Glenn Reynolds: If You Like the Idea of Checks and Balances and Rule of Law, You Must Vote Trump

An argument I've been making for some time, though I don't think I can take credit for it. I think I got it from somewhere else, too.

Good column making the argument well.

He quotes this piece noting that Hillary Clinton, almost immediately corrupted the State Department upon entering it.

Forget the new dump of Hillary Clinton emails. Forget the phony claims that the missing communications were all about wedding plans and yoga routines. Forget, too, the many requests from Doug Band in which the Clinton Foundation honcho hoped his quos (hefty donations to the Clinton Foundation) would translate into quids (e.g., special access to the secretary).

Forget them all. The most disturbing aspect about the FBI dump may not be fresh evidence of another Clinton lie. The most disturbing thing about Mrs. Clinton’s continuing email drama may be where she’s telling the truth.

Or at least a half-truth. Mrs. Clinton told the FBI it was “common knowledge” at State that she used private email. Agents further quote her as saying she “could not recall anyone raising concerns with her regarding the sensitivity of the information she received at her email address.”

However unseemly the cashing in of the Clinton family, whatever the trampling of the ethics accord the Clinton Foundation had signed with the White House, even apart from the walking conflicts-of-interests that were Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, the much larger stink here is this: Mrs. Clinton was allowed to spend her four years as secretary of state off the grid.

It isn’t so much that Mrs. Clinton set up a personal server so she would not be accountable the way normal political appointees are held accountable. It’s that no one in government stopped her. The inspector general’s report notes that when two IT officers expressed their concern in 2010 that her private email system meant federal records were not being preserved, they were told “never to speak of the Secretary’s personal email system again.”

She has now corrupted the FBI into becoming her own personal Law Enforcement Division. She did that as a candidate, not as an actual president.

What can this crime boss do when she has real power, not just the Foundation's billion dollar slush fund?

Reynolds writes:

And the FBI and Department of Justice have seemed curiously uninterested in going after people for behavior that, in other circumstances, would be a surefire ticket to federal prison.

The reason, of course, is that the civil service, though supposedly professional and nonpartisan, has become a Democratic Party monoculture. Federal employees overwhelmingly vote for Democrats, donate to Democrats, and, by all appearances, cover for Democrats as a routine part of doing their job.

When Richard Nixon tried to weaponize the IRS, top officials at the Service made a stink. Under Obama, the IRS weaponized itself.

And, of course, the press is in the tank for the Democrats as usual. Bad news about Obama and Clinton has been soft-pedaled, with reporters sometimes admitting that they don’t want to help Trump.

So if the choice in 2016 is between one bad candidate and another (and it is) the question is, which one will do the least harm. And, judging by the civil service’s behavior, that’s got to be Trump. If Trump tries to target his enemies with the IRS, you can bet that he’ll get a lot of pushback — and the press, instead of explaining it away, will make a huge stink. If Trump engages in influence-peddling, or abuses secrecy laws, you can bet that, even if Trump’s appointees sit atop the DOJ or FBI, the civil service will ensure that things don’t get swept under the rug. And if Trump wants to go to war, he’ll get far more scrutiny than Hillary will get — or, in cases like her disastrous Libya invasion, has gotten.

Plus, of course, the press will be against him. Right now the press is covering up for Hillary-- the Washington Post is now campaigning to just drop this whole obstruction-of-justice piffle.

Five of the last six popular presidential votes went to Democrats. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 but got in by a hair.

When that stat changes to "six of the last seven" and "seven of the last eight," what do you think the federal bureaucracy will do? They already are almost all liberal government-happy Democrats. Now they'll know that Republicans will barely ever win the Executive, and that the way to guarantee job security is to do... little favors for the Democrats whenever possible.

The #NeverTrumpers -- who are really Hillary supporters; they want Hillary to win, because they think then they can purge the Trumpkins and start winning elections as a party drawing the support of 25% of the country -- seem to think elections are just about intraparty jockeying, palace intrigues, and "principle."

They seem to not notice elections are actually about forming a government and staffing it with actual people, people the president chooses, and then directing (and hopefully restraining) a sprawling bureaucracy that not only can destroy you, but increasingly desires too.

But I guess the important thing is being able to write pungent, emotional opinion pieces for NR.

posted by Ace at 03:22 PM

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