Do you remember the USA, the nation that was established by a constitution?

Perhaps you imagine it is still in existence?

It is not.

Glenn Ellmers describes the post-constitutional republic that America has become. He writes at American Greatness:

The constitutional republic created by our founders no longer exists. Most everyone on the Right seems to agree with that—though we differ about how deep the rot is, and whether we are now living under a new regime that is essentially different in kind, not merely degree.

Most of us also agree that we want to restore the American founders’ principles and institutions. …

But how exactly we recover the founders’ constitutionalism is a question no one has been able to answer with any specificity. …

Elections—and therefore consent and popular sovereignty—are no longer meaningful.

This is the big one, and in a way, everything flows from it. It is helpful to break it down into two discrete pieces.

First, even if conducted legitimately, elections no longer reflect the will of the people.

Set aside for the moment any concerns about outright fraud and ballot tampering. The steady growth of the administrative state since the 1960s means that bureaucracy has become increasingly indifferent to—even openly hostile to—the will of the people over the last half-century. A clear majority of Americans, including Democrats (at least until recently), has been demanding and voting for comprehensive immigration reform, including strict control of the border, for decades. The Republican establishment in Congress—which made its peace with the deep state some time ago—has made numerous promises to fix this problem, and broken them all, always finding a reason for “amnesty now, enforcement later.” The decision about who gets to be part of the political community was the basic principle of popular sovereignty in the founders’ social compact theory. To the degree that the elites have simply ignored the American people on this point, neither the United States as a nation nor its citizens can still be considered a sovereign people.

Of course, that is only one obvious example. In thousands of other ways, the federal bureaucracy ignores the deliberate wishes of the American people. The regulators, administrators, and policymakers in the alphabet soup of federal agencies set the rules and impose their collective will as they see fit. Regardless of who the people repeatedly elect to reform the system, those politicians and their agendas come and go; the permanent government persists.

Yet even this has not been enough for the leftist oligarchy. Trump’s election in 2016 scared the establishment into taking even more extreme measures to prevent “unacceptable” electoral outcomes. Which leads to the latest antidemocratic development.

Second, elections now represent “manufactured consent”.

Mollie Hemingway showed in her excellent book, Rigged, that the technically legal though unscrupulous maneuvers undertaken by the Left—including legacy and social media propaganda and censorship, last-minute changes to election laws, and private money poured into partisan “voter education” efforts—were more than enough to alter the outcome of the 2020 election.

This new reality became even clearer this month. The highly manipulative practice of ballot harvesting—which reached new lows of cynicism in the recent midterms—makes a mockery of elections as an expression of popular deliberation and rational will. … The Democrats didn’t beat back the red wave because the voters chose them; they won by choosing their voters. It is hard to see how elections under these circumstances are substantially different from the artificial voting rituals practiced by the “people’s republics”, i.e., communist regimes of the 20th century.

The idea that the founders’ institutional arrangements still obtain is a nostalgic fiction today—especially the idea of checks and balances based on federalism and the separation of powers.

As a treatise on constitutional government, The Federalist is and will always be a classic work of political science, with many enduring insights. … [But] what Publius describes about the functions of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches—as well as the countervailing powers of the states—has almost no connection with current reality.

Congress doesn’t write, the executive does not enforce, and the judiciary does not interpret the laws. Power and wealth have become massively centralized in Washington, D.C. Federalism, judicial review, executive authority, the legislative process, appropriations—none of this remains operational in a way James Madison would recognize. And now, the country’s most powerful corporations are in active collusion with the federal security apparatus to enforce the regime’s authority. That’s practically the definition of fascism. …

Political competence, in the traditional sense, is becoming irrelevant. 

Ignore the current spat between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. A bitter nomination fight would only benefit the opposition. What’s important to note is that any attempt by a Republican president to control his own (nominal) employees in the executive branch would require talents that neither Trump nor DeSantis has demonstrated. In fact, if confronting today’s administrative state, it isn’t clear how even a Lincoln or a Churchill would have exercised effective statesmanship. We are in a post-constitutional, even a post-political, environment.

For all his flaws, Donald Trump at least recognized that defending the sovereignty of the people (the most fundamental and meaningful definition of Americanism) meant striking at the legitimacy of the administrative state, especially its assumptions of rational expert knowledge. Trump correctly perceived that mockery and derision were effective, if indelicate, tools for challenging this hubris.

But Trump erred grievously in thinking he could accomplish everything he wanted on his own. The art of the deal doesn’t work when the other side holds almost all the cards. Trump underestimated this situation. And he was simply foolish and vain in thinking he could overcome it on the strength of his abilities alone and ignoring his duty to fill every available appointment with people loyal to—and willing to fight for—his agenda.

A DeSantis presidency, meanwhile, would have to recognize that while executive experience as a governor was once the ideal training ground for the Oval Office, this is much less true today. To whatever degree overweening bureaucracy has infiltrated the states, the governor of Florida does not have to deal with a national security machine that sets its own foreign policy, abuses classification rules, and engages in shameless leaking to a compliant national press; a Justice Department that weaponizes the resources and capacities of the FBI to undermine an elected president; and a veritable nation of unfireable (for now) subordinates long habituated to regarding themselves as the true representatives of the public will.

Yet DeSantis has shown better instincts than Trump in backing up his words with actions, especially in his willingness to punish powerful opponents, like Disney, when they needed it.

It remains to be seen how either man could translate his virtues, and overcome his shortcomings, to exercise the power of the presidency creatively, with cunning, subtlety, and ruthless determination, in ways that pursue the goals of constitutionalism even while understanding that the old forms no longer apply.

Moreover, any president seeking to restore constitutional government would need large majorities in both houses of Congress committed to reform far more seriously than the current Republican leadership seems to be. This partnership would not involve traditional legislative log-rolling, but would require an alliance in a quasi-political street fight, probably leading to a constitutional crisis, to bring the bureaucracy to heel. It is a big ask to expect congressional leaders who would even understand how this would occur, let alone have the will actually to do it. Massive challenges await at every turn. …

By carrying on with retail politics and accepting the current situation as normal, people on the Right are now legitimizing and strengthening their enemies. 

This may be the hardest pill to swallow.

Our current woke oligarchy becomes more fanatical every month, yet instead of getting weaker or provoking a popular backlash, it seems to grow ever stronger. In part, this is because the elites have maintained a semblance of institutional normalcy. No matter how extreme its policies—COVID lockdowns, chemical or surgical castration of children, open borders—the ruling class carries on with a kind of constitutional kabuki theater. Citizens (or rather “people”) vote, Congress meets and passes “laws”, the president pontificates and signs documents. It is largely just a performance; it certainly doesn’t resemble government functioning as the founders intended. But it looks close enough to the real thing to persuade many people that the situation, if not perfect, is at least tolerable. There is just enough veneer of Our Democracy™ to keep most citizens from acting on their dissatisfactions and justified fears.

But the longer this goes on, and the more phoniness people are willing to tolerate, the more the whole rotten edifice becomes accepted as legitimate. At some point, the people will have consented, by their acquiescence, to anything the regime decides to do. Soon, one suspects, our left-wing masters won’t find it necessary to keep up the charade.

That’s why I disagree with those who say we should simply go tit-for-tat with the Democrats. Julie Kelly and Scott McKay, among others, believe that Republicans need to adopt the Democrats’ ballot harvesting techniques in order to beat them at their own game. In the same vein, Ned Ryun argues, “If conservatives and Republicans want to win again, we had better adopt the only-ballots-matter approach at least in the short term or die. . . . This is now the modern-day political battlefield in America, the rules of the game. One can either howl at the moon about it or beat the Left at it.”

Look, I get it. Nevertheless, this strikes me as a bad idea—practically, theoretically, and morally.

• • Practically, we can never hope to match the maniacal zeal of the Left, which invests millenarian expectations in politics, and is thus always driven to do whatever it takes to win. Acknowledging this does not mean giving up and letting them win. But it does mean recognizing that in a race to the bottom, the Left will always get there first. And having fought tooth and nail to see who can go lower, what do we do when we reach the bottom?
  • Theoretically, this means we will be participating in altering the essential meaning and purpose of elections. Representative, deliberative democracy will become the technocratic accumulation of votes—a clickbait contest that rewards whichever side can best wage computerized demographic warfare.
  • Morally, we will then lose any claim that we are trying to recover genuine self-government. If the argument is that we need to descend to the Democrats’ level in order to gain power, one might ask, “Why not just cut to the chase and skip the empty, meaningless process?” If power really becomes the only object, and neither side really believes in consent, then the entire pretense will fade away soon enough anyway.

Accepting, even “in the short term”, the regime’s authority to perpetually rewrite the rules of the game is the true surrender. They will always win if we repeatedly acquiesce to their legitimacy, chasing after what they define as normal on their terms. Worse, there won’t be a republic in the long term worth having.

I know that what I am painting here is a pretty bleak picture. But while it reveals a rough road in the short term, I don’t think it necessarily dictates long-term despair, in part because there are certain truths about political life that the Left cannot change.

Ellmers then “offer[s] some ideas about what has not changed, which might provide some grounds for optimism”, including “human nature”! But with that section of his article I disagree. I don’t think human nature or anything else he points to provides grounds for optimism.  Quite the contrary.

Ashli Babbitt was not the only person murdered in the Capitol by the police on January 6, 2021.

She was shot dead in cold blood by police officer Lt. Michael Leroy Byrd, and Rosanne Boyland was beaten to death by another police officer, badge number L359.

Julie Kelly reports at American Greatness:

In 2018, after a local news crew filmed Ryan Nichols rescuing dogs abandoned by their owners after Hurricane Florence, the former Marine appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. Not only did DeGeneres commend Nichols’ longtime work as a search-and-rescue volunteer, she donated $25,000 to the Humane Society in his name and gave Ryan and his wife, Bonnie, a $10,000 check to pay for the honeymoon they had missed the year before so Ryan could assist rescue efforts in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

But instead of heading to Hawaii, the Nicholses used the generous donation to buy a rescue boat. With his Marine buddy and best friend, Alex Harkrider, at his side, the pair has participated in “dozens of hurricane rescues and disaster relief efforts” according to Joseph McBride, Nichols’ attorney.

Three years after his appearance on the DeGeneres show, Nichols was featured on another program, but this time, Nichols spoke from the fetid confines of a political prison in the nation’s capital. And instead of telling a heroic story of saving dogs drowning in rising flood waters, Nichols told Newsmax host Greg Kelly a harrowing tale of what he saw at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

“We showed up in good faith . . . to protest the election results but never would have imagined we would encounter the horrors that we did on the west terrace and in the tunnel that day,” Nichols explained to Kelly in a phone interview on November 9. “When I saw women being beaten and in distress, my rescue instinct kicked in and I knew I had no choice but to help rescue them.”

Nichols’ account is detailed in an appalling new court filing that confirms what American Greatness has reported for months: on January 6, D.C. Metro and Capitol police assaulted nonviolent protesters with explosive devices, rubber bullets, tear gas, and in some cases, their own fists and batons. A tunnel on the lower west side of the Capitol building became a dangerous—and, likely for at least one protester, deadly—battle scene as police viciously attacked American citizens on the “hallowed” grounds of the U.S. Congress.

Nichols, of Texas, has been behind bars since his January 18 arrest; he sits in the D.C. jail specifically used to house January 6 detainees, charged along with Harkrider with multiple offenses including assault of a police officer, civil disorder, and unlawful possession of pepper spray.

So, what on Earth turned two decorated veterans with a history of helping people in crisis into “insurrectionists” who “attacked” police officers? It was what they saw when they approached the tunnel around 3 p.m. on January 6. “They hear people screaming in pain and crying for help—women and old men are bloodied and injured,” McBride wrote in a motion seeking Nichols’ release. “Training and instincts kick in and they head to the tunnel …”

McBride viewed three hours of surveillance video captured by Capitol security camera—the extensive system captured at least 14,000 hours of footage that the Justice Department and Capitol police are desperate to keep away from public view—and described for the first time what happened inside the tunnel where a combination of D.C. and Capitol police, ostensibly, were stationed to prevent protesters from entering the building:

“[Just] after 4:00 pm, Ryan is sprayed multiple times by an officer standing on a ledge in the tunnel,” McBride wrote in a November 1 filing. “He is also separated from a woman who stood next to Ryan at different times at the Western Terrace. She was middle aged and nice. Ryan promised to keep an eye on her. The woman was wearing a red shirt and a MAGA hat. Shortly thereafter, officers begin terrorizing people in and around the tunnel. People are screaming and getting crushed. There is a pile of human beings stacked on top of each other at the tunnel entrance. People are trapped and there is nowhere to go.”

McBride focused on the conduct of one officer in particular, with badge number L359 and wearing a white shirt. The unidentified officer begins “to beat a man for no apparent reason . . . [and] beats the man so badly that the man crawls over to the woman with the MAGA hat.”

At this point, according to the security video, the officer turns his sights on the woman. “Then for reasons that no fair minded or decent human being will ever understand—[the officer wearing the] White-shirt turns his attention to the woman and begins to pulverize her,” McBride explained. “The weapon this officer appears to be using is a collapsible stick, designed to break windows in emergency situations. This stick is neither designed nor to be used against another human being.”

For the next several minutes, between 4 p.m. and around 4:15 p.m., the officer in the white shirt relentlessly beats the woman; McBride furnished a literal blow-by-blow account in the court document. (The time stamp is based on a three-hour video clip, not time of day.)

2:07:01: White-shirt hits the woman in the head with his baton five times in seven seconds;

2:07:22: The woman is sprayed directly in the eyes by officer on ledge;

2:07:24: White-shirt uses his baton to hit another person with a mask on;

2:07:30: The woman and others are still being maced and hit by White-shirt and ledge officer;

2:07:38: Blood is visibly coming out of the woman’s head and can be seen on the white hoody;

2:07:55: White-shirt and other officers are randomly assaulting people for no apparent reason;

2:08:17: White-shirt makes his way to front of crowd again and targets woman who is attempting to escape;

2:08:30: White-shirt spears and pokes the woman with his baton about the head, neck, and face so as to inflict maximum pain;

2:08:46: White-shirt beats the woman with his baton striking her eight times in six seconds;

2:09:13: White-shirt punches the woman in the face, with his left-hand, landing five punches in five seconds, with all of his might;

2:09:35: Another officer joins in and starts beating the woman in the head with his baton, landing twelve strikes in seven seconds;

2:10:47: If you pause the video here, you will see the welts on the woman’s face along with a disturbing look of helplessness;

2:10:54: Officers push the woman around the tunnel;

2:10:55: The woman briefly collapses;

2:11:13: White-shirt follows the woman to the front of the tunnel and beats her with his baton as she’s falling;

2:11:24: The woman is taken to the back of tunnel and is never seen again.

These assaults occurred about 10 minutes before the lifeless body of Rosanne Boyland was seen lying on the ground, just outside the tunnel. Most of the violent brawls between police and protesters take place near this tunnel in response to what McBride calls “overwhelming police brutality and misconduct”. 

Body-worn camera footage released by the courts and seen here show Boyland on her side not moving as her friend, Justin Winchell, begged for help. “She’s gonna die!” Winchell tries to scream while holding on to Boyland. He turns to the crowd. “I need somebody, anybody,” he pleads. “She’s dead! She’s dead!”

McBride then confirms another report by American Greatness: “Roseanne (sic) Boyland’s body is dragged into the tunnel at 4:30 p.m., and is never seen again.” In September, I reported that, according to his congressional testimony, Officer Aquilino Gonell appears to be the person who handled Boyland’s body after she died, dragging her inside the building where he is then met by Officer Harry Dunn.

Dunn told the January 6 select committee in July that he carried an “unconscious woman”, presumably Boyland, into House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s office.

The D.C. Medical Examiner’s Office concluded Boyland died of a drug overdose but that autopsy result is highly suspicious considering the video footage and first-hand accounts of others about what happened to her that afternoon.

Joe Biden’s Justice Department, with compliance by D.C. District Court judges, are keeping several eyewitnesses to the terror in the tunnel behind bars awaiting trials delayed until at least the middle of 2022. Nichols’ hearing for bond is set for December 20, at which point he will have been incarcerated for more than 11 months.  He has no court date.

The acquittal of self-defender Kyle Rittenhouse on charges of homicide which should never have been brought against him, has revived hope that the rule of law will not be abandoned in America – despite many signs that the very idea of it has already been rejected by the present government – and even some hope that equality under the law may return as a firm principle.

If that were to happen, the policemen who killed Rosanne Boyland and Ashli Babbitt, and those who gave them their orders, and those who are keeping innocent people in prison under cruel conditions for “staging an insurrection” which they did not, may yet be made to answer for their crimes.

Under the new humanitarian, antiracist, diversity-equity-inclusion administration, certain people who committed crimes are not criminals.

They would be criminals if they’d committed the crimes in the day time. But they committed them at night, so there are no charges against them.

Merrick Garland, nominated by the Biden regime to be Attorney General, was answering questions at his confirmation hearing in the Senate when he explained this novel principle of law.

Daniel Greenfield recorded the exchange:

“Let me ask you about assaults on federal property in places other than Washington, D.C. Portland, for instance,” Missouri Senator Josh Hawley said. “Do you regard assaults on federal courthouses or other federal properties as acts of domestic extremism, domestic terrorism?”

Garland said his personal view on the matter lined up with the statutory definition of terrorism.

“My own definition, which is about the same as the statutory definition, is the use of violence or threats of violence in an attempt to disrupt democratic processes,” Garland replied. “So an attack on a courthouse while in operation, trying to prevent judges from actually deciding cases, that plainly is domestic extremism, domestic terrorism.”

But Garland drew a distinction between an attack on a government property at night and the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“Both are criminal but one is a core attack on our democratic institutions,” Garland added.

Greenfield goes on to quote a description of an attack on a government property at night. Because it occurred at night, it was not, according to Merrick Garland, extremist or terroristic, or a “core attack on our democratic institutions”:

“It’s scary. You open those doors out, when the crowd is shaking the fence, and … on the other side of that fence are people that want to kill you because of the job we chose to do and what we represent,” said a Deputy U.S. Marshal who has been protecting the courthouse for weeks. …

“I can’t walk outside without being in fear for my life,” he said. “I am worried for my life, every time I walk outside of the building.”

Small pods of three to four protesters dressed in black circulated in the crowd, stopping every few minutes to point green laser beams in the eyes of agents posted as lookouts on porticoes on the courthouse’s upper stories. The agents above were silhouetted against the dark sky as dozens of green laser dots and a large spotlight played on the courthouse walls, projected from the back of the crowd.

Thirty minutes later, someone fired a commercial-grade firework inside the fence. Next came a flare and then protesters began using an angle grinder to eat away at the fence. A barrage of items came whizzing into the courthouse: rocks, cans of beans, water bottles, potatoes and rubber bouncy balls that cause the agents to slip and fall.

The firework came whizzing over the fence so fast that the agent didn’t have time to move.

It exploded with a boom, leaving his hearing deadened and bloody gashes on both forearms. Stunned, with help from his cohorts, he stripped to his boxer shorts and a black T-shirt so his wounds could be examined and photographed for evidence.

He told his fellow agents he was more worried about his hearing than about the gouges and burns on his arms.

By the end of the night, five other federal agents would be injured, including another who got a concussion when he was hit in the head with a commercial-grade firework. One agent was hospitalized. Several agents have lingering vision problems from the lasers.

But the memo is in. Give these guys a pass. …

Some of the most serious charges dropped include four defendants charged with assaulting a federal officer, which is a felony. More than half of the dropped charges were “dismissed with prejudice,” which several former federal prosecutors described as extremely rare. “Dismissed with prejudice” means the case can’t be brought back to court.

Much like handing out immunity agreements to Hillary Clinton’s associates and then destroying their data, in a case in which no charges were brought.

There’s a new regime and it stands with its terrorist allies in Portland, in New York, and everywhere else. Prosecutors and law enforcement officers who stand up to them, know that they’ll be targeted by the new Biden regime. So it’s over. Just like it was with the Weathermen. The molotov cocktail lawyers will get a plea deal in New York. And slaps on the wrist or dismissals will be handed out to all the boys and girls, who will go on to academic positions and to political careers.

And also under the new humanitarian, antiracist, diversity-equity-inclusion administration, a man who committed no crime is a criminal:

Julie Kelly gives this example at American Greatness:

[Eighteen year old] Bruno Joseph Cua … sits in jail in Washington, D.C. awaiting trial for his involvement in the January 6 Capitol breach, the youngest of the nearly 300 people so far arrested under the U.S. Justice Department’s “unprecedented” investigation into the events of that day. Unlike tens of thousands of protestors who occupied the nation’s capital for months … Cua will be given no mercy. …

 For the first three weeks following his arrest, Cua languished in solitary confinement before being transported to a jail in Oklahoma City where he shared a cell with 30 other inmates. His family, like the families of dozens of January 6 defendants, has been denied the opportunity to post bail.

And there’s a chance the teen will remain behind bars until at least May when his trial is scheduled to begin. …

According to federal prosecutors, his rants on Parler make Bruno a national menace. “This small sample of public social media posts on the platform Parler by the defendant in this case evinces a full picture of who this defendant really is: a radicalized man with violent tendencies and no remorse for his participation in the violent insurrection that occurred at the U.S. Capitol,” assistant U.S. Attorney Kimberly Paschall wrote in objection to Bruno’s pretrial release.

Further, Bruno’s refusal to accept that Joe Biden fairly won the presidency is more proof he should stay in jail, prosecutors say. “The offenses committed by the defendant illuminate characteristics inconsistent with a person who could follow orders given by this Court, or indeed, any branch of the federal government. The defendant has espoused disbelief in the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election, and violently acted on that world view.” (The government, both judges and lawyers, routinely cite a defendant’s doubt about last year’s election as evidence of wrongdoing.)

The criminal case against Bruno, however, is weak.

What did he actually do? After attending the Trump rally, he walked to the Capitol among hundreds of others,  and there …

He climbed on scaffolding outside the Capitol building and went into areas he should not have entered. 

Does his conduct merit the necessity of a first-time offender spending months in jail even before he has a chance to defend himself?

Absolutely not. …

The Cua case has nothing to do with seeking justice for the melee on January 6 or appropriately prosecuting one of the participants. It has nothing to do with making sure the nation’s capital or Cua’s hometown remains safe.

It has everything to do with punishing a family who dared to show up in support of Donald Trump and dared to question the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

And that is why we do not believe that Bruno Cua would be treated any differently by the new humanitarian, antiracist, diversity-equity-inclusion administration if he had climbed on scaffolding outside the Capitol building and went into areas he should not have entered at night rather than in the daytime.

Nor do we believe that the rioters, arsonists, and murderers who attacked government buildings, law enforcement officers and fellow citizens at night would be treated the way Bruno Cua is being treated if they had committed their crimes in the daytime.

Merrick Garland’s real unspoken definition of terrorism is “supporting President Trump”. And it “lines up” with the definition of the new humanitarian, antiracist, diversity-equity-inclusion administration. 

The vile people now governing America long to do to Donald Trump what they are doing to Bruno Cua.

This boy is being maltreated not because of anything he has done but because they have chosen to make him a proxy for the great man he admired and supported, and they hate.

“If Biden becomes president …” The words chill us to the bone, but we cannot now avoid uttering them.

And we cannot avoid hearing Trump supporters comforting one another by saying, “You don’t need to worry too much because we will still have the Senate. The Democrats won’t be able to put any of their dreadful domestic policies into effect because the Republican majority there will stop them.”

Suddenly, they trust the Senate Republicans!

Is there reason to trust them?

Julie Kelly writes at American Greatness:

In February 2020, Mitt Romney became the first U.S. senator in history to vote to convict the president of his own party. Despite a laughable impeachment case concocted by House Democrats and clear evidence of corruption tied to the Democratic presidential candidate whom the impeachment effort was designed to protect, Romney nonetheless supported the removal of Donald Trump from the White House.

“My faith is at the heart of who I am,” Utah’s junior senator claimed while working up tears from the Senate floor on February 5. “The grave question the Constitution tasks senators to answer is whether the president committed an act so extreme and egregious that it rises to the level of high crime and misdemeanor. Yes, he did.”

As we all know, President Trump had done nothing wrong, let alone an extremely egregious wrong. He was accused – to put the case briefly – of bribing a Ukrainian government to investigate whether Joe Biden had bribed a Ukrainian government to protect and enrich his son Hunter Biden and through his son, himself. President Trump had not done it. Joe Biden had done it. And Joe Biden’s party impeached Trump for doing it.

But Romney didn’t just pontificate about the president’s behavior. In that very same soliloquy, Romney defended the actions of both Joe and Hunter Biden.

“Taking excessive advantage of his father’s name is unsavory, it is not a crime.” Romney concluded, therefore, that since no crime had been committed by the Bidens, in his opinion, the president’s request that Ukrainian officials look into their shady business dealings was “political.”

With that, Mitt Romney secured his place in political history for something other than losing two campaigns for president.

In many respects, Romney is the poster child for the present-day Republican U.S. Senate: pandering, feckless, disloyal, and weak.

Yes, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s record on confirming federal judges, including three Supreme Court nominees, is laudable. But the four-year reign of the Republican Senate under a Republican president is a shameful account of missed opportunities, broken promises, and straight-up subversion of Donald Trump. During one of the most fraught, destructive periods in American history, Senate Republicans squandered rather than wielded their immense political power.

Longtime pledges to reform immigration laws and repeal the Affordable Care Act were cast aside. When the president used his legal authority to attempt to secure the southern border in the spring of 2019, a dozen Senate Republicans vetoed his emergency order.

Rather than stand up to the Democratic Party’s race hustlers, Senate Republicans—including McConnell—condemned the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor as racially motivated even when evidence contradicted those claims. A few Republican senators sponsored legislation to replace Columbus Day with Juneteenth as a sop to the Left.

As lawless thugs tore down statues of America’s Founders and Antifa mobs occupied swaths of major U.S. cities, some Republican senators didn’t even bother to attend a public hearing about Antifa’s ongoing threat to the country. President Trump often was the lone voice defending America’s history and ideals; following his riveting July 4 address at Mount Rushmore, where he unapologetically confronted America’s domestic enemies, Republican Senators were silent.

Of course, there’s no greater example of the Senate Republicans’ abdication of power than its complete and total failure to hold accountable any of the perpetrators of so-called Obamagate for orchestrating the biggest American political scandal of all time.

Republicans knew early on that the Steele dossier was garbage; Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and the late Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) were fully aware that the dossier was political propaganda sourced from a foreign operative paid by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee but legitimized its use as the pretext for the collusion scam.

Rather than put a stop to the phony Trump-Russia collusion plotline, Senate Republicans played along with their Democratic counterparts. Every single Republican senator supported the appointment of Robert Mueller, a Beltway crony and BFF of James Comey. The Senate Judiciary Committee, headed by Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) then by Graham, performed no oversight of Mueller’s destructive probe despite holding the purse strings. When the president justifiably expressed his frustration at Mueller’s “witch hunt”, instead of defending the president, Senate Republicans vowed to “protect the Special Counsel”. 

At the same time, top Republicans did nothing more than write stern letters and give Fox News interviews threatening to “get to the bottom” of the real scandal. Subpoenas were blocked; criminal referrals were ignored by the Justice Department; public interrogations were canceled or delayed until public interest waned.

The flagrantly corrupt chiefs of the country’s law enforcement and intelligence apparatus, rather than face jail time or at least a public tribunal of sorts similar to what House Democrats did to Donald Trump and his loyalists for two years, continue to demean the president on cable news shows and on social media.

The current composition of the Republican-held Senate is a tower of Jello, a quivering, wavering ship of fools, an embarrassing collection of dunces, dupes, and paper tigers.

We’ll call that a string of metaphors rather than a mixed one and give it a pass, because most of the Republicans in power are cowards, fools, dunces, and dupes of their more cunning, more determined, utterly unscrupulous Democrat colleagues.

For example, in a pre-Election Day tirade, Senator Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) insisted the president would cause major GOP losses as voters across the country rejected his antics and tweets. “We are staring down the barrel of a blue tsunami,” Sasse told supporters.

Now that is a mixed metaphor. A prize one. Proof that Republican Senator Sasse is a dunce. An inability to talk sense simply reveals an inability to think sensibly.

And he was wrong about the imminent arrival of a “blue tsunami”:

Not only did Republicans hold the Senate but they’ve picked up at least six House seats with more victories predicted.

Even now, as the president is fighting widespread election irregularities and suspected fraud, he is on his own. “Where is the GOP?!” Eric Trump tweeted Thursday afternoon. “Our voters will never forget . . .” (Late Thursday, Graham announced he would donate $500,000 to Trump’s legal defense fund.)

It’s pure folly to think this Republican Senate will act as a bulwark against a Biden-Harris Administration. Armed with a slim majority, Senate Republicans undoubtedly will play footsie with their former colleagues under the solemn banner of “bringing the country together”.

There is no reason to believe Senate Republicans won’t sign off on a Democrat-backed coronavirus relief package that includes a partial bailout of bankrupted blue states, a lite version of the Green New Deal or at least “climate change mitigation” legislation, expanded Obamacare coverage, more flexible immigration laws, and a variety of taxpayer-funded goodies from college debt forgiveness to some form of racial reparations.

McConnell already is ready to work with Biden on his cabinet after Democrats made life a living hell for every Trump appointee. … McConnell is signaling to Team Biden that he will approve “centrist options” and fight the nomination of any progressive candidates. But that won’t fly with the Democratic Party base; Biden owes them. And once the media goes scorched earth on Republican senators who won’t acquiesce, don’t be surprised when they cave.

Oh, and the little matter of Hunter Biden and the overwhelming evidence of the Biden family’s pay-to-play schemes with hostile foreign entities? Don’t hold your breath waiting for any follow-up investigation. Both Graham and Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) recently refused to commit to issuing a subpoena for the younger Biden.

“And this election did not give the Democrats power,” Ben Shapiro tweeted Thursday morning. “Biden’s most progressive priorities are DOA in a McConnell-run Senate.”

Only people who haven’t paid close attention to a McConnell-run Senate believe that to be true. Do they really believe folks like Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Ben Sasse and Lindsey Graham will hold their ground against Biden? Do they really think Mitt Romney won’t attempt to carve out some “Conscience of the Senate” role that lets him find common ground with Biden and Harris for the “betterment of democracy” or some nonsense?

Pure fantasy.

I hope I’m wrong, but I doubt I am. Listening to the deafening silence of Senate Republicans this week only reinforces my cynical analysis. If you’re disappointed with McConnell and company now, just wait until next year if Joe Biden is president.

If the Democrats get control of the presidency, the House and the Senate, they will do everything they can to stay in power permanently, and America is all too likely to become a one-party state. Ambitious politicians who call themselves Republicans now will happily become Democrats. It will not be a big change; they have been conniving with their opponents for years.

The Republican Party needs to be taken in hand by new young members who will make it energetic, effective, dedicated, and extremely aggressive – starting now before we even know for sure who the next president will be.

“The Resistance” has drawn up plans to get Donald Trump out of the White House and Joe Biden into it, whether that’s what the electorate wants or not.

Here’s an extract from the document outlining their plans. It needs to be read in full.

Preventing a Disrupted Presidential Election and Transition

In June 2020 the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) convened a bipartisan group of over 100 current and former senior government and campaign leaders and other experts in a series of 2020 election crisis scenario planning exercises. TIP organized four scenario exercises to identify risks to the rule of law or to the integrity of the democratic process in the period between Election Day (November 3, 2020) and Inauguration Day (January 20, 2021), with an eye toward mitigation and/or prevention of worst-case outcomes.

In one scenario, the exercise posited that the winner of the election was not known as of the morning after the election and the outcome of the race was too close to predict with certainty.

In another, the exercise began with the premise that Democratic party candidate Joe Biden won the popular vote and the Electoral College by a healthy margin.

In a third, the exercise assumed that President Trump won the Electoral College vote but again lost the popular vote by a healthy margin.

The fourth exercise began with the premise that Biden won both the popular vote and the Electoral College by a narrow margin.

One scenario they didn’t visualize – being simply unable to believe it could possibly happen? – is an overwhelming victory  for Trump: his winning the popular vote and the Electoral College vote, both by a huge margin. 

That is the result that the electorate must deliver if we are to stand any chance of avoiding more and worse violent chaos (carried out in the name of democracy and the rule of law).

Although that outcome is apparently unthinkable to the planners, yet they fear it. Their fear shows in the extreme lengths they are preparing to go to if Trump wins by a narrow margin or by Electoral College votes but not the popular vote. These include an attempt to break up the union by secession of the three far-left western states, California, Oregon, Washington, which would unite to form a new country, “Cascadia”.

Julie Kelly writes at American Greatness:

Consider yourselves warned, America. …

A vengeful and well-funded coalition of Trump-hating insurrectionists are prepping the battlefield for a post-election civil war, threatening not only to extend the 2020 election into 2021 but to weaponize every tool at their disposal to make sure Joe Biden assumes the presidency even if President Trump legitimately wins.

The very same sore losers on the Left and NeverTrump Right who still refuse to accept the results of the 2016 presidential contest are preparing to do whatever it takes—including promote the secession of western states—to force the removal of Donald Trump next January.

Their plan, using the intentionally misleading title, Transition Integrity Project, outlines alarming and wholly unconstitutional responses to a number of post-election scenarios. Once upon a time, I would’ve read such a far-fetched document through tears of laughter. But considering the desperation and depravity of the people involved, this terrifying roadmap needs to be taken seriously.

Organizers, including Clinton loyalist John Podesta and NeverTrump leader Bill Kristol, have been playing war games for the past few months, plotting how to deploy media, government, and public armies to install Biden no matter what. Their scorched earth strategy rests on two factors: the use of widespread mail-in voting, intended to delay the official result so they can manipulate the outcome while stoking civil unrest until Republicans cry uncle, and the notion that if he loses, President Trump will claim the Democrats stole the election, a legitimate possibility that this plan only serves to further validate.

The four options described in the report, ranging from a Biden landslide to a slim Trump victory, would propel a constitutional crisis which our already frayed populace is ill-equipped to endure …

Teams of imaginary players, representing both campaigns and supporting interests, explored each potential result. (Kristol recently bragged on Twitter that he played the role of President Trump.) Bad guys include Attorney General William Barr; good guys include Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah).

“In the scenario that most closely mirrored the 2016 election results (e.g., the Democratic candidate wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College), Team Biden pushed to overturn certified results in states with Democratic Governors,” the participants previewed.

To buy time as they harvest Democratic ballots in tight contests after Election Day, the TIP operation will harness support from all living former presidents and anti-Trump Republicans such as Maryland Governor Larry Hogan to urge patience from the public in the name of “election integrity”. Faith leaders will call for calm even as Democrats stoke unrest; in order to involve corporate America in their fight—which shouldn’t be a heavy lift—anti-Trump forces will initiate nationwide work stoppages and strikes.

“Team Biden almost always called for and relied on mass protests to demonstrate the public’s commitment to a ‘legitimate’ outcome, with the objective of hardening the resolve of Democratic elected officials to fight and take action.” (The group at one point envisioned at least 4 million Biden supporters taking to the streets with warnings of “violent skirmishes and vandalism“.)

Those Democratic elected officials, according to the plan, include the governors and legislatures of swing states. One scene may have accidentally revealed the makings of a false flag operation after November 3 if Michigan is the deciding state.

“A rogue individual destroyed a large number of ballots believed to have supported Biden, leaving Trump a narrow electoral win,” the group imagined. “The Governor of Michigan used this abnormality as justification to send a separate, pro-Biden set of electors to DC.” …

The teams also developed a battle plan if Trump wins Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. The Biden campaign would demand a recount based on accusations of “voter suppression”. In that scenario, “governors in two of the three (Wisconsin and Michigan) sent separate slates of electors to counter those sent by the state legislature“.

If that happens, the plotters predict, it would prompt “a breakdown in the joint session of Congress by getting the House of Representatives to agree to award the presidency to Biden based on the alternative pro-Biden submissions sent by pro-Biden governors.” January 20, 2021 would arrive with no clear winner, raising the specter of military action.

Only one scenario allows for a Biden loss, but any concession would involve a constitutional shakedown. The Biden campaign wouldn’t admit defeat until it “negotiated hard for permanent structural reforms” including long-desired Democratic Party goals such as eliminating the Electoral College and approving D.C. statehood.

Keep in mind, these are the same folks who routinely accuse the president of violating “constitutional norms”, and therein lies the gist: since Trump allegedly shreds the Constitution and rule of law, they argue without evidence, then his foes are justified in doing the same. …

The Biden team may encourage California, Washington, and Oregon to secede and form a new country—Cascadia—unless Congressional Republicans agree to “structural reforms to fix our democratic system” proposed by President Obama.

Romney plays a starring role in one anecdote; while Trump disputes a slim Biden victory, Romney successfully convinces three Republican senators to declare Biden the victor. “As it became evident that the Biden victory would be certified, Senator [sic] Majority Leader Mitch McConnell privately signaled to several Republicans they could support Romney’s cross-the-aisle effort, recognizing that moderate Republicans are more likely to prevail in 2022.”

Trump’s woes, however, won’t be over after Biden replaces him in the Oval Office. TIP organizers will push to have the president and members of his administration charged with unspecified crimes.

Some observers have compared the Transition Integrity Project’s operation to a “color revolution,” a coup-like strategy the United States uses in other countries to foment civil unrest and oust hostile foreign leaders. (Revolver News has a few excellent pieces detailing the comparison and the players involved.)

But what’s most alarming about TIP’s plan is the deep pockets behind it. All of this could be written off as the grudge fantasies of political activists still mad about 2016 except it is backed by some of the wealthiest people in the world. … including George Soros, Pierre Omidyar, Mark Zuckerberg, and the Rupert Murdoch family.

On further consideration we wonder: is more and worse violent chaos unavoidable even if Donald Trump wins in a landslide?

After all, it is not the will of the people that matters to these planners of chaos.

Only their will to power matters to them.

President Trump acts as the framers of the Constitution intended the president of the United States to act. But many of his civil servants want him to be a mere figurehead without power over their actions and decisions.

In fact, this president has achieved enormous gains for America by his personal efforts, persisting despite unprecedented moves on the part of civil servants, Democrats and the media to hamper and even incapacitate him.

Most recently he has compelled NATO members to pay more for the defense of the West – the ostensible reason for the organization’s existence. Until now, the US has uncomplainingly borne by far the greater part of the financial burden. Now the US is complaining – though still bearing most of the costs. And the president’s achievement, the very change itself such as it is, angers civil servants in the State Department

Julie Kelly writes at American Greatness:

Since 2016, delinquent NATO allies have coughed up an additional $130 billion in new defense spending. Trump also is redirecting NATO’s focus away from Russia and insisting the alliance address more serious threats such as cyber security, Syria, terrorism, and China.

But it’s not supposed to happen this way. Any progress with America’s allies—or enemies—only can be achieved, we are cautioned, through proper channels of carefully constructed diplomatic finesse.

Very important people with very important advanced degrees from very important universities must be involved at every step. Coaxing American allies to stop welching on their debt requires many white papers and think tank conferences and pricey parties at well-appointed embassies.

Before the president speaks with another head of state, polite talking points must be drafted and edited and redrafted and approved by dozens of people with lengthy titles who occupy offices situated along the Potomac River decorated with many impressive diplomas and commendations.

So it’s understandable why people who have been groomed their entire lives to one day serve as the deputy director assistant undersecretary of East Samoan Affairs are a little huffy at the Trump Administration. During her opening statement before the House Intelligence committee, ousted Ukrainian ambassador Marie Yovanovitch warned Congress about a “crisis” at the State Department. No, the crisis isn’t about rising tensions in Iran or the ongoing instability in the Middle East or desperate Venezuelans fleeing to neighboring countries.

The crisis, Yovanovitch emotionally explained, is empty corner office suites and silent cell phones and bruised egos. “Leadership vacancies go unfilled and senior and mid level officers ponder an uncertain future. The State Department is being hollowed from within in a competitive and complex time on the world stage. This is not a time to undercut our diplomats.” Morale, she warned, is low.

But Yovanovitch only told a portion of the harrowing situation besieging Foggy Bottom. There are more “horror stories”, according to GQ reporter Julia Ioffe. No, not horror stories about child trafficking or forced starvation or mass slaughter around the world. Ioffe tells the terrifying account of how one American diplomat in the U.K. got his walking papers from Trump’s appointed ambassador to that country. Trump, Ioffe fumed, is waging war on America’s diplomats!

Lewis Lukens, the deputy chief of mission (yes, his actual title) in London, got the boot after he offered effusive praise of Barack Obama in two speeches last year. In addition to raving about the previous president, Lukens gave Trump a few shots, asking Brits not to give up on the “special relationship” between the two countries.

Lukens was referring to Trump’s criticism of both former British Prime Minister Theresa May and London Mayor Sadiq Khan. In fact, Lukens tweeted his support for Khan a few hours after Trump ridiculed the London mayor for his response to a deadly terror attack in June 2017. Lukens also asked the Trump White House to stop criticizing May. It’s interesting how the diplomatic graces of these self-important envoys don’t ever apply to their American boss.

So Lukens, who worked for Hillary Clinton and helped set up her illicit email system when she was head of Obama’s State Department, got the ax about two years later than he should have. But rather than presenting Lukens’ ouster as a cautionary tale of how a disloyal political hack finally got his comeuppance, Ioffe instead claims his sob story is a “grim illustration of how the administration—through three years of attempted budget cuts, hiring freezes, and grotesquely personal attacks—has eviscerated the country’s diplomatic corps”.

Ambassadorships remain unfilled as are one-third of foreign service positions overseas, according to Ioffe. Recruitment in the foreign service is way down.

“Many of Trump’s political ambassadors have an unfounded belief that government bureaucrats are overwhelmingly Democrats and liberals and working against Trump’s agenda, and that’s just not the case,” Lukens, the Obama appointee, said⁠—presumably with a straight face.

But it’s not just Obama/Clinton loyalists who are living a nightmare. Nicholas Burns, the U.S. Ambassador to NATO under George W. Bush and a frequent Trump critic, cringed at the president’s performance in London this week.

“When interacting with allied leaders, Trump’s predecessors have generally followed a golden rule: Disagreements with friends are okay—but only behind the scenes, not in public,” Burns sniffed. “Trump, in contrast, seems to relish going after the Europeans in full view of the rest of the world.” Burns was aghast at Trump’s “testy” exchange with French President Emmanuel Macron. (In an April op-ed for the Washington Post, Burns called Trump “NATO’s most urgent and difficult problem”.)

But the real crisis for former State Department bureaucrats and their colleagues who have been recycled back to the Ivy League campuses whence they came is not that Trump poses an existential threat to national security; it’s that he poses a legitimate threat to their professional sinecures. If indeed the State Department is being “hollowed out”, no one outside the Beltway or the Kennedy School of Government has noticed.

Trump, almost single-handedly, is addressing the international fiascos left behind by Barack Obama including North Korea, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and China to name a few. He’s pushing our allies to get on board while pulling out of poorly-enforced and outdated international pacts that handicap Americans.

Meanwhile, the global chaos that the diplomatic class predicted under a Trump presidency hasn’t come to pass: “Donald J. Trump is entirely unqualified to serve as President and Commander-in-Chief. He is ignorant of the complex nature of the challenges facing our country, from Russia to China to ISIS to nuclear proliferation to refugees to drugs, but he has expressed no interest in being educated. We fear the damage that such ineptitude could cause in our closest relationships as well as the succor it might offer our enemies.”

That passage was part of a letter signed in September 2016 by 75 “former career ambassadors and senior state department officials”, as they humbly described themselves.

They were wrong then, and they’re wrong now. And there’s no strategic plan or multilateral talks that can save them from their transparent career angst. As Harry Truman observed in his memoirs about the challenges he encountered in recognizing Israel, “The foreign service officer has no authority to make policy. They act only as servants of the government, and therefore they must remain in line with the government policy that is established by those who have been chosen by the people to set that policy.”

Folks like Lukens and Yovanovitch and Burns might not like that reality. But it is they, not Trump, who are the problem.

The teasing question is: what are they – the US government’s servants who deal on Americans’ behalf with other countries – for, what are they on the side of?

President Trump is on the side of America: his slogans are “America First, and “Make America Great Again”. Among his chief foreign policies are: to trade with other nations prosperously for America; to put an end to China’s economic exploitation of America; to be militarily strong against perceived enemies, chiefly Russia and China; to demand that America’s allies pay their promised share of defense expenses; to keep rogue states from becoming nuclear powers or using nuclear weapons if they have them; to maintain friendly relations with friendly nations and ease tension with unfriendly nations; to prevent illegal and subversive immigration.

What is there in all that for America’s representatives and agents to object to?

They did not object to Barack Obama’s foreign policies. They cooperated enthusiastically with him. Among his chief policies were: paying huge sums of money illegally to Iran, an extremely oppressive tyranny, and enabling it to become a nuclear power; appeasing Russia by refusing to honor America’s commitment to provide defensive arms to Ukraine; stealthily supporting the enemies of allied Israel; encouraging illegal immigration; befriending Communist Cuba, another extremely oppressive tyranny; promoting world government through the United Nations and  “climate change”  pledges that would have harmed the American economy; conniving at corruption in foreign governments;  assisting the Muslim Brotherhood, the self-declared enemy of America and the West, to gain power in Egypt, and encouraging Islam generally to spread through the West?

What can be concluded but that a multitude of Americans appointed to serve the interests of their nation, are for tyranny, corruption, communism, the spread of Islam, unlimited immigration, the impoverishment of America in the name of combatting “climate change”, the weakening of America’s defenses, its governance by an international body, and so its dissolution as a free, prosperous, strong, independent nation-state?

The destruction of the Republic. Could there be any greater treason than that?