planning. Perhaps too much time."  Generalizations are straightforward.