Actually @FaithAlone and I were discussing last night how Trump’s 2016 fervor was largely fueled by the death of Scalia. It would be foolish for Trump to push a quick appointment, but it would be genius to allow his nominee to be a second running mate.
P.s.
A quick nomination and appointment would just push the moderate leftists in this country more militant. As it stands a contested election will go before a Supreme Court that no longer has RBG.
Nope. Mitch McConnell knows why his base turns out to vote for Republican senators. It’s because of judges. He knows if he doesn’t deliver, he’s certainly losing the Senate.
It’s pedal to the metal. This is what you have to do to fight a culture war, and Trump is willing to do it.
Were leftists concerned about precedent, decorum and the rule of law when they pushed through gay mirage and abortion on demand by Court decree? No. Those who live by the sword die by the sword.
But that doesn’t address the risk of stirring up the voters on the left to get Biden elected the same way that Trump was and losing the critical need to vote on the right because the judge is already appointed.
It’s an interesting idea.
Arguments can be made both ways, but I tend to think we should proceed because it’s straightforward and no abuse of process.
I do not think Republican turnout will be depressed by a quick appointment, though logistically I don’t think it’s possible to get a new justice through the process before the election. It can be done before January 3.
Trump needs a win to galvanize his base. His first two Supreme Court appointments were lousy. It is not clear either man, Gorsuch or Kavanaugh, will reverse Roe vs. Wade. Trump needs to nominate an actual conservative with pro life credentials this time.
The conservative legal movement has largely been a failure. I would not be so sure that President Trump’s other Federalist Society approved judges are as good as advertised.
But you know it will be called a lame duck appointment. Plus if the election is contested, no doubt the nominee turned justice would be expected to recuse from the case. I think for the appearance of process propriety as well as political advantage, Trump would do best to make a super-star nomination to be passed if the people want it. This would motivate more voters than depress them. This way it will also stand as a true public judgement on the Democratic Party.
I’m not saying there is an actual abuse of process, but considering all the solemn statements made in 2016, regarding appointing Garland, a quick appointment will make many of the Republican Senators liars. Cruz, Cornyn, Graham, I’m sure others as well. All showing themselves to be shameless liars. I think that’s something to mourn.
You can find similar dishonesty with McConnell and Cruz.
If we elected or didn’t elect on the basis of who is the shameless liar we wouldn’t vote for anyone.
Agreed. I didn’t say anything about not voting for a candidate simply because they have been dishonest in the service of political power.
And I think we should show a measure of grace toward those caught in the grip of the temptation for political power. I’m not sure how much better I would do than any of these candidates, placed in the same temptation. But grace doesn’t mean condoning lies and deceit. Conflating the two is part of the moral confusion I am concerned about.
We won the Cold War, so how come it feels like we lost?
I hadn’t considered Carter–he’s apparently forgettable in lots of ways. Trump may join Carter and Truman, then.
Clinton left the White House in major hock over his legal bills, not to mention disbarred for perjury either shortly before or shortly after he left the White House. But he’s a jet-setting multi-millionaire now. How? Again, nobody even bothers to explain:
Yeah, fair enough, I don’t have a way of proving my assertion. Trump has been a blowhard shyster about his tax returns and his finances generally for decades. But what’s his angle on the presidency? Is he going to peddle influence like the Clintons? What influence? He’ll be lucky if he isn’t in prison. Is he supposed to get richer from Qataris or Emiratis staying in Trump hotels while he’s President? Every Emirati on planet Earth could spend two weeks per annum in a Trump hotel from now until the day he dies and it won’t make up for the damage that Trump has done to his brand by the sole step of standing up for forgotten Americans against institutional Washington. Who, other than right/populist organizations will ever want to throw a conference in a Trump-branded property ever again? The Trump organization may still exist in some form come, say, 2035, but mark my words, there won’t be a property worldwide that still has his name on it by then.
Commuting a sentence is the sole discretion of the President, subject to no checks or balances. This is a power brought to the Presidency by the Founders from the English monarch’s power to commute sentences and grant royal pardons. One could argue that trading pardons for cash is corruption, but that would implicate President Clinton (l’affaire Marc Rich) rather than President Trump as far as we know. Stone’s case was, in my opinion, a gross miscarriage of justice, and Trump’s commutation of his sentence (not pardon) was an entirely appropriate and measured response to such prosecutorial misconduct.
I’d like to point out that Clapper and Brennan both told bald-faced lies to Congress in front of God and everyone, and unlike Roger Stone, don’t have to walk around for the rest of their lives as convicted felons.
Trump’s problems with staffing are manifest and I grant the point. I will see your Manafort, Bannon and Cohen and raise you Tony Podesta–Manafort’s business partner on the job he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison for–plus President Clinton and Sid Blumenthal.
Michael Flynn’s case has been a gross abuse of power from both the DOJ and now the Judicial Branch. You are aware that Washington DC is in the midst of a crime wave of unregistered foreign lobbyists, right? Why is it that Flynn gets singled out for a perjury trap and not, say, any of the legion of ex-Congressmen who take money from foreign governments in order to influence the operations of the American government? Perhaps it’s a coincidence? Bad luck?
When Trump buys his Martha’s Vineyard Mansion 2 years out of the White House, I’ll eat my words on this one, Martin.
If President Trump isn’t allowed to look into the Bidens’ corruption, then who is? Should we wait for Joe Biden to call the Ukraine and ask why he himself asked for the Ukrainian government to fire the prosecutor who was looking into his son’s appointment to the Burisma’s board? No doubt the Buttigieg administration will give us a straight answer about this, or the Romney administration will get to the bottom of it all.
And incidentally, if you can point me to the job board where such sinecures get posted, I’d be much obliged. Like Hunter Biden, I know nothing about oil and gas and speak no Eastern European languages. But I’m sure it’s all above-board because Joe Biden said so and because career DOJ prosecutors aren’t looking into it. They must be busy dealing with the hard-hitting problems facing Americans today like Trump administration officials misremembering phone calls.
We can all see with our own two eyes that Washington DC is full of the sorts of corruption you outline here. The Clintons are somewhat more open about it than others, but you can’t tell me that men like Romney and Karl Rove and Paul Ryan couldn’t be rung up on charges like lying to the FBI, accepting money from foreign governments or profiting unduly from “nonprofit” organizations. Yet somehow the only people who get prosecuted for things like this are people who work for Donald J. Trump. “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”
And please, let’s not let this pass without noting that the FBI and the DOJ worked to bring down a duly elected President on completely false charges. Let me repeat that: The charges that the FBI, the CIA, the DOJ and all of institutional Washington tried to use to bring down Trump were an act of complete fiction. It’s been obvious that there was a seditious plot against President Trump from inside the US Government for three years now. So far? A few firings, one guilty plea. If Biden wins in November, no more of these malefactors will be punished, and like Lon Horiuchi, another FBI malefactor from a different time, they will walk free for the rest of their natural lives. If we talk of corruption, then let us start with the very men whose motto is “Fidelity Bravery Integrity.”
It doesn’t just “empower a man like President Trump,” Martin, it changes the very rules of the game. When one team is boxing according to the rules of the Marquess of Queensbury and the other team is fighting MMA-style, who is going to win? And at what point does the man with the boxing gloves on stop harrumphing and start actually fighting according to what’s happening right in front of him? When one team is maneuvering in the halls of the Senate and the other is firing on Fort Sumpter, at what point should the maneuvers move to the field where the action is?
A higher price than donating thousands of America’s finest boys to pointless wars? A higher price than shipping American factories to China and condemning thousands of American men and women to suicides and opioid deaths? A higher price than watching abortion clinics and casinos operate while churches are shuttered? A higher price than having to acknowledge “preferred pronouns” at the cost of our very livelihoods? A higher price than having to stand for our public schools teaching atheistic materialism? A higher price than watching criminals and anarchists burn down American cities?
I wish President Trump were other than he is. If I were his pastor, I would have words for him. But fighting is ugly and dirty, and the men who do it tend also to be ugly and dirty. President Lincoln said of Ulysses S. Grant, a man of great and manifest moral failings, “I can’t spare this man, he fights.”
Perhaps this question best boils down to, “What standard should we hold President Trump to?” He is certainly crasser and certainly coarser than other recent Presidential candidates. Otherwise, applying equal weights and measures to him and other recent major-party nominees, I have a hard time condemning him.
Thank you for taking to time to say all that I just didn’t have the patience to spell out. Excellent post.
So on the one hand, you assert without evidence that Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney are profiting from their office. On the other hand, you have no idea how in the world President Trump could turn the highest office in the world for a profit. I am quite sure the President is much more full of ideas as to how to turn his position to profit than you are.
Trump’s finances are opaque enough that we would have little idea of how his wealth has been effected by his tenure.
“One could argue…”!!! Yes, one certainly could. I did not say that his pardon was illegal. I said it was corrupt. And when you compare it to the actions Clinton, in many ways the gold standard of corruption, it makes my point. We’ve come quite a long way from “what open corruption?” But yes, I get that since Roger “imma gonna kill your dog” Stone is on “our team”, you’d like him to get the same perks of our corrupt system as the other team gets. But please spare me the tears for a dirty trickster who was long overdue his comeuppance.
And yes, I realize the Senate was far too busy investigating Clinton in 2015, to take break and investigate all of Biden’s corruptions going on in Ukraine. Do I think everything was on the up and up? Probably not. But Hunter’s place on the board of a gas company is hardly a national crisis, and the nepotistic Trump family are the last people on earth with any standing to criticize that. [edited to remove comments about Biden and US policy. It’s beside the point, and I have no need to defend Biden, a man I will never vote for regardless]
Essentially I disagree with all of your assessments of the arrests and investigations, but I doubt I could marshal enough links to make convincing argument to you.
I have no problem condemning him on the basis of other major party candidates. I won’t belabor all the moral filth his life has consisted of. And again, I am not attacking people’s decision to vote for him. However, when that vote brings us to embrace the sort of moral reasoning I see running rampant, where things we once cried out as disqualifying are now treated s as no big deal, we have a problem. However we vote we must not allow our vote to cloud our convictions.
The price will be far higher than all the tragedies you listed. “What does it profit, if he gain the whole world?”
No doubt. Time will tell. But if Donald Trump, in 2015, was looking around for ways to become rich, “become the political avatar for the white working class” was a dumber plan than “start smoking meth.” Perhaps he’ll be more successful at this than I give him credit for: No one has gotten rich lately betting against Trump.
Official Washington never had any serious problems with the Clintons’ corruption. There was some harrumphing and a failed impeachment and a phoney-baloney FBI investigation cum coverup of Mrs. Clinton’s emails. When do they get theirs? Who will give it to them? Why does “not as bad as the Clintons” become a poor defense of a politician when the Clintons have clearly established the boundaries of the actual law?
And what did Trump get for commuting Stone’s sentence (not pardoning!), other than a bunch of bad press? If anything, Trump has been far, far too tolerant of the DOJ prosecuting people for the apparent crime of working to get Donald Trump elected. This is an outrage and a scandal. Manafort deserves a commutation and Flynn deserves a full pardon. Papadopolous deserves a full pardon also.
(For the record, I would repeal the law against lying to federal agents. It’s nonsense. But if we are going to have the law, then we should apply it equally or not at all.)
Paul Manafort has been kicking around Washington for decades. St. Ronald’s campaign manager, in fact. Apparently nobody noticed he was into dirty tricks until about 2016. Something happened in 2016, but I can’t quite remember what it was.
What Roger Stone got was certainly comeuppance. It was absolutely not justice. Having a CNN crew cover the man’s dark-of-morning guns-drawn arrest for a process crime is revolting prosecutorial misconduct. Again I ask, where is official Washington’s sanction against Mueller’s attack dogs who carried out this injustice? Quis custodet ipsos custodes?
I have one representative in Washington DC, and it’s very clear that federal law enforcement applies a different standard to him and the people who work for him than it does to anyone else in Washington.
Maybe part of the reason that President Trump has had so much trouble staffing his administration is because people don’t want to wind up in prison for the rest of their lives. Who could blame them?
If we want to apply one standard of measure to all parties, then I’m very open to that. Let’s send them all to prison. Harvey Silverglate contends that the average American commits three felonies per day. Let’s have the FBI set perjury traps for every candidate’s campaign team and incoming cabinet members. That’d be a hoot. It’d probably get a few laws changed too, which would be very salutary. But let’s not have one standard for the Trump campaign and another standard for literally everyone else. (Well, they’d probably screw Bernie too, but I doubt he’ll ever get the chance at this point.)
You are correct that you will not convince me that entrapping an incoming National Security Adviser in a process crime as a way to lash out against American voters was a correct course of action. A sane country would have found a long gallows for the federal agents who perpetrated the seditious Russia hoax on this nation. Instead they get TV contracts and book deals.
If it is your contention that our system is so corrupt that it only produces men unworthy of our votes, that’s not a position I agree with, but it’s one I respect. (I expect I’ll take up that position after Trump leaves Washington. If no one does hard time for the seditious Russiagate conspiracy, I doubt I’ll ever cast a vote in a presidential election again.) But if your position is that Donald Trump is uniquely awful, among the crowd of hucksters, liars and grifters who have made up major-party candidates over the last 30 or so years, well, I’m not swallowing it.
There are certainly those who have become morally compromised by Trump’s sins. Someone referenced it up-thread, and it is a real hazard. But let us not confuse the sidelines for the moral high ground. If a fight is worth fighting, then it’s worth fighting well, and worth winning.
Defending General Flynn gets my blood up. Feel free to take the last word, Martin.
Best,
John
“Be careful, when you fight a dragon, that you do not a dragon become” (Nietzsche). To quote Ben Carmack on this thread, “[Trump] has proven to be the Samson we needed, not the David we thought we deserved”, but Samson’s career as a judge ended in a disaster called Delilah, and so, perhaps, could Trump’s - thus, dragging down with him what he did accomplish.
If I’m not mistaken Judges 16 does not end in verse 27 and thus does not end with Delilah. But no one here is either judge or prophet to know what will or should happen to this president.
I’ve never been a registered Republican or Democrat because neither party has enough overlap with my own views. I also didn’t vote for either Trump or Clinton the first time around and have not settled on who I will vote for this time around, if anyone. The reason I say this is to demonstrate my non-partisan outsider bona fides.
Perhaps many people here are too young to remember the Clinton administration, but I recall a lot of apparent corruption that the mainstream media and government officialdom waved off with a, “Nothing to see here.” I use the word “apparent” because there was hardly ever was any mainstream media or government investigation to genuinely dig out the facts rather than cover them up. One is example is Mrs. Clinton mysteriously making $100,000 in commodities trading when her husband was Governor of Arkansas. Well, that certainly looks like a bribe to me, but no one with the hard or soft power to dig into it ever did so.
More recently, former Secretary Clinton used a private computer for official communications and then “lost” a large number of emails. To mention that a lesser government official would get in big trouble for this sort of thing is missing the point – c’mon, I’m adult here – you expect me to believe that Secretary Clinton did this for any other reason than to exercise power for private purposes with impunity from oversight? And yet the mainstream media and government officialdom treats me like a baby and tells me what I see with my own eyes is not what it looks like.
So when it comes to President Trump, I guess I am suffering corruption fatigue. I am not one of his supporters and thus feel no need to take responsibility for his moral failings, but I also clearly see that he is being held to a different standard than others. The Russia investigation was laughable from the very start seemed like an attempt by Democratic partisans to excuse their own campaigning failures and subvert the outcome of the election. Again, I say this not as a Trump supporter or Republican, but as someone who is able to see with his own eyes.
Agreed.
I’m not nearly as philosophically neutral.
For me the two parties, since I’ve been alive and through many possible exceptions, represent two clearly distinct world views; with the Democrats generally representing the worldview of Marxist rebellion. It is a philosophy of envy disguised as philanthropy, of deconstruction, and ultimately one that necessitates authoritarian rule. These are the omnipotent moral busybodies CS Lewis spoke of. The republicans on the other hand, are selling good ol’ fashioned Americana. God, Liberty, Guns, and fried Chicken. What escapes many Americans is the philosophy that undergirds that American dream, and because it escapes so many, we often get sold a false bill of goods. It looks like Americana but doesn’t end up tasting like it.
The commonalities they shared are largely pragmatic, survival, and even Machiavellian, but not so much philosophically. Both sides have their core beliefs, and both sides frequently sacrifice those beliefs at the alter of survival.
I’m not fooled into thinking that voting party line won’t produce that false bill of goods, but I’m not buying the product the other party is selling whether it is ideological or watered down.
I’ve always voted Republican and have almost always been utterly disappointed. None more than when Trump was nominated. I still wrote in my guy from the Primary as a protest. But, there is something about Trump that I didn’t expect. The man gets things done, fast. In all my years of studying politics, and I have two related degrees, I’ve never seen such rapid productivity from a first term President.
Clinton and Carter were both utter embarrassments to their party for their political failures year after year. No so with Trump. He may be embarrassing to watch on the news, but man does he get things done. And he largely does what he said he was going to do.
So while I have major concerns about the moral fitness of the man, I see a leader who knows how to deliver the product he’s selling. That’s got value. So this season, I’m not gonna cry over the 2016 primary, and I’m sure as heck not gonna buy social deconstruction and self-hatred of the other party. It’s a clear choice.
Those that respect the law and love sausage should watch neither being made. Mark Twain
A history prof in seminary applied this proverb to the formulation of Christian creeds, including the Nicene. Mutatis mutandis it applies just as well to Christians who applaud the Presidential leadership of Donald Trump.
Switching perspectives from folk wisdom to Pauline Dogma, I am constantly amazed at Christians - especially those who are the Church’s ostensible leaders - who constantly flash virtue signals to the Universe by criticizing Trump as unworthy of a Christian’s vote, much less their applause or support. Or who fault other Christians who do support him and applaud him, as if such were spiritual dolts, dimwits, or dunces. Have these Christian leaders never read Romans 13, composed by Paul most likely during the reign of Nero? Do they forget that a Babylonian pagan named Cyrus is extolled in Scripture as a servant of the Lord? Do these virtue signalers fault the Lord of Hosts for elevating The Donald to the Executive Headship of America? What do they think of Him when He raised up Samson?
All their virtue signaling is the purest flummery.
Someone somewhere said something about the King’s heart being like rivers of water in the hands of the Lord. I’ll put my trust in those hands, and not in the waters He happens to turn whichever way He pleases.
After decades of Republican presidents and aspirants to that office sweet-talking gullible evangelicals during election campaigns, only to ignore them after they’ve pocketed their votes, a majority of evangelicals have finally turned away from the pious posturing of such dishonest men (or cowards, whichever they be) to vote for someone who is delivering on his campaign promises. I voted for Trump in earnest hope that he would be for America what Samson was for Israel - a wrecker of the Cosa Nostra between the Philistines and Israel’s elders (or, on the modern scene, between the godless Democrats and those religious snake oil salesmen in the Republican Party). It’s a huge evidence that Trump has turned out to be what I hoped that he has enemies just as numerous and bitter within his own party as he does among the Democrats.
Thank you!
I’m afraid what some of them think boils down to American exceptionalism. Our free democratic process should be above this sort of thing because … America! 