The new “get over it”
by digby
After the GOP successfully leveraged Jeb Bush’s Florida machine and daddy Bush’s Supreme Court to hand George W. Bush the election in 2000, the Republicans and many in the media taunted angry Democrats with the phrase “get over it.” It was a nice little strategy to disempower the opposition and it worked. Now they’re doing the same thing with the Barr Letter and are taking it to a new level. It’s as if after the 2000 recount the Republicans decided to investigate the Democrats for trying to steal the election.
Josh Marshall tweeted this in a series of tweets this morning and I think it succinctly outlines the monumental bad faith of the Republicans:
Through all the kicked up sand and misdirection, it’s worth remembering the importance of trying to make judgments on the basis of accepted practices, credited fact-finders, not pulling out completely contradictory arguments wily nily and judging people’s credibility by whether you like what they say. Some basic history. The Mueller probe began when a recently confirmed Trump appointee (with a strong but Republican reputation) Rod Rosenstein created a special counsel investigation. He, in turn, appointed Robert Mueller, a Republican with a strong reputation. Mueller’s team spent almost two years investigating the issue and produced a report. We still haven’t seen that report or what it says. We’ve seen about 80 words out of more than 400 pages.
We have a new Attorney a General who auditioned for the job with a memo stating that both parts of the probe, the 2016 election and 2017/18 obstruction, lacked merit. He now says neither the public or the congress will ever see the whole report. Both we will see versions of the report redacted at his sole discretion.
But the report allegedly closes the matter. So we need to move on to examining whether the investigation pre and post Mueller broke the law. This even though that question has already been investigated by an inspector generals probe. Not only this, but the full dimensions of the investigation were all visible to Mueller and it would have been in his power and his responsibility to either prosecute or refer wrongdoing he found there, which he apparently did not.
Let’s refer back to the earlier point: Mueller is a lifelong Republican albeit a fairly apolitical one who was appointed by another lifelong Republican of a somewhat more political cast, Rosenstein. Trump’s critics who are mainly but not exclusively Democrats and independents have accepted that the President is being investigated by people of his own party. A report was produced on that basis. And they would reasonably like to see what is in that report. Yet what we see is an effort to hide and move past that report and move on to seeing whether any efforts to investigate the President were themselves illegitimate.
This notwithstanding the fact that there’s never been any evidence that this is so (quite the contrary) and the question has already been investigated multiple times by Republicans.
Step back and you see a full context, investigate people who threaten the President again and again until you find something or simply wear them down. Or, take practices that are established practice in the past and decide they are actually illegitimate.
Maybe FISA warrants are too easy to get. But those who want the freest use of surveillance and law enforcement powers generally can’t really credibly become ACLUers for Trump only.
Again, we have an investigation run by Republicans. We have law enforcement and CI practices that are apparently good enough for everyone else, just not for Trump. Let’s see the report.
Remember, all special prosecutors since Archibald Cox have been conservatives and all but Jaworski were members of the Republican Party. If a Democrat is being investigated the Republicans insist that they must be investigated by a member of the Republican party. When a Republican is being investigated the Republicans also insist they be investigated by a member of the Republican party. Even that isn’t good enough for Trump, the most corrupt and inept president in history. He has taken it to a new level insisting that he should be above all oversight and investigation, no matter who is conducting it.
As Josh Marshall observes, the new approach is to use the power of the presidency to purge the government of any independent agency which might threaten him and empower his own propaganda while demeaning the free press.
.