Insight: “My kind of loyalty was to one’s country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.” —Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“Biden is president because the Democrats didn’t want Bernie and the country didn’t want Trump. His presidency has failed because, drunk on his improbable ascent, he forgot that.” —Charles C.W. Cooke

“Good news — the Biden Admin canceled its plan to pay detained illegal immigrants $450k. But remember: if the Administration could have done this quietly, they would have made these payments. They’re only backing down because they got caught.” —Senator Tom Cotton

“Last month proved the worst November for illegal border-crossers in the history of the Department of Homeland Security, with 173,000 apprehended per preliminary DHS figures, more than double the prior record of the month of 76,000 back over 20 years ago. … We’re counting the days until Biden declares his border approach a ‘great success’ on par with his bugout from Afghanistan.” —New York Post

“Democrats can keep treating voter ID requirements as if they were poll taxes, but most Americans support the standard that, incidentally, existed only a few years before the 2020 election anarchy.” —David Harsanyi

“Voting rights are secure in America. What’s not secure is the ballot box. Far too many liberal states are not doing enough to ensure that only legal votes are cast and counted. And Democrats are doing their best to make cheating in future elections easier.” —Gary Bauer

“Six thousand illegal aliens can cross our border each and every day, and progressive politicians don’t care. An American mother and daughter can be killed by a human trafficker or drunk illegal alien, and they don’t care. Ask the Squad about the anarchy and crime in the streets, and they don’t care. Tell them that the virus came out of a Chinese lab, and they don’t care. But tell them that somewhere an abortion in the second or third trimester has been blocked, and they go ballistic. There is nothing on the left’s agenda that means more to them than the destruction of preborn children.” —Gary Bauer

“All the hokum about the causes of inflation is basically a confession of impotence. If the Biden administration had a good story to tell about how it’s fixing inflation, it wouldn’t need to create cartoon villains. It would be better served by focusing on a whole host of barnacles on the U.S. supply chain — from union rules and environmental laws that have hampered U.S. ports and other infrastructure to the Jones Act, which increases the costs of shipping, to the foolish tariffs on truck chassis at a time when they are in short supply. Of course, all these measures would be politically painful to address, and none would be a magic bullet. It is easier to pretend that, sometime earlier this year, corporate America suddenly decided, out of nowhere, to become greedy.” —Rich Lowry

Braying jenny: “No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No. It’s Joe Biden. And don’t start talking like a Republican about asking whether or not he’s president. … And it’s Joe Biden, it’s Joe Biden, and it’s Joe Biden. And I’m vice president and my name is Kamala Harris.” —Kamala Harris in an angry interview response when asked, “So who’s the real president of this country? Is it Joe Manchin or Joe Biden?”

Projection: “Republicans are actively seeking to hurt the pandemic response, explicitly rooting for inflation to get worse.” —White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre (“Whereas Democrats are actively screwing up the pandemic response and making inflation worse.” —Jim Treacher)

A trip down memory lane: “220,000 deaths. If you hear nothing else I say tonight, hear this: Anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain President of the United States.” —Joe Biden, October 22, 2020 (According to the CDC, the number of COVID deaths under Biden, almost 400,000, is poised to overtake the number of deaths in the final year of the Trump administration.)

Race bait: “We learned there’s no difference between a black entrepreneur and a white entrepreneur in success, except the black entrepreneur usually doesn’t have a lawyer.” —Joe Biden (“Wait until Joe Biden finds out black people are lawyers.” —Katie Pavlich)

And last… “Omicron is a very very mild COVID strain that could be our way out of all of this and yet our public health authorities and the Biden Administration are treating it like the greatest threat we’ve faced yet. What does that tell you?” —Matt Walsh