Sunday, November 17, 2019

Cloaked in the Constituion

There are two consistent themes in most everything the Democrats have been doing since Donald Trump was elected President.

1)Donald Trump's Presidency must be resisted in every way possible.

2) It is their constitutional duty to do so in order to protect the Constitution.

What is ironic is that while they cloak themselves in the Constitution they are trampling it at the very same time.

I wrote in a previous blog that Democrats had cited 89 instances why President Trump should be impeached over the last three years. The first was just two weeks after he took office. There were 36 instances alone since the Mueller report came out and Democrat hopes that Trump would be impeached for Russian collusion were dashed.

All of this has now led to impeachment hearings in the House that began last week. Of course, the net result of those two days of hearings has not elicited one witness citing any "crime" that Trump committed. In fact, the witnesses have testified they had no direct contact with Trump.

The main gripe seems to be that these career bureaucrats did not agree with the foreign policy of Trump regarding Ukraine. Never mind that the Constitution vests the power over foreign policy to the President and the executive branch. Never mind that Trump was the duly elected President of the United States and no one ever voted for any of the bureaucrats.

Yes, the Constitution provides the Senate the right to ratify treaties and confirm ambassadors and cabinet officers, and Congress needs to consent to trade agreements, but the Constitution assumes some comity in this process.

Consider, for example, that the Trump administration negotiated a new trade agreement with Canada and Mexico (the "USMCA") to replace NAFTA almost a year ago (November 30, 2018). The House has yet to even begin the ratification process. What are they spending their time on instead? Impeachment of a President who ran on the promise of replacing NAFTA.

Consider as well the stark differences in the use of the "advice and consent" power of the Senate on Presidential appointments regarding Trump and other recent Presidents. That power is intended to be used to reject unqualified appointees but was never intended to be a unilateral power to oppose and draw out the approval process for every appointee. Doing so prevents the operation of a functional government.

Nevertheless, the Democrats in the Senate have filibustered 236 Trump nominees since he became President. How many times did this occur in Obama's first term---17 times. It only occurred four times in George W. Bush's second term.

We have the same thing happening in the Judicial branch. Since President Trump took office, federal district courts have issued over 40 injunctions ((almost all from Democrat appointees) against the government. The similar number during Obama's first term over the same period---TWO! Do you see a pattern in all of this?

Attorney General William Barr gave a speech before the Federalist Society last week in which he cited these statistics and made this overriding statement.

Immediately after President Trump won election, opponents inaugurated what they called “The Resistance,” and they rallied around an explicit strategy of using every tool and maneuver available to sabotage the functioning of his Administration.  Now, “resistance” is the language used to describe insurgency against rule imposed by an occupying military power.  It obviously connotes that the government is not legitimate.  This is a very dangerous – indeed incendiary – notion to import into the politics of a democratic republic.  What it means is that, instead of viewing themselves as the “loyal opposition,” as opposing parties have done in the past, they essentially see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple, by any means necessary, a duly elected government.  

The Democrats cloak themselves in the Constitution while actually abusing it.

Here is how Attorney General Barr describes what is occurring.

The fact of the matter is that, in waging a scorched earth, no-holds-barred war of “Resistance” against this Administration, it is the Left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law.

I predict we will soon see the Constitution invoked by the Democrats in another way.

The release of the Inspector General report regarding the Obama administration investigation of the Trump campaign and potential FISA abuses involving key figures such as James Comey, John Brennan and James Clapper could come any day now.

You can be sure that if any wrongdoing was done in investigating Trump as a candidate, or as President, (no matter how egregious or outside the bounds of Constitutional protections it was) it will be defended as necessary for the protection of our Constitution.

Democrats will claim that there was evidence to believe that Donald Trump was colluding with Russia and that the Obama administration actors would not have been performing their constitutional duties unless they initiated a counter-intelligence operation against Trump.

Hindsight may suggest that they were wrong but no one should believe that their actions were illegal considering the risks to our constitutional republic with Trump as President.

They were just patriots protecting our constitutional system. Ignore the fact that the "evidence" relied on appears to have been the Hillary Clinton funded Steele Dossier and media reports that were based on leaks from the Obama administration. In effect, they used their own leaks to justify the investigation.

Of course, it was all done to protect our Constitution.

My advice. Beware those who cloak themselves in the Constitution.

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