New Rules
Easy to make them, but ...
During the Biden-Harris administration and for at least two decades before it, the Democrats have been in a position to establish new rules for political competition and discourse. I’ll get to the rules in a moment, but since their definitive loss in the November election, the Democrats seem overly worried that the rules they have established might be used against them.
The rules are relatively simple. Here’s an abbreviated list:
If the opposition leader gains the presidency, use a variety of hoaxes to initiate a special prosecutor investigation in the hope of finding an impeachable offense. Failing that, impeach anyway based on vacuous charges.
If the sitting president or president-elect appoints a senior cabinet member or a Supreme Court justice whose worldview differs from yours, suggest that their appointment will lead to catastrophe, but at the same time, work hard at character assassination, using your trained hamsters in the legacy media to quote “anonymous sources” who level charges of sexual abuse or other heinous acts.
When you are in power but encounter a major opposition leader who is gaining traction among the populace, use lawfare to investigate, indict, try and convict that person and/or his chief advisors/assistants.
When you are in power, use the administrative state to investigate and attack businesses and the people who run those businesses because you don’t like their worldview.
When you are in power and those who oppose your programs and policies gain a foothold by using social media, use the DoJ or the FCC to convince major social media, along with legacy media, to censor opposing views or more subtly, to ban or shadow-ban those who are voicing them.
When you are in power but will soon be out of power, offer blanket pardons for persons who have committed known crimes but also persons who have never been charged but who may have committed crimes.
These rules, along with others that have modified the manner in which the Congress conducts its business, worked reasonably well for the Democrats while they were in power and even when they were not. But now the Dems openly worry that their rules will be applied to them. To wit, NBC’s Kristin Welker in a network interview this past Sunday, asked Donald Trump no fewer than 10 times whether he would seek “retribution” against his political opponents. What Welker, an exemplar of a media trained hamster, was really asking is this:
“Will you apply the same rules we created and used against you—against us?
Hmmm. That’s an interesting philosophical question.
The rules I’ve listed are unprecedented, unethical, and anti-democratic. They should never be used by any political party, and if a party attempted to invoke any one of them, much less ALL of them, the outcry by an objective watchdog media should have been be deafening. But all of the rules were applied by the Democrats, and there was no outcry among legacy media. In fact, there were attempts to justify and defend their application.
And if there is no outcry and therefore no consequences,1 there is little doubt that the rules will be applied again. So … some argue, the rules should be applied by the incoming Trump administration, if for no other reason than to let them Democrat elite understand that there are consequences for their unprecedented, unethical, and anti-democratic actions.
On the other hand, two wrongs don’t make a right. What to do?
Some of the rules should NEVER be applied. For example, character assassination (ginning up bogus charges of heinous crimes, think the Brett Kavanaugh case) is a despicable tactic and should be rejected by all decent people. Using the DoJ to violate first amendment freedoms should NEVER be used. Impeaching a sitting presdient becuase you don’t like his style or his policies should NEVER be used.
But when major politicians violate the law in ways that lead to the imprisonment of American citizens; when the administrative state attacks and/or persecutes American citizens, maybe the new rules should be turned on them. It might be the only way they’ll be dissuaded from using them again once they regain power.
On balance, I’m against doing even that, but even though I’m against it, I’ll understand if some of the new rules are applied in select circumstances. Over the past four years and in the four years preceding them, the Dems used every opportunity to FA—in fact they were super-proud of doing so. Maybe it’s time that they FO.
It can be argued that the application of the Democrats’ new rules was one of many reasons that they lost the recent presidential election in a convincing manner.