You Can't Defeat Lawfare By Discarding Trump
Donald Trump has been charged with crimes, so the Republican Party should drop him as a candidate and move on to someone else who hasn’t been indicted. That’ll solve the problem!
It won’t. The problem is lawfare. The Republican governor of Wisconsin defeated a recall effort, so Democratic district attorneys launched a long series of predawn raids on his supporters — until the courts made them stop. The Republican governor of Texas won four terms, but then was indicted by the office of a Democratic district attorney — for a budget veto, an action within his constitutional authority. Again, the courts intervened, and the legally absurd charges were dismissed.
Today, scumbag California Assemblyman Evan Low, a uniquely craven publicity chaser even by the local standards, proudly announces that he’s just introduced a legislative resolution calling for the federal government to open a criminal investigation into Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
So. Get rid of Trump and nominate DeSan— oh, wait. Okay, name someone, anyone: Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy, a utility nominee to be named later in exchange for three rookie infielders. Oh no, it turns out that the new nominee is under criminal investigation for [TBD]! As of, uh, tomorrow.
I have mixed feelings about Donald Trump, who supported pandemic lockdowns and school closures and the rushed development of mRNA injections with limited testing. Dumping him as a candidate because he’s been indicted misses the point. No Republican candidate will run for the presidency without being indicted, unless he’s a court-eunuch Mitt Romney figure, too safe to bother attacking.
The Democratic Party’s increasingly open attempt to transition to single-party rule is built on the foundation of lawfare. Consider the possibility that no Republican presidential nominee will ever again run for the office without fending off “criminal investigations,” wink wink. It’s a political strategy, and treating it as anything else is insane.
In 2014, the economist Thomas Sargent gave a commencement address to econ grads at UC Berkeley, and used the forum to lay out the economic fundamentals of human behavior. It took him five minutes. In short, he said that people respond to incentives. If Democratic prosecutors indict the Republican frontrunner, and then Republicans discard that frontrunner because of the indictments, every Republican frontrunner until the end of time will be indicted by Democratic prosecutors.
If it works, it will be used.
If you go back and listen to Trump's press conferences from the great covid fake, you will hear him opposing lockdowns and school closures, and he also recommended hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as treatments --until Fauci et al laughed in his face, gently shooed him away from the podium and proceeded to tell us all to ignore the president and only listen to "the experts."
Trump relied on people like Fauci, Collins, Birx and the rest of the evil, greedy jackal bastards in DC to look out for America and do their jobs. He thought they loved the USA, but he was wrong.
I believe Trump's lack of experience as a backstabbing politician left him somewhat powerless in the face of strategic perfidy from throughout the administration.
I do grant him slack for learning those lessons the hard way and for fighting back. I love a fighter. 🇺🇸
We in the 21st c. West live in electoral Fairytale Land. In Fairytale Land, if you vote Left you get Left and if you vote Right you get Right. And here's the best bit...the administrative bureaucracy and the courts are IMPARTIAL. In Reality Land, if you vote Left you get Left; if you vote Right you get Left.