The Bull has been gored and The Party is bellowing, which it does through denial, obfuscation, nitpicking, and ridicule — and for what it does to defend its Reality-Defying / Reality-Evading Highness — and does so badly and baldly — it has now made a habit of treating moderate, independently observant, and thinking Republican voters with contempt.
BackChannels’ view: The IG report has been accepted on major observations while “irregularities” have been regarded by Trump’s opposition as minor “nits”. Nonetheless, the GOP’s bull has been gored, and The Party has been bellowing about what it may deny but cannot change.
I’ll go further here: The Republicans, who for fear of The Donald may well be referred to as “The Party (Sycophantic)” — they have earned that much — appear to have become the Party of Power (Now Matter What — and Absolute) while the Democrats have soldiered on to become the Party of the American People (Empathizing, Listening, Watching, Reasoning, Judging).
Notwithstanding the justified concern over aspects of the FBI’s use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to investigate onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, make no mistake: The dual headlines of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report are: 1) the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia was adequately “predicated,” i.e., had a lawful factual basis, and 2) no agent acted out of animus toward President Trump or his campaign.
Those two findings should put to rest persistent allegations from Trump and his champions that the bureau’s scrutiny of the contacts with Russia was illegal or, worse, a plot of the “deep state” to derail his candidacy. And whatever valid beefs Page may have with the investigation, they have nothing to do with Trump.
Litman, Harry. “Barr allegedly wanted to avoid public confusion. But he caused more.” The Washington Post, December 13, 2019.
The grammar-school-civics-class version of our Revolution is that it was a rebellion against monarchical tyranny, and that in framing our Constitution, one of the preoccupations, the main preoccupation of the Founders, was to keep the executive weak,” Barr told the audience. “This is misguided.” Instead, Barr advocates for what is known as the “unitary executive theory,” which challenges the long-established doctrine that the president’s control over his branch of government is shared, to some degree, with Congress and the courts. “Whenever I see a court opinion that uses the word share,” Barr said, “I want to run in the other direction.” Critics say that in its maximalist form, the theory is a license for authoritarianism — a concern that Barr dismissed with ridicule.
Rice, Andrew. “Trump’s Other Lawyer: Much more powerful than Giuliani, William Barr is exercising the Justice Department’s full force to defend a president in crisis.” Intelligencer, New York Magazine, December 5, 2019.
If the observations were less than cogent, frank, honest, and prescient, I’d have to make them myself.
🙂
The Bull has been gored and The Party is bellowing, which it does through denial, obfuscation, nitpicking, and ridicule — and for what it does to defend its Reality-Defying / Reality-Evading Highness — and does so badly and baldly — it has now made a habit of treating moderate, independently observant, and thinking Republican voters with contempt.
Related Online
Hofstadter, Richard. “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” Harper’s Magazine, November 1964.
Moscow’s GOP?
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