Writes Megan McArdle, in "When the rule of law becomes rule of lawfare/Friday’s Bolton raid and the rebuke of Trump’s $500M fine show what happens when justice is not impartial" (WaPo).
Bad ideas... and they did absolutely nothing to stop Trump. But what if they had stopped Trump? That was the biggest of the ideas, and it might have worked. McArdle asserts that now — now that Trump is back with a vengeance — now we should see that neutral principles are best. If only the lawfare hadn't backfired, it would have been delightful to go on ignoring them.
Delightful for whom? Who are we talking about? Not McArdle herself. She's reporting on what she'd "been hearing" for 10 years. She also says "it was depressing watching so many people on the left thrill to this abusive lawfare." Well, "so many people on the left" think a lot of awful things, including that the so-called "rule of law" is a con.
Did the ordinary liberals of America buy into the fight-fire-with-fire approach? Let them take responsibility, not merely gesture at the "many people on the left." But it's not as though admitting you were wrong now will carry any weight. You played a game of tit for tat and now you're sad that the game continues.
ADDED: Trump plays openly, on Truth Social, just yesterday:
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204 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 204 of 204Ronald J. Ward said:
"My point hasn’t changed: every one of these controversies starts with Trump’s own actions. Seeing him only as the victim flips cause and effect on its head."
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So taking out a loan secured by his properties and paying that loan back with interest, is a predicate for "Tush" James---who ran for office on a platform to "get" Trump--- to go after him for commercial fraud?
And for a rabid judge to fine him $500 million in penalties?
"every single one"............SNORT
You're obviously not up to this "troll" thing, since your positions are so manifestly stupid.
Hold your cards, everyone — I think we have a BINGO. Achilles finally addressed my argument. According to him: Democrats invented Russian election interference (despite the criminal charges that proved otherwise), paid E. Jean Carroll to fabricate a dressing room rape, and pretended Trump hoarding classified documents was a crime (ignoring that he refused to return them even after a federal subpoena). Ukraine and Georgia? ‘Perfect calls.’ Proud Boys on ‘standby’? Totally fine. January 6? Just a friendly tour group. In his telling, Trump never did a single thing that merited even a raised eyebrow.
So why all the whining for me to rehash four years of Trump’s chaos line by line? My point is simple: his actions drew scrutiny — cause and effect. Calling every raised eyebrow ‘Stalinism’ doesn’t erase the cause. It only shows how allergic you are to admitting scrutiny was inevitable.
And there’s a reason nearly every credible historian ranked Trump #45 as the second-worst president in U.S. history. The only thing keeping him from dead last was his one real skill: persuasion. But that skill was spent spinning chaos into devotion, not leadership
You played a game of tit for tat and now you're sad that the game continues.
No, they didn't "play tit for tat", they just played "tat".
Hillary Clinton didn't go to jail under the Trump Admin, despite committing crimes involving classified material that justified time in jail (conversations between the Sec State & President are "inherently classified". Every time she sent a message to President Obama over her private email server, she knowingly committed a crime).
The Dems were NOT "responding" to Trump's actions, they were simply violating the hell out of norms like they've always done.
Trump's response now IS "tit" for the Dems' "tat". The ONLY norm Trump ever violated first was the way he talks.
And if you (generic you, not Althouse you) think that justifies you violating actual behavioral norms, then you are a monster
Bad ideas... and they did absolutely nothing to stop Trump. But what if they had stopped Trump?
Then they still would have been bad ideas.
But Democrats are fundamentally stupid and amoral people who care about nothing but power, and are incapable of thinking ahead. Otherwise MOST of the things they've done over the last 70+ years they would have refrained from, on the grounds that it would set bad precedents
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