If there’s no personal gain in it, fuck it
The people who ran against Democrats over “defund the police” (never a Democratic Party policy) now want to dismantle the F.B.I., make the Department of Justice a political enforcement tool of a future Republican presidency, dismantle the civil service and more.
Consider it an extension of the profit motive to our entire experiment in popular sovereignty, from regulatory capture to full repurposing the government to serve personal aggrandizement. If there’s no personal gain in it, fuck it.
Now under federal indictment under a Joe Biden administration D.O.J., Donald Trump promised in a speech last week that if elected he would appoint a “real” special prosecutor to investigate the current president and his entire family. Being held to the rule of law is for Republicans an abomination. Holding your enemies to it is delicious.
Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman write in the New York Times:
But by suggesting the current prosecutors investigating the Bidens were not “real,” Mr. Trump appeared to be promising his supporters that he would appoint an ally who would bring charges against his political enemies regardless of the facts.
[…]
Mr. Trump’s promise fits into a larger movement on the right to gut the F.B.I., overhaul a Justice Department conservatives claim has been “weaponized” against them and abandon the norm — which many Republicans view as a facade — that the department should operate independently from the president.
The Heritage Foundation is all in. “[The FBI] needs to be started over from scratch and rebuilt,” says Heritage president Kevin Roberts.
The F.B.I. is the most respected law enforcement agency in the world, handling some of the most critical and complex investigations there are, McCaskill told MSNBC’s Alex Wagner.
“What do these guys think are going to happen if they just fire everybody?” Are they going to recruit Trump fans from rural sheriff’s departments and train them to do this work, McCaskill asked, calling the notion ludicrous on its face. What happens to federal law enforcement in the meantime?
(How many times did Republicans in Congress promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act? How many times did they attempt the repeal with nothing to replace it?)
Republican 2024 presidential candidate, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, agrees with his rival Trump. As part of his “Day One” strategy, DeSantis plans to “end what conservatives see as the weaponization of the justice system” (Real Clear Politics):
[DeSantis] has privately told advisors that he will hire and fire plenty of federal personnel, reorganize entire agencies, and execute a “disciplined” and “relentless” strategy to restore the Justice Department to a mission more in line with what the “Founding Fathers envisioned.”
But his ambitions go beyond bureaucratic restructuring. He wants to physically remove large swathes of the DOJ from the District of Columbia, including FBI headquarters, RealClearPolitics is first to report.
[…]
DeSantis, who takes a broader view of executive authority than is typical of constitutional conservatives and who has told advisors he “doesn’t buy” the idea that presidents can’t fire anyone on the federal payroll.
Scott McKay, a contributing editor at the fringe-right The America Spectator agrees wholeheartedly. The Trump indictment “stinks of a banana republic.” Whichever candidate Republicans nominate, he doesn’t care:
What I care about is that (1) we’ve got to have a Republican nominee who is capable and willing to do the things necessary to win in November 2024 — whether that means harvesting ballots, hiring every lawyer in America to engage in lawfare against local Democrat vote-fraud machines, kissing all the babies, lying to the rubes, whatever — and (2) that nominee, once he wins, had better be willing to take action.
“Action” meaning overhauling and/or dismantling the D.O.J., the Department of Energy, the E.P.A., etc. “The Departments of Education and Homeland Security, the IRS, and practically all the rest of them need major, strategic, and structural reorganizations.” To better comport with their arrogation of personal power, to be sure.
“Weaponization of government” is fine so long as Republican fingers are on the trigger. Or, as President George W. Bush said in perhaps his most famous Kinsley gaffe, ‘If this were a dictatorship it would be a heck of a lot easier… just so long as I’m the dictator. Hehehe.”
The Trump Republican Party represents the triumph of the profit motive (monetary and personal power) over government stewardship. Americans owe a debt of thanks to those who enter government service driven by the mission. Trump, DeSantis, et al. simply ask, “What’s in it for me?”
Founding Fathers, indeed.