KRAUTHAMMER

detoxified.

Again, that’s not going to win him the Hispanic vote. But that wasn’t the point. The point was to soften his image in the Philadelphia suburbs, pundit shorthand for white collegeeducated women that Republicans have to win (and where Trump trails Romney 2012 by 10 points). Which brings us to:

3) The blockbuster childcare proposal. Unveiled Tuesday, it is liberalism at its best, Big Government at its biggest: tax deductions, tax rebates (i.e. cash), and a federal mandate of six weeks of paid maternity leave. The biggest entitlement since, well, Obamacare.

But wait. Didn’t Trump’s acolytes assure us that he spoke for those betrayed by the soldout, elitist, GOP establishment that for years refused to stand up to Obama’s overweening mandates, Big Government profligacy and budget-busting entitlements?

No matter. That was yesterday. There is no past. Nor a future — at least for Ivanka-care. It would never get through the GOP House.

Nor is it meant to. It is meant to signal what George H. W. Bush once memorably read off a cue card. “Message: I care.”

And where do you think Trump gave this dish-the-Whigs cradleto-college entitlement speech? Why, the Philadelphia suburbs! Can’t get more transparent than that. Or shameless. Or brilliant.

And it’s working.