I hope I live long enough to see the day when we again have a Democratic administration and a Republican Congress. It will be quite the spectacle when the Republicans try to conduct oversight. For example, if they have concerns about how the president’s office is handling security clearances, they can’t expect to be told that their inquiries are jeopardizing the privacy of millions of innocent Americans.
President Trump’s top spokesperson on Tuesday called House Democrats’ efforts to investigate the White House’s security clearance process “dangerous” and “shameful,” saying it could put millions of people’s personal data at risk.
“What the Democrats are doing is playing a very dangerous and a shameful game, frankly,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters. “They’re putting the 3 million people that do have a security clearance at risk. If you [pull] one individual, you’re putting all 3 million people’s personal information at risk.”
Sanders did not explain how the Democrats’ investigation would potentially jeopardize the broad swath of government employees and contractors’ data.
If they want cabinet members to testify, they’ll be told that they can’t discuss anything because of executive privilege. If the president obstructs justice, the attorney general will just declare that it’s impossible for a president to obstruct justice. If the president has engaged in rampant criminality ranging from every kind of fraud to self-dealing to sexual assault, they’ll be told to take it to the ballot box.
The Republicans are putting all their eggs in Donald Trump’s basket. But he won’t be in the Oval Office forever. Once he’s gone, they’ll begin to understand how many of those eggs they’ve broken.
And that’s just on the oversight question. God forbid they should criticize a Democrat for impeding free trade or cozying up to dictators or being a bad ally to our friends.
I know the Republicans will try to turn on a dime and pretend none of this ever happened. They did that with George W. Bush. But that was more like breakfast-for-one. With this many broken eggs, the post-Trump revisionism will be like a banquet buffet of hypocrisy.
Booman, come on. Rules only matter for Democrats. They will acknowledge nothing and willfully forget and misconstrue everything they did to enable Trump.
There are few sure things in life, but Republican hypocrisy is as close as you will get.
Can I get an Amen!
I guess the question I have is, will the Democrats continue to play by the standard rule book which had been generally observed by both parties throughout our history, or will they decide that Republicans were the ones who let this genie out of the bottle and threw the book out the window, and simply thumb their noses at the GOP and tell them to go fuck off, in the same way the GOP has done to Democrats when the roles have been reversed?
Because Democrats, in general, seem to care more that our historic precedents and processes are followed, my bet is that they will continue to play by a completely different set of rules, which will hamstring them in a wide variety of ways in which Republicans have not, and will likely never again, be constrained.
In addition, we all know that when there is a Democratic President and Republican Congress, the media will dutifully put away their stenographer hats they have worn while enabling the worst of the Republican transgressions against our democracy since GWB was handed the 2000 election, and suddenly decide that they MUST, once again, be the gatekeepers of “truth”.
One part of me wants Democrats to give Republicans a taste of their own medicine, but I have serious doubts that will ever happen. And I am torn as to whether or not that would be a good thing, anyway. Trying to even imagine someone like Elijah Cummings pulling a Devin Nunes just gives my brain a charlie horse. But damn, I want so badly to poke a thumb in the eye of every one of those duplicitous motherf@#$ers!!!
I agree.
But what about The Presidency? Trump has eviscerated the norms, procedures, and processes that have built up over many year. The next democrat presidency is going to have to rebuild that……if they choose to. That tit for tat you discuss is all in good fun, but every democratic candidate has to be asked `who will you hire in your administration to restore what was?’
Fortunately we have the Obama people to step up. But I fear if Trump wins again nobody will even remember what the Chief of Staff actually is supposed to do.
The next POTUS will have a choice……return to traditions and standards that actually restrain the Presidency, or accept Trump standards as the new normal.
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I think it’s simpler than that. As described by Booman in this post, the Republicans are simply full of shit. The Democrats know that, the majority of the country knows it, every day more and more people are starting to get it — and the Democrats are (to judge, for example, by Nadler and Schiff) actually saying it — in somewhat more eloquent language of course.
This is a time when ETHOS is coming to the fore in American political rhetoric. The Democrats have it;
Sure, the Republicans think they have it … but most Americans see through the con. It’s getting to be kind of like this.
If you think I’m being too optimistic about the American public, consider this: the momentous event of the ending of the Mueller investigation and the “complete exoneration — NOT” of the resident have resulted in no favorability bump for Trump.
You could well be correct. The majority of the country might know it, and see through the con. But if they don’t show up to vote, it won’t mean shit. As for the Democrats, they are often their own worst enemies, with this seemingly innate capacity to form circular firing squads, often up to the very point where they are on the cusp of claiming a victory.
I really do want to have confidence that enough people care about what is happening to actually step off the sidelines and put some small amount of skin in the game this time around, because it is going to take at least that, and probably more, to give us even a fighting chance to right the ship. Trump has already destroyed so much of the infrastructure of our political norms and processes that I probably won’t live long enough to see us get back at least to the point we were prior to enough of the country losing its collective mind to put this nut case in the White House.
I confess that I am at a point where I am just weary, beaten down, and frankly, a little bit scared. These daily doses of insanity are taking their toll on my perspective. I know, however, that there is no choice but to continue to fight. I have tried to give myself a little mental “time out”, but the fact is, if one is simply conscious and aware, there is just no escaping the insanity all around us.
In this case (meaning the response to filing of the Mueller report) I hold the media largely responsible. I am sure they understood the con, but it was as if they felt they had to follow the convention of playing along at least for a few days in order to string out the story. So they hyped what a “victory” this was for Trump, when it really wasn’t worth a bucket of warm spit, as was apparent within a few days. And I don’t think the major media have caught up with events yet, although there have been a few good reports.
It does wear you down (it’s designed to). but I was very bucked up by Adam Schiff’s response. I thought it was magnificent, not only for the spirit, but also for the actual content. It made you realize, he’s right, the Republicans ARE totally full of crap. Totally.
Democrats can’t even muster up the ability to use an enforceable statute on the books to get Trump’s tax returns, something they promised they would do if granted power — a popular campaign promise. Yet we are are to believe that they’re going to start trampling on norms in tit-for-tat fashion? It’s not going to happen. Too many old people still run the party and they’re attached to their precious norms.
What’s the hurry? The closer to the election, the better.
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That’s not the strategy.
The ONLY thing that will dissuade some GOP voters is an economic downturn that hits them HARD. Otherwise, they will ignore reality itself and rationalize ANYTHING, because they enjoys being part of a belligerent cult.
The belligerence is the appeal, and the people who manipulate and control these suckers know it.
While Trump was out screwing Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels, Melania was at home with Trump’s infant son. Maybe his voters really are deplorables.
Maybe loss of medical insurance will be a tipping point.
I still don’t understand why so many (or so we hear) voted for Obama and then switched to Trump. If we knew the answer to that, it ought to help us craft a message and approach that would bring them back to supporting a Democratic candidate.
Otherwise, the best we can hope for is that they don’t vote for president.
I think its just pique. People are impulsive. More than analysts would like to admit. And charisma plays a big role in determining how they vote.
The GOP won’t have to clean up Trump’s mess. It will all go down the memory hole because Democrats are incompetent when it comes to messages and the media won’t raise it on their own. If a few reporters try, they’ll be beaten down or ignored.
The only thing that can fix this — other than the Democratic party and/or the media growing some balls — is a maturation of the American people to the point where the wool can’t so easily be pulled down over the eyes of so many. I don’t know when or if that will happen. The young seem a lot smarter and more informed than their elders but the future is hard to predict.
“the post-Trump revisionism will be like a banquet buffet of hypocrisy”
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There’s a good one.
Well, it’s not just Der Trumper’s mess, Repubs never clean up the mess made by ANY “conservative” prez, from to St. Reagan to Bushco/Cheney to Der Trumper. Of course, in almost every case a huge part of the appalling mess was caused by a Repub Congress itself. And it would be beyond Repub competence to clean a mess up even if they were not simply the Party of Bad Faith.
At this point in the failed 21st Century, the messes have piled up so high and the US government has been wrecked to such a degree that it’s likely wishful thinking to imagine that any amount of effort could clean things up, from taxation policy to the environment. It looks like the scientists are basically watching the deathbed of the Thwaites glacier of Antarctica and its collapse will set the climate calamity into motion. Today’s Good Thought!
Also not factored into the equation is the supremely dishonest corporate media and press, which simply would decry any attempt by a future Dem prez to pull what Der Trumper is now pulling, while parroting the obligatory and hypocritical Repub “outrage” at the highest volume. Hell, the Woodward and Bernsteins of today are perfectly content to watch from the sidelines as Whitewasher Barr suppresses the entire Mueller report, for God’s sake. Can one imagine what the teevee hue and cry would look like if this were being tried by a Dem prez? it would make the press attacks on Clinton look like reporting on a high school student council.