Dear Republicans...
Dear Republicans,
I am sorry I have not had time to write sooner, and I only have time for a short missive. But I want you to know that you are NOT going to like living with the precedents that Trump is setting right now for Presidential power.
I know you have convinced yourselves that you will be in power forever. Believe me, I know -- the Democrats thought the same thing after 2020 and even more so after the 2022 election. And I know some of the court challenges at the margin have been nutty -- the injunction against Congress legislatively cutting funding to certain organizations was completely baseless, for example. These crazy court challenges at the bleeding edge have allowed you to convince yourselves -- wrongly -- that all of Trump's actions are perfectly normal and legal and all the legal actions are unjustified. You will not like future administrations firing Republican commissioners from typically bipartisan organizations. You will not like Presidents setting tariff rates (or by extension other tax rates) at will. You will not like a Federal Reserve that is a lapdog to the current administration (perhaps the only thing that can make the Fed worse than it is already). You will not like Presidential powers that trump state and local governments on even the smallest details.
You all need to relearn Coyote's Law -- never give the government (or particularly the President) powers you do not want your worst enemy to wield, because sure as hell your worst enemy will be in charge some day. Yes, I know previous administrations pushed the envelope on Presidential power. Unfortunately, when faced with an opposition party in the prior administration that took a bad precedent from level 4 to an 8, both parties will likely NOT respond by de-escalating but by pushing the 8 up to 11.
first point - most republicans are not pro trump
second point - most republicans are pro trump policies
third point - those two differences are important distinctions
fourth point - most of the perceived pro trump persona is actually a repulsion of woke leftist policy
I agree that the procedural precedents set by trump are bad and will come back to bite.
However, I am not sure how to fix the problem since much of the leftist ideology is engrained into the government and which is heavily dominated by leftists individuals who are employed by the various state and federal government agencies.
Adding to my first point. -
leftists accuse individuals who are opposed to woke policies and being "maga" because they cant defend the woke policies on the merits
I completely agree. Since Obama, every president has ratcheted up the executive orders, and it appears it is going to continue getting worse. It's going to take something really bad to change that arc.
The problem with your position if that you don't differentiate between the various executive actions - virtually all of Trump's actions have been to undo previous executive actions, many of which are of clearly dubious nature at best.
Trump's record in court speaks for itself, as does Obama's and Biden's: Despite the hype, Trump's team has clearly thought out the legal basis for his actions and almost every action of his that has been fought has held up in court. This was NOT the case with Obama or Biden.
i agree that the administrative state should be far smaller than it is today (even though I'd lose my job since I'm part of it) - but putting Trump's actions on the same level as Obama or Biden doesn't help achieve that goal.
Then you need to explain how the various constitutional abominations perpetrated by Andrew Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR failed to become part of the permanent political landscape.
Or maybe they did?
I live in a very progressive small town in New York. After 4 years of Trump's first term were it was nonstop incessant complaining about the President, I aske which powers of the presidency are you writing our Senators & Representatives should be removed from the president. The answer was always silence. The same holds true for Republicans. Perhaps I am just a fool. But I do believe in Coyote's Law.
The general idea I hear is that there'll simply be no more elections in which a democrat could get elected, so, problem solved. /s
Hence, my warning would be: you won't like living in the world where there's an established in-group with a standing army of enforcers who have practiced being above any law for years.
Historical examples show what happens when the authoritarians run out of victims, and it's not pretty.
Glad to see you are writing again!
I've been reading information mostly through things like Substack the last few months (years?) rather than my old Feedly blog feed, but I am probably going to pay more attention to the latter again.
Democrats crowed that the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934, empowering the executive branch to negotiate trade arrangements with other nations, was pragmatic.
I agree with Coyote's Law. An out-of-control executive branch tends to bite both parties on the ass eventually.
40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation
James Carville | May 5, 2009
Dear fascists and people who call themselves liberals, you all have finally unmasked your true selves and even rethuglicans can see that liberals don’t tolerate any dissent and kill anyone who argues with them. We got your number and now we know you for the murderous nazi scum that you really are.
just remember, it was you that took it all the way up to 11.