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Tut, Tut, Gov. Desantis: The Cult of the Raised Eyebrow Is Cheesed Off
David French’s rather tiresome shtick of high-minded disapproval of behaviors within the ranks of his (alleged) side gets him kudos from well-placed people, a gig on the NYT, and “respect” from the left. It is the kind of “respect” that made the British tolerate the presence of Benedict Arnold in the UK or the Russians’ provide desultory accommodations for Kim Philby, although admittedly neither of them got an NYT gig.
Yesterday French found DeSantis’ refusal to extradite “dangerous.” The incredibly brazen partisan weaponization of federal law enforcement and of blue-state Soros prosecutors (Bragg in this particular instance) is not the danger, according to Mr. French. It is DeSantis’ refusal to honor this particular abuse of law. That is a remarkably warped perspective. If an armed bank robber leaves his mobile phone behind and the branch manager brazenly refuses to return it as he should, would French do a critical tweet about the branch manager?
David French and his RINO predecessors in Cult of the Raised Eyebrow made Trump a virtual necessity even as they decried his rise. Precisely because they seem to prefer tut-tutting about the people on their side rather than vigorously confronting the hordes massing on the left getting ready to tear it all down. When so many of us feel the need for leader to gird up to fight the real enemy, the sheer fecklessness of the Raised Eyebrow crowd makes Donald Trump’s confrontational stylings that much more appealing and the choice by default despite some rather substantial drawbacks.
The entire sum of Donald Trump’s most intemperate remarks (and, let’s be honest, there is a lot of petty, inaccurate, and gratuitously ugly stuff there) is far less offensive and vastly far less of a threat to the republic than the Steele dossier/Mueller/impeachment conspiracy attempts to cripple an elected president and undo an election. It pales in comparison to the Obama/Biden/Soros partisan weaponization of federal and local law enforcement.
If your indignation and sheer rage against the real abuse is not evident and boiling over in your prose and Twitter feed, then why should anyone care if your panties are in a bunch by some crude tweet or some (allegedly) empty political gesture by Ron DeSantis? To be that disproportionate is to be a ridiculous man.
Team Raised Eyebrow is not built to deal with the modern left. The American left is no longer only about increasing welfare and benefits payments, expanding regulatory scope, raising taxes, or some other agenda that lends itself to debate and compromise. The American left is now expressly about the elimination of the moral, cultural, legal, and historical premises of the United States of America. What is the polite Romneyesque gentlemanly comprise that can avert that? How does looking the other way when the mules stuff the ballot box, the J6 demonstrators get more jail time than Chicago shooters, the entire federal health establishment lies about the science of COVID, the border is deliberately undefended, white children are brow-beaten into racial guilt, black kids are taught to despair because the system is rigged, people lose jobs and/or get harassed for noting that sexual identity is actually linked to biology, and we are force-fed the lie that America was founded solely to promote slavery, how does passivity with a gentlemanly smile effectively oppose much less undo any of that?
I have extensive reservations about the efficacy of a second Trump candidacy but I firmly reject the notion that the answer to the vital issue of the survival of our national political, moral, and legal culture is a Raised Eyebrow at tacky behavior by the wrong sorts of chaps who probably should not be in our party at all, eh wot?
If David French were picking at his usual targets because he knew of another fighter in the wings, someone willing to drain the swamp, jail the crooks, free the energies of the people, restore the republic, and who can get elected with sufficient margins to govern and change and if he were trying to clear the way for that leader, then his approach would be justified. As it is, he is just another self-promoting divisive figure whose net effect is to give aid and comfort to the real enemy. He is a ridiculous man.
Published in General
The French Davidian knows the word “empty” (as in thought and mind) intimately.
But giving the mob false hope is dangerous …
Yo David! Did you ever consider or write about the false hope that the media and democrat leaders (redundant) were giving to their ignorant mobs over many
monthsyears regarding the hoax of a presidential impeachment?!Good post. I didn’t realize that Pastor French still had a public platform. Perfect NPR/NYT style. Tut, tut, indeed!
It says a lot about Pastor French that he’s a “Conservative writer” who can only be hired by the Op-Ed page of the NYT.
But he’s also right…. DeSantis doesn’t really have a role to refuse if Trump doesn’t voluntarily turn himself in. The Constitution (Article IV, Section 2) requires DeSantis to assist if a proper request is made. Same for federal law that sets out that process. I think the balance of DeSantis’ statement is spot on, but do we really want to go down that road where governors can ignore such requests?
In addition, French has written that the indictment shouldn’t happen. In the NY Times he wrote: “No one should face the potential loss of liberty on a case that requires so much acrobatics to make, not even a man as corrupt as Donald Trump.” He also has spent multiple podcasts saying that this is a bad idea and that creative or novel legal theories shouldn’t be used to indict anyone, much less a former president.
False hope that there is going to be some showdown with DeSantis and Hochul to protect Trump is not good. Trump can and will be able to challenge the sufficiency of the indictment and the legal theory supporting it. I don’t think Trump will ever actually be in front of a jury or spend time in jail. And I don’t want him to either. But this has to play out now and DeSantis doesn’t have a say.
I believe that DeSantis stated that the State of Florida would not cooperate with the Manhattan prosecutors in the serving or the execution of an arrest warrant from the State of New York. The State of New York law enforcement agencies have no lawful authority in Florida. They cannot compel or direct Florida law enforcement agencies to act on their behalf. They can request assistance but cannot compel it.
Some inside baseball info on out of state police actions:
As a sworn officer in Oregon, I could make an arrest as a police officer anywhere in the state. The exceptions were; I could not make an arrest on tribal lands. I had no lawful authority in any federal buildings, or property.
The State of Oregon, California, and Washington have an agreement that in a pursuit an officer from each of these state’s can continue the pursuit across state lines. The arrest can be made and the subject arrested can be immediately returned to the state where the pursuit began without an extradition hearing.
All well-said. But “dangerous” and “the mob”? Bragg’s travesty got a sober formal criticism in the NYT and was not expressly “dangerous” nor did French think that Bragg risk stirring up the “mob” on the other side braying for Trump’s hide. Where French is concerned, tone is dispositive. He is in the NYT because his gentle critiques of the left prove they are “balanced”. People who claim to be all about morality and civility who nevertheless refuse to go after the purveyors of the rot are ridiculous or stupid. French is not stupid.
So, . . . evil?
The Constitution states
“A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.”
Quoting from the Constitutional Law Reporter at https://constitutionallawreporter.com/extradition-clause/#:~:text=In%20this%20clause%2C%20the%20Constitution,history%20of%20the%20Extradition%20Clause:
“The Extradition Clause is yet another provision which normalizes legal processes among the states. In this clause, the Constitution requires that if a person is charged with a crime in one state and flees to another, the harboring state must return the individual to the charging state. There are two Supreme Court cases which are central to the history of the Extradition Clause. First, in Kentucky v. Dennison (1860), a man committed a crime in Kentucky by helping a slave escape. He then fled to Ohio. The Court did hold that, under the Extradition Clause, the governor of Ohio had the constitutional responsibility to return the man to Kentucky. However, practically, the Court refused to enforce the clause. Instead, it held that federal courts could not issue so-called “writs of mandamus” – essentially court orders – to force the governor to comply with the clause. Essentially, this greatly mitigated the power of the clause. However, in Puerto Rico v. Branstad (1987), the Court reversed its position. There, an Iowa man had struck pedestrians in Puerto Rico. The man then fled back to his home state; and the governor of Puerto Rico requested that Iowa return the fugitive, asking an Iowa federal court to enforce the Extradition Clause. The governor refused, and his decision was backed by the district court in Iowa, as well as the Circuit Court of Appeals. They cited the precedent set in Kentucky. The Supreme Court reversed, however, holding the decision in Kentucky to be outdated and no longer applicable. Iowa had to return the man to Puerto Rico. In the wake of Branstad, courts now do have the power to enforce the Extradition Clause.”
If Trump refused to go to New York, DeSantis would be required to extradite him. DeSantis is a graduate of Harvard Law School. He knows better.
I have already gone on record that Alvin Bragg should not indict Trump. See https://ricochet.com/1413170/alvin-bragg-should-not-indict-trump/.
But now that Trump has been indicted, the process should play out.
If the NY Governor thinks DA Bragg has this right then she should challenge DeSantis on constitutional grounds. What do you think is inappropriate there? Do you remember what Speaker Pelosi said when the ACA was passed by Congress.
As you put it, “To be that disproportionate is to be a ridiculous man.” The NTer stuff is similar to being a libertarian or a Woke radical in that the ideas now matter more than the reality. For the record I think libertarian ideas are often quite good when they are tied to human nature but libertarians (especially the the anti-Abraham Lincoln types) seem to ignore stuff that doesn’t fit with what they want to be real.
Both Old Bathos and myself find Trump to be less than ideal. The word ideal and the word idea are the exact same Latin root. I think the word might have been defined by how Plato used it when he described the world of ideal forms. I am myself a Platonist and while I too am interested in perfect ideas I realize as Plato might well have realized that this world is incredibly imperfect and you have to accept compromised people and compromised policies that are mere shadows of true goodness.
Trump is very clearly not an ideal candidate but he is mostly a good force in American politics because he enacted good policies (if not ideal policies) that benefitted America. But to NTers he so conflicts with their impossible ideals that they can’t accept him.
And the enforcement mechanism is?
“Evil” is over the top. French and Trump share the same condition in which falling in love with one’s own preferred public persona may blind one to certain inconsistencies.
I don’t think so. If it’s deliberate, then it’s evil.
But then, I’ve long considered French a pharisee.
You and French would be arguing that governors had no choice but to extradite with fugitive slave laws.
and “suit.”
Nice straw man.
You both are using the same principle, are you not? It’s the same principle in the 1850s. Sorry you don’t see it and use the lame straw man argument.
It’s a literal straw man argument! You are making up a position that I didn’t argue.
The principles aren’t the same at all when you’re dealing with slavery and the actual text of the fugitive slave act. That act gave no due process whatsoever to the slave and basically put all blacks in the north at risk of capture. This was because no testimony was allowed from the accused fugitive slave and all that was required was an affidavit from the alleged owner. It wasn’t constitutional and allowed for open season on black people in general.
If you can’t see the difference between slavery and this situation here, then I can’t help you.
If David French knew of another fighter, he would immediately attempt to dispose of him/her as well. David French is a phony and, like Bill Kristol, always has been.
Extradition would be required if NY formally requested it and the paperwork was in order. However, DeSantis does not have to do anything quickly. Out-of-state cops can’t effect an arrest if the Florida cops are not acting. The remedy for New York would be a federal judge issuing an order. The enforcement of the extradition order is contempt citations from a federal judge, presumably fines. DeSantis could out-dramatic Trump by getting arrested by federal Marshalls for protecting Trump but all that is really unlikely. If the indictment is what we think it is, it should be tossed long before there is a trial. Not sure if Trump would need to appear at all.
The point of the post is not whether extradition would be legal but that anybody would get the vapors because DeSantis said he would refuse to honor such a request when we know the predicate for the extradition is a foul abuse of the law and an attack on comity and the rule of law. It is a matter of disproportionate outrage.
But we need to understand this as a continuation step in the hoax of the century:
A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century.
In the past, didn’t any felony carry a possible death sentence? So maybe this charge isn’t really a felony regardless of how Bragg et al are dressing it up? Is “felony” defined anywhere in the constitution? If not, wouldn’t the common definition at the time be in effect? Which would mean a “paperwork error” is not a felony.
Speaking of people whose obsession with Trump has warped them…
Splendid! Watch and learn, those of you who haven’t quite figured out how to go about such things. @oldbathos has provided a masterclass. Those of us who’ve been here a while might understand why.
The rest of you? Perhaps a little humility might be helpful.
What a Friend We Have In David.
I’m not convinced that states should automatically cooperate with the feds/other states.
Maybe Trump should have access to a ‘sanctuary city’.
More to the point, does the rule of law apply if the law is corrupt?
Are we talking about the Librarian of Kiev?
This is objectively untrue.
Why this Ricochet post from 2 years ago is the third on the list of results when I query, “David French Stupid”
https://ricochet.com/1004722/the-continued-betrayal-of-david-french/
Lots of French Davidian stupidity on display there.
Quote of the Day: “Not Law but Fraud”
I wonder about those two.
Didn’t Bill Kristol set David French up as a Presidential Candidate fall guy?
Didn’t David French fall for it?
There has to be a money angle in there somewhere.