The great political surprise of 2018 will be the size of the Republican victory. 
 
 After members of the elite media have spent two years savaging President Trump, lying about Republican legislation, and reassuring themselves that Republican defeat was inevitable, the size of the GOP victory in 2018 will be an enormous shock. 
 
 Two very interesting columns (one by Barry Casselman and one by Scott Adams) illustrate how the media is deceiving itself. 
 
 Casselman contends that the Democratic victory in Alabama may have blocked a year-long embarrassment and actually strengthened Republican prospects in the Senate. He asserts there may be a new political wave coming, but no one knows whether it will be a red or blue wave. 
 
 As I listened to the end of the year "analysts," I was struck by how little they know, how little they have questioned their own mistakes, and how mutually reinforcing their false information has been. 
 
 Adams, the author of Dilbert, has a list of 20 political opinions and predictions made about President Trump and his Administration, which were just plain wrong. He suggests if you were wrong about 15 or more of these assertions, you might quit talking about politics while Trump is in the White House. By Adams’s standard, most elite "analysts" would have to be quiet, because they have been so consistently wrong about Trump. 
 
 As I listened to the end of the year "analysts," I was struck by how little they know, how little they have questioned their own mistakes, and how mutually reinforcing their false information has been. 
 
 These are not analysts. These are liberal propagandists. Much of what they assert is just plain wrong. Fake news is, sadly, an accurate term. And the topic about which they have been the most fake is the GOP’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. 
 
 First, the media lied about the tax bill in an effort to convince most Americans their taxes would go up. 
 
 Then, the media took surveys of people who opposed the GOP bill based on the false information supplied by the media. 
 
 Then, the media talked again and again about how unpopular the Republican plan was and how it was going to weaken Republican candidates in 2018. 
 
 Then, the bill passed, and unsurprisingly, it turned out to be dramatically better for Americans than the elite media had described. 
 
 In fact, the tax cuts will be the 2018 proving ground of media liberal bias and dishonesty. 
 
 CBS News just provided a vivid example of the false impressions created by the liberal news media’s lies. They interviewed three families about how they expected the GOP tax bill to affect them. Then they had a CPA tell them, on camera, what they would actually be paying in taxes next year. 
 
 Of course, after months of convincing most Americans their taxes would go up, the three families either expected to be paying more in taxes or to not save any money. And you can tell by watching the segment that the liberal hosts expected the same. 
 
 Of course, it turned out that all three families would pay less under the GOP tax cuts than under current law. 
 
 A North Carolina single mother with an income slightly under $40,000 who didn’t think she would be affected will keep about $1,300 more per year under the GOP bill. 
 
 Two college teachers in Rhode Island with a joint income of over $150,000 a year thought they would pay more taxes, but they will actually pay about $650 less under the GOP tax cut. 
 
 The biggest surprise in the CBS report was the impact the tax cuts would have on a California couple with three children, a small business, and earning an income of approximately $300,000. The family believed that because California is a high-tax state, that capping state and local tax deductions would really hurt them. Instead, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will save them nearly $13,000 in taxes. 
 
 The look on the three families faces as they learned how much they would be saving was remarkable to behold. 
 
 The CBS analyst concluded "every one of the families will have more money in their pocket next year." 
 
 As my colleague Joe Desantis wrote me: "This segment drove me crazy. As if CBS was incapable of doing math before the tax cuts passed." 
 
 The gap between the news media falsehoods and the dramatically better reality of the GOP tax cuts will have three huge effects on the 2018 campaign: 
 
 1. The American people will be positively surprised and pleased by the degree to which Republicans kept their word and actually put more money in taxpayer pockets. After 10 months of frustration from trying to repeal Obamacare, Republicans have proven they can get big things done. 
 
 
 
 2. The news media’s dishonesty will be vivid at a personal level. People will be able to compare their personal experience with the news media's fake reporting and endless bias. As the truth sinks in, the ability of the liberal media to shape opinion will decline even further. 
 
 
 
 3. Democrats who voted against the bill will live to regret it as people look at their family budgets and realize Democrats in the House and Senate wanted Washington bureaucrats to have more money, rather than hard-working Americans. This will certainly be a losing proposition for the 10 Senate Democrats up for re-election in states President Trump won in 2016. 
 
 In fact, the stage is being set for a definitive election. 
 
 Do you want higher taxes, bigger bureaucracy, more power in Washington, and a smaller economy with lower take-home pay and fewer jobs? If yes, vote Democrat, because that is what they stand for and will continue to vote for next year. 
 
 If you want a bigger economy, more jobs, more take-home pay, less power with Washington bureaucrats, and lower taxes with more money in your pocket, then vote Republican. 
 
 If Republicans can learn to tell the truth better than the elite media and Democrats lie, the GOP will win an astonishing victory in 2018. ||||| It's not that there's no drama. It's that there's not much chance of big changes in national policy, no matter what happens. 
 
 Pundits know two things about next month’s midterm elections. First, Republicans will likely take the Senate. Two, the elections stink. In a recent column, David Brooks declared, “The 2014 campaign has been the most boring and uncreative campaign I can remember.” Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza responded with a post titled, “David Brooks thinks 2014 is the ‘most boring’ campaign he can remember. It’s even worse than that.” 
 
 Brooks blames this dullness on the fact that Democrats and Republicans won’t change their minds. (“Polarization is deeply rooted in the economic conditions and personal values of the country.”) Cillizza blames it on the fact that both Democrats and Republicans can’t stand Washington. (“The American public are in a stage of disenchantment and anxiety that is historically unique.”) But the best answer I’ve seen comes from Ezra Klein, who argues that “elections are about stakes.” And the stakes in this one just don’t seem so high. 
 
 At a micro-level, after all, the 2014 elections have plenty of drama. In Kentucky, the Republican leader in the Senate has been fighting for his political life all year. In Kansas, an entrenched incumbent could lose to a little-known independent who won’t say which party he’ll caucus with. It’s even possible we won’t know who controls the Senate until December or January, when Louisiana and Georgia hold runoffs. 
 
 The dullness comes from this election’s lack of a compelling macro-theme. Yes, there are national refrains: Democrats in state after state call their Republican opponents heartless misogynists; Republicans call their Democratic opponents Obama clones. But there’s no big national issue on which voters feel that they can change the country’s course. It’s not that candidates today are more cynical or homogenized than in midterms past. It’s that the subjects they’re discussing cynically and homogenously don’t matter as much. 
 
 A look at the last four midterms makes the point. In November 1998, Bill Clinton’s impeachment hung in the balance. After proving initially wary of the issue, in the campaign’s final week the National Republican Congressional Committee launched an advertising campaign in 30 swing districts aimed at rallying the GOP base. One spot showed two mothers asking each other, “What did you tell your kids?” But the ads backfired. The people most energized by the specter of impeachment were Democrats, especially African Americans. (It was the 1998 impeachment struggle that launched Moveon.org—as in “move on to something more important than impeachment.”) 
 
 After expecting to win numerous House seats, the GOP ended up losing five. Speaker Newt Gingrich was forced to resign. Democratic Senator Robert Torricelli of New Jersey declared that as a result of the election, “Any serious effort to remove President Clinton from office is effectively over.” 
 
 In 2002, the stakes were just as high. Roughly a month before Election Day, the House and Senate had voted to authorize President George W. Bush to invade Iraq. But because Bush had agreed to a last-ditch United Nations inspection effort, and because he was still seeking UN approval for military action, many still believed an invasion could be averted. The midterms were thus cast as a referendum on war. 
 
 Like 2014, 2002 had plenty of micro-drama. After voting against the war, progressive hero Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash a week before Election Day. In Georgia, Republicans ran ads featuring Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in an effort to depict Vietnam Veteran and triple amputee Max Cleland as soft on homeland security. But what made these local storylines nationally compelling was their connection to the still unresolved question of whether America would go to war. 
 
 By 2006, America was in the middle of another fierce debate about Iraq: Not whether to get in, but whether to get out. In a Washington Post poll two weeks before Election Day, a plurality of Americans called Iraq their top concern. And in exit polls, 55 percent of voters said they wanted some or all U.S. troops withdrawn. As in 2002, the dramatic local stories—Senator Joe Lieberman’s loss to an anti-war challenger in the Connecticut Democratic primary, ex-Marine Jim Webb’s defeat of potential presidential contender George Allen in Virginia—connected to this national debate in a way the key races this year do not. As it turned out, the victorious congressional Democrats did not force George W. Bush to rapidly withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. But the prospect that they might gave the election its passion. 
 
 There's little reason a Republican Senate would substantially change American policy toward ISIS or Ebola. 
 
 Finally, the 2010 midterms occurred in the wake of the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression and the largest expansion of the American welfare state since the Great Society. And back then, far more than today, both these subjects seemed up for grabs. Many Republicans believed that by winning Congress in 2010 and then the presidency in 2012, they could repeal, or at least cripple, Obamacare. With the deficit skyrocketing, the nascent Tea Party warned that only by radically changing course could America avoid becoming Greece. The size and scope of federal intervention in the economy seemed to hang in the balance in a way it had not since the 1930s. All the dramatic races that year—Sharron Angle’s effort to unseat Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada, Marco Rubio’s driving Charlie Crist out of the Republican Party in Florida, Rand Paul’s shocking victory in Kentucky—connected to that theme. I remember watching MSNBC on election night as liberal pundits speculated about whether the barbarians now at the gates would force a debt default that sent the global economy into meltdown. For conservatives, it was enthralling. For liberals, it was terrifying. It certainly wasn’t boring. 
 
 Today, these domestic-policy debates are more muted. Republicans still denounce Obamacare, but few still believe they can repeal it. Big partisan differences about the size of government remain, but with the deficit going down and Republicans no longer willing to go to the brink over the debt limit, the crisis atmosphere of 2010 has faded. Overseas, Americans worry about Ebola and ISIS, but those threats don’t divide them along partisan lines like Iraq. There’s little reason to believe that electing a Republican Senate would substantially change American policy toward either. 
 
 Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying next month’s elections don’t matter. They do. As Annie Lowrey has predicted, a Republican Senate—if elected—will work mightily to prevent President Obama from using his executive authority to implement a broad range of government regulation. But these potential fights are mostly too narrow and too technical to grab public attention. Americans just don’t believe that as much hinges on their vote as did in 1998, 2002, 2006, or 2010. For many pundits, that makes this election boring. For many ordinary Americans, I suspect, it’s something of a relief. ||||| Senate Majority Leader Senator Mitch McConnell walks to the Senate Floor on Capitol Hill on Dec. 1. | Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Senate passes sweeping tax overhaul Debate spilled into the wee hours after a day of horse trading. 
 
 The Senate narrowly passed a massive tax overhaul early Saturday morning, putting Republicans on the cusp of revamping the U.S. tax system for the first time in more than three decades. 
 
 The 51 to 49 vote came after Senate Republicans frantically rewrote the multi-trillion dollar legislation behind closed doors to win over several final holdouts, and left congressional Republicans just a few steps away from sending legislation to President Donald Trump’s desk. The House passed its own plan in November. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee was the only Republican to oppose the measure, in what’s also a big victory for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who repeatedly fell short in his efforts to push through an Obamacare repeal measure this year. 
 
 “I think one reason we were able to get there was because there’s widespread interest,” McConnell said in an interview with POLITICO. “Every single member of our conference wanted to get to yes, and all but one did.” 
 
 President Donald Trump praised McConnell and Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch in a tweet after the bill passed, adding, “We are one step closer to delivering MASSIVE tax cuts for working families across America.” 
 
 McConnell and GOP leaders were able to score the necessary votes on Friday by acceding to demands by Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and others for expanded tax breaks for small businesses, homeowners and others. That gave leadership the breathing room to reject conflicting demands by Corker and others to rein in the cost of the plan. 
 
 Democrats harshly condemned the legislation and the way it came together. 
 
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 "Millions of Americans must be watching in stunned disbelief tonight as the Republican Senate betrays the middle class for the benefit of faceless multinational corporations," Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the tax-writing Finance Committee, said on the Senate floor shortly before the bill passed. 
 
 Democrats also ridiculed the GOP scramble to get the bill passed and the frequent rounds of horse trading required. Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois posted a picture on Twitter that showed hand-scribbled changes on a page from the initial version of the lengthy Republican amendment to the legislation. 
 
 “Trying to review the #GOPTaxScam but they are making hand-written changes to brand new text as we speak – can anyone else read this?” Durbin jabbed. 
 
 Debate on the legislation spilled past midnight as the Senate debated numerous amendments, including one from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that would extend tax-advantaged “529” college saving accounts to public, private and religious K-12 schools. It was adopted on a 51-50 vote after Vice President Mike Pence broke a tie. 
 
 The Senate struck a controversial provision from Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) that would have exempted Hillsdale College, a prominent conservative institution led by a Heritage Foundation board member, from a controversial new tax on university endowments. The school also has close ties to the family of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. 
 
 House and Senate Republicans still have to settle the differences between their tax bills before Trump can sign a final bill, which would give the GOP the legislative achievement they’ve sought throughout their first year of regaining full control in Washington. 
 
 The House plans to vote Monday to formally set up a conference committee to hash out a final compromise, though some of the changes that Senate Republicans agreed to Friday also brought the two measures closer together. 
 
 “Now it’s time to take the best of both the House and Senate bills, make them even stronger in a conference committee, and finalize one piece of legislation that will dramatically improve the lives of Americans for generations to come,” Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement after the Senate vote. 
 
 However, Senate leaders haven’t publicly committed to a formal conference. 
 
 Republicans are using powerful budget procedures to evade a Democratic filibuster of the bill, which allowed McConnell to lose up to two GOP votes and still pass the bill. After struggling all week to corral at least 50 votes for the tax measure, Senate GOP leaders ended up appeasing all but Corker. 
 
 Tax Reform: Who Pays What? poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201708/2289/1155968404_5544094581001_5544019579001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true 
 
 Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) won a string of concessions for her vote, including a provision that would allow taxpayers to continue writing off property taxes, albeit with a $10,000 limit, and an expanded deduction for medical costs. 
 
 “As revised, this bill will provide much-needed tax relief and simplification for lower- and middle-income families, while spurring the creation of good jobs and greater economic growth,” Collins said. 
 
 In a particularly big victory for leadership, Johnson and Steve Daines (R-Mont.), both of whom had announced in recent weeks that they couldn’t support the bill, were won over by a proposal that would increase a tax deduction for pass-through businesses. They had complained that the Senate bill offered more tax relief to corporations than to pass-throughs, which are businesses – often small ones -- that pay taxes as individuals. 
 
 Those businesses would see a deduction included in the Senate bill for them rise from 20 percent to 23 percent, a boost financed by increasing a proposed one-time tax on multinational corporations’ offshore earnings. The multinational provision also puts the Senate bill in line with the House measure, by charging 14 percent on those companies' liquid assets and 7 percent on illiquid ones like facilities, up from the 10 percent and 5 percent the Senate had been considering. 
 
 “We’re going to have to reconcile that anyway, and might as well reconcile up front here to take care of our issue,” Johnson told reporters. 
 
 Though Johnson’s vote was likely never truly in doubt, he could have held out for more changes, which would have further handcuffed leaders as they tried to satisfy a duo of stubborn fiscal hawks alarmed that the measure would blow up federal budget deficits. A Joint Committee on Taxation report on Thursday found the proposal would add an extra $1 trillion to the federal debt over the next decade, even after considering economic growth. 
 
 Both Corker and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) pushed for a trigger mechanism that would have forced automatic tax increases if the bill didn’t jog the economy as much as Republicans hope. The Senate parliamentarian found that such a mechanism would violate complicated procedural rules, scotching a vote on the bill Thursday night and sending Republicans scrambling for alternatives. 
 
 Corker said Friday that he had “wanted to get to yes,” thanked GOP leaders and Trump for working with him in good faith and maintained that he would take another look at whatever measure might emerge from a conference committee. But he added that while “it would have been fairly easy to alter the bill in a way that would have been more fiscally sound without harming the pro-growth policies, unfortunately, it is clear that the caucus is in a different place.” 
 
 Unlike Corker, Flake supported the bill in the end, after securing language that phases down write-offs for business investments that had been slated to abruptly expire at the end of 2022. The Arizona Republican also got a “firm commitment” by party leaders to “work with me” on “fair and permanent protections” for undocumented immigrants threatened with deportation by Trump’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. 
 
 “Having secured both of these objections, I am pleased to announce I will vote in support [of] the tax reform bill,” he said in a statement. 
 
 GOP leaders also had to make changes elsewhere in the bill to fund some of the policy promises they had made. That included dropping plans to repeal the alternative minimum tax -- a complicated batch of rules designed to prevent people from dodging taxes -- that had been a key part of Republican plans to radically simplify the code. 
 
 Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said they needed the money to finance other last-minute changes to the bill, including the expanded tax cut for pass-through businesses and the property tax deduction. 
 
 “Most members felt very strongly that we wanted a property tax exemption for individuals,” Rounds said. “The trade-off is there.” 
 
 Congressional Republicans have said in recent weeks that they don’t want to go into the 2018 midterm elections without a tax cut to show to voters. But it’s an open question just how much a victory on taxes will help Republicans politically. 
 
 The GOP proposals, which feature a large permanent cut in the corporate tax rate and temporary tax relief for individuals, have consistently polled poorly with voters. 
 
 Democrats have predicted that Republicans will end up paying a steep political price. But on Friday, Democratic leaders were mostly enraged by both the substance and process of the tax push. Most Democrats even voted against an amendment from Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), which was rejected, that would have further expanded the child tax credit while pushing the proposed corporate rate up from 20 percent to almost 21 percent. 
 
 Aaron Lorenzo, Jane Norman and Michael Stratford contributed to this report.
– One common sentiment among political pundits is that Democrats are on track to deliver a political shellacking to Republicans in the 2018 elections. At Fox News, however, Newt Gingrich is predicting the "great political surprise" of the new year: Republicans will not only win, they'll win big. "After members of the elite media have spent two years savaging President Trump, lying about Republican legislation, and reassuring themselves that Republican defeat was inevitable, the size of the GOP victory in 2018 will be an enormous shock," writes the former House speaker. One key reason for his prediction is the newly passed Republican tax plan. Ordinary Americans have been told in the press over and over that the changes will hurt them and benefit the rich, he writes. But when people actually receive fatter paychecks next year, Gingrich argues, they'll see the truth. "In fact, the tax cuts will be the 2018 proving ground of media liberal bias and dishonesty," he writes. What's more, he predicts that Democrats who voted against the measure will pay the price in the midterms, particularly the 10 Senate Democrats up for re-election in states won by Trump. Click for the full column, in which Gingrich references another by Dilbert creator Scott Adams that offers up a list of 20 doomsday political predictions about Trump that Adams says failed to materialize.