Author: Andrew Sullivan

Over the weekend, at least 49 Egyptians died in clashes with police while marking the anniversary of the country’s 2011 uprising.  Soon thereafter, the interim government announced that it would hold early presidential elections and that army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has been promoted to Field Marshal, paving the way for a presidential bid that most expect him to win. Bel Trew looks ahead:

The few public statements made by leading generals suggest that the army will endorse his candidacy. He can also count on popular support: the media, several grass-roots campaigns and political parties have called for him to run. A photoshopped presidential campaign poster for the general went viral minutes after the preliminary results of the referendum were released. …

If Sisi wins, he will oversee the implementation of the constitution, new draft laws and, crucially, parliamentary elections. It is likely the general will form his own party. “It’s easy to imagine a situation when Sisi’s new party sweeps the parliament, whose election will be as free and fair as the referendum,” said Hisham Hellyer of the Brookings Institution. “You won’t have ballot-stuffing because they won’t need to.”

Amid these events, Nathan Brown pins Egypt’s problems on its institutions rather than its political personalities:

Egypt’s political affliction is not one dictatorial person but a host of dictatorial institutions, and much of Egyptian society is a happy participant rather than cowering victim in the wave of repression.

Let us turn first to the Egyptian state—a set of balkanized institutions, each with its own keen sense of mission and privilege. President Adli Mansour—a man almost as genial and modest as Shahin—is no thundering Mussolini. Even military leader General ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, while powerful, shows few signs of micromanaging the Egyptian state. Instead, various institutional actors who spent years under what they came to feel was a domineering and sometimes corrupt political leadership under Mubarak, are finally free to act on their own. And each one is doing so with a vengeance.

Eric Trager stresses the complicity of the Egyptian people themselves in the endless turmoil:

Within the Beltway, Egypt’s autocratic recidivism is often blamed on Egypt’s poisonous media and draconian military-backed government, thereby casting ordinary Egyptians as passive actors in their own country’s story. But they aren’t. Time and again, critical masses of Egyptians have cast and recast their lot: first with the 2011 anti-Mubarak uprising, then with the military junta that succeeded Mubarak, then with the Muslim Brotherhood during the 2011-2012 parliamentary and presidential elections, and then with the military once again during the July 2013 uprising-cum-coup that ousted Mohamed Morsi.

In all likelihood, these critical masses of Egyptians will change their minds again, because even as the rules of Egypt’s political game have been written and rewritten repeatedly, one hard law has emerged: nothing is permanent.

Reviewing Ed West’s e-book The Silence Of Our Friends, Michael Brendan Dougherty laments how little attention the West pays to the plight of Christians in the Middle East:

Western activists and media have focused considerable outrage at Russia’s laws against “homosexual propaganda” in the lead-up to the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. It would only seem fitting that Westerners would also protest (or at the very least notice) laws that punish people with death for converting to Christianity. And yet the Western world is largely ignorant of or untroubled by programmatic violence against Christians. Ed West, citing the French philosopher Regis Debray, distils the problem thusly: “The victims are ‘too Christian’ to excite the Left, and ‘too foreign’ to excite the Right.”

Church leaders outside the Middle East are afraid to speak out, partly because they fear precipitating more violence. (Seven churches were fire-bombed in Iraq after Pope Benedict XVI quoted an ancient criticism of Islam in an academic speech in Germany.) Oddly, unlike Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Russia, the U.S. and the U.K. are the only powers acting in the Middle East that do not take any special interest in the safety of those with whom they have a historical religious affinity.

Josh Green puts the latest Obamacare numbers in perspective:

[T]he Congressional Budget Office predicted that 3.3 million people would sign up for insurance through the exchanges by the end of last year. That obviously didn’t happen. But after essentially losing two month to technical problems, Obamacare appears to be gaining ground. It’s nearly reached that 3.3 million figure two-thirds of the way through January. It no longer seems inconceivable that 7 million could sign up by March 31st, as the CBO had originally projected.

Philip Klein adds a caveat:

HHS still hasn’t disclosed how many of those who have selected a plan through the health care law have actually paid for it, which is how insurers typically define enrollment.

Cohn’s analysis:

[T]he new figure does mean that people are using the system, in large numbers.

And while total enrollment is still short of what initial projections had suggested, the rate of enrollment seems to be right in line with what the experts, including government forecasters, had expected. A now-infamous internal HHS memo had predicted that a little more than 1 million people would sign up for coverage in January. The newly released data means that about 800,000 have signed up this month—and there’s still a week to go.

Sargent reviews Obamacare polling:

A solid majority thinks there are good things in the law, even if it needs changes, while barely more than a third supports the idea that it’s a disaster that must be eliminated entirely. The latter is driven almost entirely by Republicans. Among them, 69 percent support repeal, while independents tilt in favor of keeping it by 65-35.

One part of Obamacare that is proving popular:

A solid majority of Kentucky Republicans support the state’s decision to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, according to a new poll, standing in stark contrast to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s opposition to the provision.

The Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky poll, reported by NPR-affiliated WFPL, found that 60 percent of self-identified Republicans said they support expansion. In total, 79 percent of Kentuckians agree with Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear’s decision to expand coverage to low-income people under the health care reform law.