Battling the Dems’ Revenge Tour

The temper-tantrum is a call for attention

This is being sold as an unprecedented assault. It isn't. It is nothing more than a temper-tantrum because they hate Trump, conservatism, MAGA, the Constitution, and a businessman’s approach to streamlining government and handling our enemies with a firm hand.

For leftism, what is coming in January is a perfectly ordinary exercise of what they believe to be a perfectly real power, mounted by people who have convinced themselves that volume is the same thing as legitimacy. If the squeaky wheel gets the grease, then a massive cacophony must get much much more--or so they believe. The temper-tantrum is a call for attention, and what they believe to be a revolutionary strategy to seize power and never let something like Trump ever happen again. 

They think the voters are stupid, negative attention is just as good as fair practices, and that they can finally deliver the death-blow to anyone who might stand in their way politically. The Republican response needs to start from the understanding that, despite constitutionality or a lack thereof, the “oversight powers of Congress” exist in our modern system, so we will have to go through the whole thing and let them have their committees and their goon-squad meetings and their accusations and their subpoenas. 

Unfortunately, the loudest voices inside the GOP are already getting it wrong, either treating use of “oversight” as a coup that can’t be stopped, or they are shrugging it off as theater that will pass in the night.

The Constitution does not contain a general grant of inquisitorial authority. Article I's powers are enumerated; the investigative power is implied, and implied only as an auxiliary to legislating. That is the whole architecture. Congress believes it may inquire because it must legislate, and it may compel because inquiry without compulsion is a suggestion. But the compulsion is derivative. Madison warned in Federalist 48 that "parchment barriers" collapse when one department is permitted to "exercise powers properly belonging to another," and Kilbourn v. Thompson said so in 1881 when the House tried to adjudicate a private bankruptcy: Congress had wandered out of its own department and into the judiciary's.

A tyrannical legislature may be even more dangerous than a president 

Garcia's retort, that Congress's authority "comes from Article I of the Constitution, not from the permission of the White House," is a slogan dressed as an argument. Their powers need to be expressly enumerated in Article I, which is the constitutional limit. A subpoena issued to harrow a man rather than to inform a statute is an unconstitutional use of Article I against Article I.

Not that I am a fan of the courts, but sometimes they get it right. And on this topic, there is a relevant line of cases that runs unbroken from the founding to the present. McGrain v. Daugherty required a "legitimate legislative purpose." Watkins v. United States held the power "is not unlimited" and warned against treating the committee room as an end in itself. Quinn protected the witness against being made to guess. Trump v. Mazars gave the courts a four-factor test before Congress may pry into a President's papers, precisely because the separation of powers does not survive a majority party with a free hand.

During the Constitutional Convention a running argument against the dangers of a tyrannical legislature dominated many of the debates. They had seen it pop up its tyrannical head during the American Revolution when the Continental Congress and state legislatures attempted to micromanage General George Washington’s duties as Commander in Chief, and nearly lost the war as a result in 1777. 

They learned their lesson, backed off, and let Washington tend to his duties without interference. While you don’t want a “king,” I get that, you don’t want the opposite extreme either. In fact, a tyrannical legislature may be even more dangerous than a president who may believe he has kingly powers. Or, as a friend of mine likes to say, “For God so loved the world, He didn’t send a committee.”

"Swing voters think they won cheap gas. The radical base thinks they won blood"

That all said, we live in a modern America where congressional oversight has become one of the tools that Congress uses, regardless of its constitutionality. I am not dismissing it, but as a matter of strategy, the White House's letter from counsel Will Scharf is likely something that would be better as a warning than as a theory. The good part is the standard: compulsory process exists "for oversight functions, and only for oversight functions." 

The overreach is the flourish that abusive subpoenas may "cross the line into blatant criminality." Nobody can quite name the alleged crimes, but as Joseph Stalin is famously attributed to saying, the Democrats’ attitude is, “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.” The last time I looked, Congress has no power to stage criminal investigations and follow up with convictions. They are not a Court of Law in the sense that the judiciary is supposed to be. And, the last time I checked, we have things like a right to due process, and innocence until proven guilty.

The key to the firestorm on the horizon is to manage the whole fight on the battlefield that has already been surveyed. Do not refuse process. That is how Bannon and Navarro ended up in federal prison (despite, again, the technically unconstitutional face of it). Negotiate scope, produce the tedious material, assert deliberative-process and presidential-communications privilege over the rest, and force the contested demands into Article III, where the executive has won before and where the clock is on its side. Every month in litigation is a month not spent on a hearing.

Meanwhile, the political case writes itself. The Democrats promised cheaper gas, even though their record reveals that they want expensive gas and us driving electric cars or taking the bus. Jesse Watters commented, "Swing voters think they won cheap gas. The radical base thinks they won blood. Somebody is going to get let down, and one side isn't going to take it lightly."

Look at the propositions around the country. Even in blue states, conservative ideas won

That is the fault line. Their majority was assembled from people who believed the affordability crisis deception and wanted cheaper groceries and people who wanted scalps. The scalps come first, because that part of the base is louder and the freshmen are fresh. Every week of Epstein and Nvidia espionage is a week not spent on the cost of living, and the cost of living was the only thing they ever actually ran on--and from the voters’ perspective, “it’s the economy, stupid.” Not, “how many trees in the GOP forest can we cut down.”

Greg Gutfeld supplied a relatively intelligent counter-agenda. The reality is, under Trump and the Republicans (despite their inaction in the Senate), the border is secure, we are seeing historic lows in crime, there is observable wage growth, greater energy production, massive deregulation (an elimination of five regulations for every one created), fentanyl interdiction, and the Trump accounts. His question deserves to be carved over the Oversight Committee door: "The point, if the point is obstruction, is what are you obstructing?" And his conclusion is the only one that matters for 2028: our incumbents were voted out, but our ideas were kept in. Look at the propositions around the country. Even in blue states, conservative ideas won.

The biggest tool is the one the left is refusing to discuss. They have fifty-four seats, maybe fifty-six, in the Senate. Not sixty. Every structural ambition they have, statehood for the District of Columbia, a packed Court, a federalized election code, and abolition of the Electoral College dies at the cloture vote unless they first destroy the Senate's own rules.

A Congress can compel a man to appear. It cannot compel the country to care

They will try. The Republican task in the Senate is not to win arguments; it is to hold sixty, and to make the price of losing it visible.

Two years is a long time to hold a hearing. It is a very short time to build a country. Republicans had the chance to do some very good things, like pass the SAVE America Act, and rather than getting the work done they spent the last two years arguing and failing the country. Therefore, unless it was some kind of shenanigans-loaded election (which I consider a possibility, as well), the voters reacted by saying, “You didn’t do your job, so the other guys get control until you learn to legislate.” The response will be brutal, because the Democrats, filled with vitriol are too stupid to see it for what it was. They believe the election was an excuse to begin a massacre. It will likely backfire, but the next two years will prove to be a rocky road.

That said, I am not one to panic. Let them print their forests. Answer the subpoenas, keep the deadlines, litigate the scope, and put the receipts of two years of governance on the table beside the hearing transcripts. A Congress can compel a man to appear. It cannot compel the country to care. That is done by results, and results are the one thing on the docket that the party out of power cannot subpoena.

Don’t panic, and remember the warmth of liberty, the Constitution, and the fact that as the Democrats are trying to set fire to the country and their enemies, they are also setting fire to their chances for any kind of victory in 2028.