Wiretap: Sure, GOP lost in Alabama, but that doesn’t mean anyone’s backing down on taxes

If you think Republicans were afraid that their tax-cut bill is being seen as a boon to the rich, think again. In the House-Senate compromise bill, Republicans decided to relent on a lot of popular deductions they were ready to cut, but they also took the rich-guys-come-first theme another step further by cutting the top tax rate. Via The Atlantic.

Roy Moore said Washington was afraid of him, and he was right. But, as Molly Ball writes, it turned out that Alabama voters were also afraid to be represented by someone like Moore, and that’s how the impossible — a Doug Jones victory — came to be. Via Time.

After Alabama, both parties are reworking their 2018 electoral playbooks. But Republicans apparently have a lot more work to do. Or as Lindsey Graham put it, no Republican “should feel safe about anything.” Via The Washington Post.

If you’re looking for someone to blame for Roy Moore’s loss, blame those Republicans who were ready to trade their souls for one more Senate seat. Via The New Yorker.

From The National Review, George Will writes that it has taken only 11 months, and one Roy Moore endorsement, for Trump to reveal himself as the nation’s worst-ever president — one who should be shunned by any Republican with a capacity for disgust.

The conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat writes that you can predict the future of Trumpism through the failure of Roy Moore.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein basically lays it out for a hostile House Judiciary Committee: If Republicans want to go after special counsel Robert Mueller, as they seem ready to do, they’ll have to come through him. Via The New York Times.

Renee Graham writes in The Boston Globe that the #MeToo movement will very soon be knocking on Donald Trump’s White House door.

Even if you think you’ve seen everything you’d ever want to read on Harvey Weinstein, you’ll still want to read this compelling and moving piece by Salma Hayek: Harvey Weinstein is my monster too. Via The New York Times.

Photo by Gage Skidmore, via Flickr: Creative Commons. Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin speaking at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland.