The Daily Show’s John Stewart recently mused that Republicans play chess while Democrats . . . “are in the nurse’s office with their balls glued to their thighs.” But Republicans don’t in fact play chess — they play dirty. Like deploying lies.
Stewart said Democrats venerate a rules-based system, where faithful compliance is expected. Recalling Britain’s “good chap” theory of politics, with unwritten norms of honorable conduct. (Which Boris Johnson shredded — until his political implosion.)
Our rules-based system, Stewart held, has created a vastly complex governmental morass of bureaucratic pettifogging whose strict observance makes getting anything done impossible. But all its complexity also makes for loopholes, that can be exploited — if you have the balls.
Democrats don’t. Stewart pointed to an instance where the Senate’s (unelected) parliamentarian ruled that a key piece of legislation couldn’t be advanced in the way Democrats proposed. President Biden just shrugged and bowed to the ruling.
An ethos very different from that of Republicans. Exemplified by their stunningly ballsy 2016 refusal to even allow a vote on the Merrick Garland Supreme Court nomination, on the ridiculous pretext that an election was a year away. Then, with an election just weeks away, they rammed through Trump nominee Amy Coney Barrett. Because they could. No “good chaps” there.
Democrats in comparison are weenies. Remember how they long awaited Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s nailing Trump in the Russia election collusion investigation? Turned out Mueller was too much the “good chap” — I mean wet noodle weenie.
His report actually did nail Trump for crimes. But Mueller silently let Attorney General Barr get away with presenting a lying recap of the report. And then, testifying before Congress, Mueller was so tangled up fretting over what he should or should not say that he wound up saying nothing. What an ineffectual fool.
Next case in point: Merrick Garland. The same guy Democrats had allowed Republicans to screw out of a Supreme Court seat, now made attorney general. Who proceeded to dither for two years, wringing his hands over the talmudic niceties of whether to prosecute Trump for what were obviously blatant crimes, relating to January 6 and stolen classified documents. When Garland at long last appointed Jack Smith special counsel, Smith did act swiftly to indict Trump. But it was too late, enabling Trump’s legal strategy of running out the clock until he could get back in office and kill the cases.
Still, Smith might have refused to go away quietly. But instead, even before Trump’s inauguration, he has simply dropped the cases. Because some old Justice Department memo rules out prosecuting sitting presidents for crimes. (It stymied Mueller.) No such rule is in the Constitution, the reasoning is dubious, and the potential consequences dire if there’s a rogue president (like Trump). Yet Smith too bows before that unfortunate memo. Democrats here again meekly allowing an overdone obeisance to what they think are rules to defeat what’s actually good and right.
Thereby letting Trump drive a tank over their whole cherished rules-based concept. He’s now pretty much succeeded in shrugging off all the multiple crimes he’s committed, with zero accountability. With all his claims of a juridical system politically “weaponized” against him, that system has proven to be the ironic opposite — incapable of countering his weaponization against it.
In his first term he abused it by pardoning racists, war criminals, and political cronies convicted of crimes. Now he promises to pardon hundreds of people convicted for January 6 violence (most of whom pleaded guilty).
And of course he won’t be squeamish, like Democrats, in weaponizing the justice system to afflict his political opponents. While he falsely called the prosecutions against him baseless, those against his foes surely will be.
Trump plays the system for a fool, eviscerating rule of law. We’re a nation of fools for electing him.
