GOP Returning to Its Vomit

"As a dog returns to his vomit, so fools repeat their folly" -- Proverbs 26:11 Ever quick to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, the GOP has not even waited for the weekend to begin systematically dismantling the stunning victory their party achieved despite their best efforts. Trump has barely had time to shower and shave before his party began dictating to him how things should be run - the same way they were run before he showed up on the scene. The Grand Old Party seems incapable of learning from its mistakes - and its successes.

So the claim that we cannot prosecute Hillary out of some sense of tradition is nonsense

First there is the matter of what to do about Hillary Clinton. America has a tradition of a graceful transition of power, and we do not criminalize political disputes. But that has not always been the case, and Richard Nixon should make that assertion perfectly clear; Hillary herself sought to deny Nixon legal counsel, deny him the right to open hearings, and not allow congress to actually see evidence against Mr. Nixon when he was being investigated for Watergate. (In fact Hillary went so far as to suppress documents and someone actually stole secured legal documents that showed there was legal precedent for an impeached individual to have legal counsel.) Nixon was pursued legally until Gerald Ford issued a pardon. Ford paid a price for that; one of the big reasons he wasn't elected President was the public saw his pardon of Nixon as corruption. Why did the Democrats go after Nixon? Because, they asserted, crimes were committed and he was responsible. In actuality Nixon likely had no knowledge of said crimes but showed loyalty to people loyal to him, and the cover-up was worse than the crime, or so Democrats told us at the time. So the claim that we cannot prosecute Hillary out of some sense of tradition is nonsense; the Democrats themselves had previously argued that crimes overrule the tradition of comity in the changing of the guard. It is likely, too, that they would have tried to prosecute Ronald Reagan over the Iran-contra Affair had Michael Dukakis won the Presidency in 1988. It was Reagan's popularity with the public that handed a milquetoast patrician George H.W. Bush the Presidency, and that effectively ended any hope of going after Reagan (Bush was the point man in the Iran-Contra Affair, after all.) The point is that actual crimes are not to be dismissed lightly, and suggestions by Republicans that Hillary should be allowed to skate on the many crimes she is alleged to have committed is nonsense. We are a nation of laws and not of men. Laws are what must matter; nobody is above them, too big to fail. Hillary may well have run for President solely to keep herself and her husband out of jail, I might add. Now, James Comey of the F.B.I. has twice "exonerated" Hillary after railing against her - and ignoring the law in the process by setting prosecutorial standards over and above any set by the law itself. Comey, after his boss met with former President Clinton, claimed there was no criminal intent and so would not refer the matter to the DOJ, despite the fact that intent is not necessary to be in violation of the applicable laws. And even an idiot would understand that Hillary had a private server - and had it professionally wiped after it was under subpoena - as a way to circumvent Freedom of Information laws. If Comey thinks there is no intent the man has no business running a snow cone stand.

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If Comey thinks there is no intent the man has no business running a snow cone stand

This whole affair made it clear that the system of justice is corrupted in the Obama Administration. It is the duty of Mr. Trump to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate this affair, and he should not just investigate Hillary, but Comey, Loretta Lynch, and ultimately Barack Obama, who was in communication with Hillary on her private e-mail and so knew she was breaking the law. It's not vengeance or political in any way; it's about the rule of law. The Clintons have always employed their corollary of Joseph Goebbels "The Big Lie". They don't just commit one crime, but commit multiple crimes, each entangled with the other to create a Gordian Knot. The result is a web of corruption so entangled that nobody can adequately unravel it, or if someone does they can never hope to explain it to a jury much less the general public. Complexity is the solution to the Clinton problem of crime. This only works because the Clinton family has so many political connections that they can get cover, and if some weak link in the chain is threatening to break it can be, uh, silenced in any number of ways. Monica Lewinsky, for instance, was given a job and hustled out of town to keep her from testifying at a critical moment. There are other, harder methods, too. At any rate, the Clintons have been engaged in criminality for decades; Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, Chinagate, pardongate, stealing the White House furniture, perjury and obstruction of justice in the Paula Jones case and about Monica Lewinski, the Clinton Foundation, stealing the money meant for Haitian relief, e-mailgate, Benghazi, Hillary stealing furniture from the State Department when she left, selling access to foreign governments, etc. Always political influence has closed down any investigation. Which was no small part of the election of Donald Trump, who promised to put Hillary in jail. Justice, in other words, was to finally be had. A great many Trump voters supported him for little more than a thirst for such justice. Yet many in the Republican Party are now calling on Trump to simply let it go. LET IT GO!

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Medved has it exactly backwards

I was listening to the Michael Medved Show and he was calling on Trump to do precisely that; he said we have a history in America of not criminalizing politics and that in the interest of uniting the country Trump should let it go. Now, Medved has been a NeverTrumper and so should be taken with a grain of salt but this is astonishingly myopic on any level. This is not "criminalizing politics" but rather depoliticizing crime. Medved has it exactly backwards. And to break this campaign promise immediately after winning the election would say that we are going to "business as usual" - the very thing that led to the election of Donald J. Trump in the first place. Half of the country is sick to death of business as usual and we do not want to be united by another surrender by our side. The only way you can unite with liberal Americans is by agreeing with them; they cannot be appeased any other way. They intend to try to deligitimize Trump, and we should have learned the lesson from George W. Bush, who tried to unite the country only to be demogogued as Satan with mangled speech. Trying to unite with the Left is fruitless. I have news for all you conservative intellectuals pushing this nonsense; the Left HATES us. They do not just disagree, but they actually hate us. If a guy wearing a Trump button were to be stuck in quicksand and a liberal were to walk by he would urinate on the drowning man. The Left has always seen this as all-out war. Our side has a terrible blind spot in this regard; we continue to delude ourselves into thinking we just disagree. We don't, and a magnanimous gesture like letting Clinton go only reinforces the opinion that we are corrupt and weak. See, the Democrats will then be able to say we lied about Hillary for purely partisan reasons. We always knew she was innocent, but attacked her because we are sexist bigots who wanted to keep women out of their place in the sun, wanted them in the kitchen barefoot and baking cookies. Letting Hillary go would tell the Nation we are hypocrites. But that is how Bush did things, and how the Establishment likes to proceed. Mustn't make a fuss! Bad form, you know! Meanwhile we prove the claims of the Democrats and media. Both Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie - former prosecutors and potential cabinet members - have demurred on questions of prosecuting Hillary. In fact, Giuliani stated:

One is we try to get over the anger and everything else about an election after it's over and put it behind us,' Giuliani said. 'And I don't like to see America become a country in which we prosecute people about politics,'

Agreed, and Giuliani is correct. Remember what was done to Tom Delay, for example, who was indicted by a Democrat operative posing as a Texas prosecutor solely to get Delay out of a leadership position (The GOP had a rule saying nobody under indictment could hold a leadership position, and in true Saul Alinsky fashion this prosecutor made the GOP live up to its own rules.) But this was a terrible answer by Giuliani, who should have spoken about the Rule of Law and the higher good of prosecuting a criminal, no matter how powerful. Hillary is not too big to fail. Chris Christie took it further. He has actually stated that calls to prosecute Hillary were nothing but campaign rhetoric. And yet many conservatives are arguing for us to "move on". Here is an essay in The Federalist making the case that Trump should pardon Hillary Clinton. If Trump does that he will anger his base, the people who put him in power. And he will come across as not holding the courage of his conviction. So, before the ink has dried on the "Trump Wins!" headlines many of the GOP are calling for retreat. It is even theorized that Trump cut a deal with Hillary's people to get her to concede the election in return for a promise of immunity. And this goes further than simply Hillary.

Mitch McConnell and Senate filibuster rules

Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader and engineer of Italian tanks (all gears go in reverse, as the old joke goes) has announced he will not change the Senate filibuster rules, despite the fact that the Democrats will unquestionably filibuster any Supreme Court nominee put up by Donald Trump. He did this within days of Trump's victory! When George W. Bush struggled to even get a hearing for any of his judicial nominees there were some Republicans who suggested the "nuclear option" which was to change Senate rules so that debate could be limited on judicial consent in the Senate i.e. to stop the use of the filibuster. The Democrats - who at the time were a minority in both chambers of Congress - had been filibustering every judicial nominee sent up by Bush, and some Republicans, frustrated at the endless obstruction of the President's agenda, called for an end to this practice. It was not unprecedented; the lie Congressional Budget Act of 1974 made it impossible to filibuster reconciliation bills, for instance. The rules are just that - rules. The Senate adopts them, and the Senate can change them. But the filibuster is an old rule and one most Senators were reluctant to amend. The GOP refused to invoke the "nuclear Option" when the Democrats were employing the filibuster on Bush's court nominees because;

They feared reprisal when they were in the minority

The Senate has always prized "comity", that cool, gentlemanly agreeability that differentiates the Senate from the more contentious House of Representatives.

But the Democrats have no such reservations. When the GOP was filibustering Barack Obama's choices they summarily changed the rules, forcing an up or down vote. They left the filibuster in place for Supreme Court nominees, knowing full well they could change them when the time came.

Being a Democrat means never having to say you are sorry. The media will cover for you

Being a Democrat means never having to say you are sorry. The media will cover for you. At any rate Obama got to stuff the courts with his choices. Liberal judges now control 70% of appellate courts with Obama appointed one third of the 179 sitting judges. Obama has also appointed 268 lower court judges - seven more than George W. Bush. Senate Republicans never punished the Democrats for this act. Now Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is stating he will let the Democrats filibuster Trump SCOTUS nominees. According to The Washington Examiner:

"When Democrats ran the Senate, they changed the rules to allow for simple majority votes for judicial nominees, but not Supreme Court nominees, which can still be filibustered. But despite speculation that Republicans will take this next step, McConnell indicated some resistance to it when asked. He (Mitch McConnell) said "overreaching after an election, generally speaking, is a mistake." And when pressed on McConnell's approach to working with Democrats in the new Senate, McConnell said the way the chamber is structured requires "some Democratic participation and cooperation."

Politics and war have much in common, and one does not allow the enemy to strike as he chooses without reprisal. Harry Reid and his cronies stole something from the GOP minority - and they let him do it. Now that the tables are turned they should be punished for that act, so that equilibrium is restored. If your neighbor steals your lawn mower out of your garage and you see it in his do you not take it back? Only the cowardly fools of the GOP would sigh and shrug their shoulders. McConnell and company need a retaliatory act to make it clear that the next time Democrats try something like this they will be punished. Rules only work if both sides play by them. If the concept of retaliation is too antagonistic to the GOP, they should at least view it through the prism of child rearing, where rules are set and consequences follow for breaking them. A child who refuses to eat his broccoli doesn't get ice cream after dinner. Well, the Democrats don't get to block appointments to the Supreme Court if they won't let the GOP block appointments to lesser courts when THEY are in power. Turnabout is fair play. But the GOP has never understood this, and indeed is not really interested in victory so much as in going along to get along. McConnell also wants to push through TPP and confirm Obama's SCOTUS pick in a lame duck session. Meanwhile, Paul Ryan, the Pee Wee Herman of electoral politics, toyed with the idea of passing both Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership deal and amnesty for illegal aliens. Love him or hate him, Donald Trump redefined the Republican Party, and gave the GOP the map to electoral success. Unlike the Establishment which has ignored the blue collar vote in favor of the Thurston Howell III wing, Trump cared about what matters to the old Reagan Democrats. Reagan won them for the same reason Trump did, and the GOP could have turned the rust belt red long ago had they been less interested in internationalism and oil profits. The people in these states have been waiting for a champion, someone who would fight for their interests and not just corporate profits. Trump showed how to do that. Until the Republican Party figures out that the RINO/Establishment wing is utterly despised by much of Middle America and that a political party must keep its word they will, like the dog in Proverbs, keep returning to the luke-warm vomit that made it sick in the first place.