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That is the standard I would ask Republicans to use when they decide how to interpret the actions of Donald Trump. What if Obama had done it?
We know that Republicans have a gross double standard. When Obama played golf, Republicans couldn’t stop arguing that he was wasting taxpayer dollars. When Trump plays golf – three times as much and at his own golf courses, charging exorbitant rates to the secret service while there – Republicans argue that it isn’t important. There are hundreds of cases where Obama would be chastised while there is nary a whine from Republicans when Trump breaks the law.
Yes, the world sees it. Seriously, it’s that obvious.
So here we are during impeachment proceedings. Remember that the Republican party impeached President Bill Clinton for lying about having a consensual affair. Remember also that many of the Republicans trying Clinton for lying about the affair were simultaneously themselves lying about having affairs. Like Donald Trump, Speaker Newt Gingrich was having one of a series of affairs. Other Republicans were doing the same; one was later found guilty for molesting young boys. Flash forward to now and Republicans bend over backwards to make excuses for Trump’s multiple well-known affairs and attack the more than 20 women who came forward with accusations of sexual molestation.
As I write this, one of Trump’s hand-picked ambassadors (hand-picked after giving Trump a million dollar donation) is admitting under oath that Trump repeatedly violated the Constitution. A long list of witnesses have testified that Trump did this. This is on top of the hundreds of examples of Trump violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution, blatantly lying in nearly every breath, and viciously and dishonestly attacking dozens – hundreds – of people who have caught Trump in corruption.
What if Obama had done that?
It’s time for Republicans to decide if they represent the United States or if they represent corruption. The facts are clear. The choice is clear.
Many Republicans are afraid that they will be “primaried from the right,” that is, forced into a primary by someone even more extreme right wing than themselves. Given where the party stands now, that seems unlikely. Add in the high probability that Trump will be impeached by Christmas and there seems little political downside for Republicans who stand up for honesty and integrity and their oaths of office. [And yes, your commitment to the Constitution is supposed to be stronger than your commitment to a party]
Six years before he was elected president, Abraham Lincoln was faced with his then-Whig party being afraid to stand up for what was right for fear that they might be branded as abolitionists. Lincoln reminded them that standing up for what is right doesn’t mean you have to change your politics. He noted:
Stand with anybody that stands RIGHT. Stand with him while he is right and PART with him when he goes wrong.
Republicans have a chance to stand up for the United States against a corrupt and criminal administration. The Republican party stood up to Richard Nixon, who was forced to resign when Republicans refused to cover up his crimes. Today the Republican party has a chance to stand up to Donald Trump.
Stand with anybody that stands RIGHT. Stand with him while he is right and PART with him when he goes wrong.
It’s time for Republicans to stand for the United States. No one is asking Republicans to become Democrats. All we, the people of the United States, are asking is that Republicans stand up for the integrity of our country.
This really isn’t a tough decision. It’s time.
*Quote is from Lincoln’s Peoria Speech, October 16, 1854
David J. Kent is a science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
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Hot White Snow 
Yes. Why is it so hard for them to do the right thing? Separate from Trump and reaffirm Republican values.
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Good question. Why is it so hard to do the right thing? We’re talking about standing up for America vs. treason. This is not a hard decision.
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Spot on, David. You made my day.
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Thank you.
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What if Obama… had fired a Director of Rural Development for the USDA out of political expediency despite the NAACP citing manipulated media to criticize her, overseen the arrests of a record more than 5-million undocumented immigrants and then enforced the expedited deportations of more than 98-percent of those detained, budgeted more for the US military-industrial complex than any administration since WWII, approved a long-term corporate and temporary middle-class tax-cut that ballooned the federal budget deficit to a record $1.3-trillion, bailed out numerous large and pathologically mismanaged corporations at taxpayer expense, argued to approve $7.6-billion for the construction of a fossil-fuel pipeline until the US State Department declared that it was not in the best interests of the United States, dismissed US Attorney warnings and stood by as pharmaceutical companies profited by creating the worst drug epidemic in American history, ignored the issue of foreign access to his own Secretary of State through a suspect monetary foundation, was Commander-and-Chief during the greatest mass theft of US civilian and military technologies in American history, canceled every NASA program pursuant to human transport to low Earth orbit leaving US astronauts dependent on seats in Russian spacecraft, bypassed Congress with executive orders 260 times, advised the DOJ to allow the NSA to conduct numerous secret and warrantless surveillance programs, signed into law the first ever act allowing the US military to indefinitely detain American citizens without charges, and added $8.5-trillion to the national debt during his two terms?
Sorry… I couldn’t resist. Though I did leave out the speculative stuff (think: IRS…).
However, I do think “What if…” questions invite the creation of a certain speculative reality. What if Hillary had been elected? We might have been witness to anything from her own impeachment to North Korean nukes falling on Tokyo. Or not. Regardless, it’s a moot point.
What we have is what we have. And what we have is an amateurish narcissist of a President whose lack of executive function sabotages even that which he, by pure chance, does right. But there’s no surprise there. We also have a Republican-led senate that’s not going to boot him out of office. So unless Democrats can find something both unexpected and shocking in a new way, few who have already fixed their positions will change them. Trump will remain an amateurishly narcissistic… President… and his hard-core sycophants will still vote for him in ’20. Barring some revelation the likes of which would bring a flush to even my own libertine and jaded visage, the pragmatist at my core just doesn’t see any of this making any constructive difference. So what viable alternative is provided by the Constitution?
Seeing as how Bennet’s been brushed aside, and both Trump as well as many of his own challengers have seen to it that Biden is damaged goods… I’m more excited to see Pete Buttigieg getting noticed… even if he does have to tow the “impeachment” line between talking actual policy. I just hope others can hear him over all the background noise and the loudmouths.
I live in a state where we can gamble on this. Unfortunately, Democrats seem to have made an art out of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Right now, all three of the big books have the best odds on four more years of the same-ol’ same-‘ol.
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A quick look at your opening list suggests that it reflects policy issues and decisions, some of which I likely disagreed with. But that’s the point. We can’t focus on debating policy issues because the Republican party is too busy pushing dishonest and racist storylines like the “Obama is a radical Christian/Muslim foreign born plant who hates America because he believes Americans should have access to health care and deal with climate change…” We can’t have those honest disagreements and discussions because the Republican party has institutionalized dishonesty. [Seriously, Breitbart, the conspiracy nutjob page that pushes “9/11 was an inside job” and “Sandy Hook was a black ops operation that never happened,” has been given WH Press Corp status and is considered a news source by the Republican party.]
I can definitively say that if Obama had done a tenth of what Trump has been doing with impunity, the Republican party would have gone after him viciously…and I would have supported booting him from office. But that’s the point. We’ve seen Democrats push out members of Congress/Senate accused of inappropriate behavior while somehow much worse behavior by Republicans and Trump is ignored.
I stand with the Democratic party when it does right, and I part with them when they do wrong. Likewise, I stand with the Republicans when they do right. The problem is they don’t seem to even try to do right any more.
But alas, we have what we have. And it’s almost certain that result of these hearings is the scenario you paint – House impeaches Trump with virtually all Republicans voting against it, Senate Republicans virtually all vote against conviction. I would argue that the Democrats have, in fact, found something both unexpected and shocking, but I agree that zero Trump supporters will admit that and they dominate the Republican party so much that no significant number of Republicans in Congress that think they are honest will dare to stand for what is right. I understand political expediency, but we’re not talking about normal political differences. Republicans stood up to Nixon, whose transgressions were arguably mild compared to Trump, so why won’t they stand up for what is right now?
I suppose that was the point of my post. You have said that you have recently voted for and supported Democratic candidates. Why won’t others? There must be more principled Republicans besides you. That is who I wanted to reach in my post.
You say you don’t see how this can make any constructive difference and ask what viable alternative is provided by the Constitution. I’m not sure. This is the viable option provided by the Constitution. I honestly doubt this will help the Democrats in the upcoming elections (which is why Speaker Pelosi was so hesitant to do it), but the events in this case were so egregious that impeachment was necessary to try to save the Constitution itself. The rest of us should support the inquiry (and presumably the passing of articles of impeachment based on testimony so far) because it will define whether our nation continues on its rocky path toward a more perfect union…or it falls apart and becomes a Putin-controlled failed dictatorship.
As for “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory,” my gut tangles in expectation of just such a thing. But I don’t see it as a Democratic party defeat. I see it as a reflection of what the American people have become. There is no reason why the last election should have turned out as it did (or the next has the potential to do). No honest sentient American can support Trump and Mitch McConnell’s corruption. And yet 40% of the country will do just that no matter what. That tears me up. That my country has degraded itself so deeply that such a huge percentage of Americans would debase the very concept of our nation because of their racism, bigotry, idiocy, and “wanting to stick it to the liberals.” I cry for my country knowing that so many people who claim to be Americans so hate the ideal of America and wish to destroy it.
For the record, yes, I do realize how this all sounds. Up until about 2007 I wasn’t particularly active politically. The combination of widespread access to “the internets” by people who would otherwise be considered crackpots and my realization of how the Republican party had given up any pretense to be an honest political view started me on this path. I wish I could argue against Democratic policies I don’t like. I wish Republicans would stop being so dishonest they don’t destroy their own policies the second Obama decided he liked them too. I wish I didn’t come off as being strident in some of my posts. But then I can’t sit back and watch what the Republican party – and their propaganda arms: Fox, Limbaugh, InfoWars – are doing to this country. I think all Americans have a responsibility to stand up for the ideal that is America with the full realization that we’ve never achieved the ideal but it is worth working towards. Not destroying so a bunch of white rich people can get richer but fomenting racism as a means of distracting from the rape of America. And that’s pretty much what it comes down to.
Soapbox off.
Any plans for Thanksgiving? I was supposed to be on a sailing cruise in the Caribbean but the trip was cancelled due to boat problems, so instead of being nice and warm I’ll be going to visit my family where they have a chance of snow.
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I remember my dad once saying that he’d given up doing any kind of serious investing in stocks, because he’d concluded that the markets were fundamentally driven by emotion. My lay-involvement in politics has followed along the same lines. Growing up in a family that was directly involved in politics (I have my grandmother’s postage stamp from a die taken to the moon that was given by Nixon to commemorate her electoral vote), I understand how the political loyalty system functions (or doesn’t). And having worked within the US military-industrial complex, I also understand how money warps political policy. It’s just different kinds of policies in relation to different monies, parties and politicians. And that said, it’s mostly in the background that the rubber hits the road. What we’re primed to consume as citizens is mostly the fluff. And to be honest, I doubt most Americans would have much interest in the really meaningful aspects of how the country gets run. Try reading through the minutia of an annual military budget (just the part the public is allowed to see). I can’t imagine anyone actually picking through the half of the US budget that’s applied to the various social safety nets. The US bureaucracy is like a massive cruise-ship at full steam.
“I cry for my country knowing that so many people who claim to be Americans so hate the ideal of America and wish to destroy it.” This is actually what compelled my comment here. Last night, during a discussion with a local friend, he expressed that he felt like everything should be torn down and restarted from scratch, and that America’s wealth needed to be redistributed. I could see the emotion in his expression, but (calmly) mentioned that examples from history have generally not turned out well, the Chinese Cultural Revolution being just one. Still, he seemed pretty adamant that there isn’t anything worth saving about America. Sitting here, comfortably drinking my coffee in front of connection to a venue within which I can freely express myself, I find myself in respectful disagreement.
I believe that the nuts and bolts of the American system still have much to offer. But politicians know that voters tend to place more notice on the paint-job than the mechanics (successful politicians, anyway). Institutionalizing an act merely re-defines what we call it… gives it a paint-job. “Corruption” is the term applied when we look under the paint, whether it’s by definition, or when it’s institutionalized. What’s really disturbing Americans watching the process right now is that we can actually see the paint being applied.
To be honest, I hadn’t given much thought to Thanksgiving aside from taking a break from a current project reverse-engineering something of interest. I’ve been more worried about trying to get some technical instruments out of Hong Kong and into the US during the crisis there and the Xmas shipping mess here. Sun just came out, so I might venture out for a run in the snow. Always seems to put things into a brighter perspective.
(-_^)
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Thanks for the additional insights. I think I pretty much agree with your views. I’ve been in Washington long enough, and interacted with enough of the players, to feel like I understand how government works under the hood (both ideally and in reality). I’ve certainly seen enough to know two things: first, that most Americans are woefully and willfully ignorant of how government works (again, both ideally and in reality), and second, that there are many people and organizations that take advantage of that fact for personal gain, to the detriment of the country. We are treated the way we train people to treat us. And that is what I find most fearful about the country.
Immediately after the 2016 election I had a fairly left leaning acquaintance tell me that he didn’t vote for any presidential candidate because he wanted what your friend wanted, for the country to be torn down and restarted from scratch. I was aghast that he would be so egregiously irresponsible, especially given he is a PhD scientist working for a government agency. I just don’t understand the thought process behind that. Maybe this explains why liberals/Democrats think I’m too conservative and conservatives/Republicans think I’m too liberal (and also why I so despise labels).
Good luck with your reverse-engineering and with Hong Kong shipping. A nice run in the sunny snow sounds appealing. Enjoy.
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