Steven Pearlstein: Even-handed or Empty-Headed? I report, you decide.
In a recent column, WashPost business dude Steven Pearlstein says what I have been saying about the Republican Party:
…[B]roach-no-compromise obstructionism has been the strategy of congressional Republicans since the mid-1990s. Since then, two Republican House speakers have been run out of town for their lack of ideological purity, while members fear being ostracized and attacked on social media just for speaking with Democrats. In the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) actually vowed that his goal was to make the Obama presidency a failure, and he spent eight years making good on that promise.
But I guess saying that Republicans suck for one whole paragraph without any “balance” made El Stevo just a little moist in his jockeys, because he quickly recouped:
When it comes to partisan posturing and eschewing compromise, however, Democrats haven’t been a whole lot better. When the Senate was considering the Trump tax cuts in 2017, most Democrats joined with conservative Republicans to defeat an amendment to extend the earned income tax credit to millions of working poor — a measure they had sought for more than a decade — because it would have made it easier for Republicans to defend a terrible bill that was going to pass one way or the other.
This is nonsense, pure and simple. President Obama spent the first six years of his presidency begging the Republicans for cooperation, as did President Clinton before him. Steve’s one example of Democratic perfidy is ridiculous. Republicans controlled both houses of Congress; Democrats had no guarantee that the EITC expansion would be included in the final bill, and no reason at all to trust Republican Majority Leader Mitch “We vote for our Supreme Court nominees but not for yours” McConnell on anything. It’s certainly “arguable”—and indeed probable—that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused action on a second stimulus bill just before the election unless it was to be clearly a “Democratic” bill, but on the other hand it’s also “arguable” that the Republican Senate didn’t want any action at all, and that Mitch was happy at the way things came out. And in any event, trying to balance one case of last minute hard ball against almost three decades of constant Republican deceit and hypocrisy is, well, deceitful and hypocritical. The press has been “struggling” to figure out how to cover politics in this age of heightened partisanship. Adding a mechanical “the other side does it too” tag to every discussion is not the way to go.
Rich Lowery is absolutely 100% sure the Republican Party won’t do anything absolutely reprehensible. Okay, make that 99% sure.
In his latest column for the National Review, “The Completely Insane Electoral College Strategy”, Rich Lowry assures himself that Republicans in state legislatures around the country won’t go absolutely crazy and try to override the will of the voters in the 2020 presidential election:
…[S]ome allies of the president are advocating, or beginning to whisper about, Republican state legislatures taking matters into their own hands and sending slates of Trump electors to Congress regardless of the vote count.
This is a poisonous idea that stands out as radical and destructive, even in a year when we’ve been debating court-packing and defunding the police. The best that can be said for it is that it is almost certainly a nonstarter, which doesn’t mean that it won’t get more oxygen.
Well, if it’s a “nonstarter”, as Rich says, why does he also say that “We may be one presidential tweet away from this gambit becoming orthodoxy for much of the Republican Party.” Does Rich really believe that Donald Trump won’t do something that is “poisonous”, or “radical and destructive”? Don’t hold your breath, Rich. Or, rather, considering your role as a “respectable” Trump apologist for the past eight years, well, maybe you should.
Bill Barr is not respectable, unless you consider shit respectable
Okay, that is really harsh, and, Bill, if you’re reading this, well, I guess it’s pretty clear that I don’t like you very much. But half my ire—though only half—is due to the mistaken view that Bill’s recent memo on election fraud is not “news”. For example, the usually reliable, not to say Reasonable Lizzie Nolan-Brown had this to say:
… Barr's letter doesn't give the impression that he's trying to help Trump hijack the election. Rather, he seems to be trying to walk a very fine line and perhaps even stamp out his boss's conspiracy claims.
There's no simply ignoring them at this point; not just Trump but other prominent Republicans have backed these claims of fraud, despite the total lack of evidence and the sheer scale that would've had to take place for it to have affected the election outcome. (Three states would have to be wrong, by a lot; this isn't a difference of a few hundred votes in one small area of one state, as with Florida in 2000.) Some listeners may never be convinced otherwise—but if anyone is to be, an inquiry blessed by Trump's top cop finding no evidence for Trump's claims is probably about the best there is to offer.
First of all, Lizzie, there’s every reason for ignoring them, because, well, because of “the total lack of evidence and the sheer scale that would've had to take place for it to have affected the election outcome.” Do you ever read yourself, Lizzie? You might learn something! Furthermore, since when to have to prove our innocence! Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?
And there are a multitude of, um, other reasons to object to Bill’s execrable mendacity, which is why Richard Pilger, who was director of the Election Crimes Branch of the Justice Department, resigned after Barr issued the memo. Over at the Washington Post, Ryan Goodman and Andrew Weissman explain what Barr is really up to: “Barr isn’t just humoring Trump. He’s weaponizing law enforcement.”. As Goodman and Weissman point out, Barr makes that following potentially disastrous changes to previous Justice Department procedures regarding investigations regarding elections: 1) Allowing investigations to begin before rather than after certification of results, making it possible for the mere announcement of an investigation to overturn an election; 2) specifically authorizing investigations to proceed on the basis of allegations of “irregularities” rather than actual crimes; 3) emphasizing the “inherent authority” of the 93 U.S. attorneys to act on their own initiative, both allowing “rogue” attorneys to proceed as recklessly as they please and keeping his own hands clean.
Donald Trump and all his cruddy crew simply cannot leave office too soon. Every day, every hour, they remain in power further besmirches this nation.
