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Trump2020: A Response to One Objection
One objection to re-electing President Trump in 2020 is that, because he exhibits so many of the personal traits which conservatives have traditionally condemned, his election by Republicans casts the latter as hypocrites and removes character as a dimension on which future Republicans can differentiate their candidates from those of the Democrats.
While I made this argument during the primaries leading up to the 2016 election, I think it is no longer relevant. Republicans have already elected Trump; failing to re-elect him will not in any way redeem Republicans. We live in a hostile, left-leaning media environment, and there is no voice on the left that will speak well of Republicans for rejecting President Trump in 2020. That would require a degree of charity the left is completely unwilling to extend.
Whatever damage to the moral standing of Republicans that the election of President Trump can do has been done, and nothing will reverse it or make it significantly worse. Those who think otherwise are crediting the left with more grace than there is any reason to believe it possesses.
I continue to believe that, on balance, the arguments in favor of re-electing President Trump remain compelling.
Published in Elections
Thank you! I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing a quick check of Wikipedia myself. My brain must not be fully functioning yet. I must need more caffeine or something – sigh.
It has been, and was called BRT.
Boring, Repetitive, and Tense…….
A very somber and dark analysis @aaronmiller. But unfortunately one that has a great deal of validity. However, our fall to the abyss is not yet written in stone. I believe there still is a light flickering at the end of the tunnel…barely visible. If Trump loses in 2020 to one of these flailing socialists on the left–game over. Gary and Bill and Max and their ilk can all go dance a jig on the grave of this country.
Have you read the report?
There ya go @Franco. Well enumerated. I feel betteralready.
@garyrobbins Saying “Read the Mueller Report” sixteen times and clicking your heels isn’t going to make it so. You know as well as I do that prosecutorial proceedings are all one sided, where no exculpatory witnesses are called and no defense is offered. You proceed from “read the report” to “hang the bastard” and then have the guts to say “I’m all about the ‘Rule of Law.’”
In this sense, we are all on the grand jury. We are not compelled to blindly accept the prosecution’s take on events. You are merely trying to incite your own mob. That’s more akin to Soviet “justice,” instead of American jurisprudence.
Of course I am not positive that Nixon would have been impeached and convicted. There could have been the SMOD. However, Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee who had voted against the articles of impeachment, such as Trent Lott, came out for impeachment after the release of the smoking gun tape. Barry Goldwater told Nixon that Nixon had only a dozen votes in the Senate. So, I think that it was likely beyond a reasonable doubt that Nixon would have been impeached and then removed. (A reasonable doubt is a doubt based on reason.)
Article I of Nixon’s Articles of Impeachment was “Obstruction of Justice.” Trump literally told witnesses to lie to the Special Counsel.
Has anyone read the report? It was only released yesterday and it’s over 400 pages. I’m a very fast reader but I’m not reading 400 pages in 24 hours.
Cite the page that supports your position. We are all capable of doing a “Control F” or a page # search.
So, how much of the report have you read? Not summaries or analysis by others, but the doggone report itself?
There you go again.
No matter what each commenter’s response to this question is … all of it, none of it or a part of it … it doesn’t matter. It isn’t relevant.
The only thing that matters is that Attorney General Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein have fully read it. They are ones duly established by the rule of Law, and in fact by Robert Mueller himself, to make this determination. And they have definitively made it. No grounds for obstruction.
And yet you continue to tilt against windmills and rage against the night, on a right-leaning website. You speak of truth, rule of law and other inanities, while blatantly disregarding each. It seems that you arrogantly presume to know better than AG Barr, DAG Rosenstein and everyone else here?
I humbly suggest that you are the one who needs to be set free of your hatred of a man.
Gary, I think you need to work on your reading comprehension, unless you consider yourself a voice on the left.
I read the controversial passages on obstruction. That doesn’t change anything. It’s not scripture. (And we have no consensus on that for thousands of years.) It’s not some magic talisman that instantly makes the scales fall from the eyes of people you disagree with.
This borders on the irrational. You’ve been grasping at straws for so long now you’re probably banned in most of California.
Whatever happened to “to thy own self be true?”
Yep, Dems are hypocrites.
Yep, the MSM are Dem water carriers.
Yep, Hillary and Obama and Holder and the rest of that crew are corrupt.
I still would like to be proud of a Republican President.
I hope not. But the long game doesn’t happen without a short game. I don’t see how conservatism can implement permanent changes in one term or half a term as is the case here. Executive orders can be rescinded, but we get to see the world didn’t come to an end after all this stuff. That’s worth something in politics.
Most of this stuff was worshipped by the left and most of the right were afraid to touch these issues. The GOP will never be quite the same, and that’s a good thing.
You’re welcome! And I know that feeling of needing more caffeine…
Gary, I do not have time to read a 448 page report.
Based on a quick review of the executive summaries, here is what I find to be the key summary paragraph on the obstruction of justice issue (from the Mueller Report, here, page 214 of the pdf, page 2 of Volume II):
You and I are both capable of reading this as lawyers, though I don’t think that either of us has been a prosecutor.
The stated legal standard that Mueller is applying is, essentially, that the accused must prove his innocence by something like clear and convincing evidence. The issue, as Mueller frames it, is whether “the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice.”
I am no prosecutor, but this strikes me as plainly the wrong standard. In fact, it is inconsistent with the standard applied in Volume I of the Mueller Report itself, on the collusion charge, which states (page 16-17 of the pdf, page 8-9 of Vol. I):
This strikes me as very wrongful conduct on the part of Mueller. I do not see why he would use an inconsistent standard on the obstruction charge, other than the obvious possibility that he desired to provide fodder for opponents of the administration.
I have not yet read any learned commentary about this, and will be curious to see whether Andrew McCarthy, for instance, shares my initial impression.
Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. Sometimes it’s just a luxury you can’t afford.
In the Catholic Church there is a long list of not only Popes but Antipopes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antipope Can we consider Trump to be an AntiRepublican?
Reworded for clarity: “We cannot prove that the President did not commit a crime.”
Well, that was never his job. This is malpractice.
The exposition at the end is also beyond his role. Mueller is a political hack, not a lawyer.
If he cared about rule of law, Mueller would have called attention to the blatant FISA abuses. Even if he found cause to continue the investigation, it was his duty to point out that the investigation’s catalyst was fraudulent.
Can you guys not separate your personal identities as ‘Republicans’ ( whatever that may be) from a President who ran under the banner of the Republican Party? Call him whatever you want. And you have been but, What does he have to do with you?
And this goes both ways. If the Republican President is some absolute pillar of a man, your also being a Republican doesn’t make you one bit a better person. It doesn’t necessarily make Republicanism better either.
Try that concept on. I promise you will feel better.
Leftists are hypocrites on rule of law.
I’ve read this several times in this thread in various forms. It’s wrong. Mueller was not hired to investigate some schmoe from the sticks, he was hired as a special prosecutor with a special mandate – to see if there was any fire behind the billows of smoke Trump was putting out, to the Russian Ambassador and Lester Holt, among others, about the continuation and deepening of his 25 years long relationships with Russian crooks and malfactors. Mueller’s office was the successor to the Independent Counsel office, who’s mission was to do more than just charge or not charge.
Exactly. And he found NOTHING. What you’re pinning your hopes on has absolutely nothing to do with Russia.
This apparently was never a counterintelligence investigation to determine how and how much Russia interfered in the 2016 election. It was always an illegal criminal investigation of a man–Trump– trying to find a crime–collusion/conspiracy. I believe the Russians that Mueller indicted may actually be completely innocent. Mueller could have just put them out there as eye candy, knowing he will never have to prove they did anything criminal. Also, going back to hacking the DNC, the FBI never took possession of the infected server. They got some kind of ghost copy from the IT outfit that the DNC hired. From this second hand sourcing the FBI and all 17 of our intelligence agencies determined with no doubt whatsoever that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass……no, wait, I mean they determined that Russia hacked the server.
You have not followed my comments on this issue over the last two years. Ask this post’s author, Henry,, if you don’t believe me. I have always said this investigation was a dead end and that they were trying to pin him with the wrong crimes. I think he has much more to worry about from the SDNY prosecutor’s office. I also think Gary is right that we, as Republicans or conservatives or whatever, would be much better off if we started thinking about getting a better nominee.
That’s funny. Do you think that could ever happen? Do you have anyone in mind? Are you expecting Trump to walk away? Just how badly do you want to lose? How much of our Constitutional Republic would you be willing to give up to the socialists in order to have Trump out of office, because what you are calling for will lead to a victory by one of those socialists running as a Democrat.
I’ve said I support Gov. Larry Hogan, but people on this thread are tired of those arguments. I won’t belabor it. And no, I do not expect Trump to walk away until he’s doused with a bucket of tears.
I think that you are incorrect about this. The Mueller report addresses his responsibility in the very first paragraph to both Vol. I (on collusion) and Vol. II (on obstruction):
So Mueller was supposed to make prosecution or declination decisions, then report his reasons. He failed to do so with respect to the obstruction charge; declined to make the obstruction decision on the basis of the governing guidelines (as quoted in my prior comment); and used a different and inappropriate standard of guilty until proven innocent by “clear” evidence. Then, he didn’t even make a decision under this improper standard.
Why? I would like someone I can support provisionally, and then dump when he no longer suits. Trump fills that bill. Most of the others don’t rise to that standard.