The Flynn Affair Shows What It Will Take For Trump To Restore Constitutional Government

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David Danford:

We are three weeks into Donald Trump’s presidency, and there are already “yuuuge” things happening. This is not to say that President Trump is doing huge things. It is the reaction to him that is so impressive. It displays the scope of the fight required to restore the Constitution.

While Trump’s policy prescriptions are controversial to the side that just lost the election, he is doing what people elected him to do as the chief executive officer and obeying the Constitution. None of this matters to Trump’s opponents. If they cannot win elections, they will use any power they can to stop him, no matter the cost.

Courts’ rulings against the immigration executive order are an example of this. So is the recent “political assassination” of Mike Flynn. The former was an unfortunate tactic we have seen before and could have predicted. The latter is something new. Both of these events show us what is at stake in our republic and the course of the fight that is ahead of us.

We Don’t Understand the Constitution Any More

The courts have been leading a coup against the Constitution for quite a while, although it has come in small doses over a long time. The rise of the Deep State to take out political opponents elected by the people is more dramatic and even more dangerous. While neither judges nor intelligence bureaucrats are elected, Congress can at least constrain the courts under the Constitution, the courts operate in the light of day, and individual rulings only have as much teeth as the Congress and the executive allow.

Intelligence bureaucrats have real teeth, however, and they can do serious damage to citizens and political opponents behind the scenes and before anyone notices. Despite this, members of Congress and legal activists argue that the president needs to go along to get along. He needs to work with the courts an avoid confronting the intelligence agencies, lest they fight back. Our modern sensibilities say government should be run like a business and the president should not use a “go-it-alone strategy for fast-tracking his agenda.”

But the president need not grovel before the courts nor work with Congress to do what the law already prescribes for him to do. Trump is not running into our nation’s systems of checks and balances. He is running into our nation’s current and unconstitutional understanding of government. As political scientist John Marini makes clear, “America has a problem, not because of our Constitution but because constitutionalism as a theoretical doctrine is no longer meaningful in our politics.

Too many people understand our government to be made of “co-equal branches” that are “separate but equal.” But our branches of government are not co-equal, because they are not equal. Ironically, it was an overactive court that once pointed out that separate means “inherently unequal.” Granted, each branch has “a will of its own” and shares a “common commission” from the people so no one branch is over the others, but the branches have different and unequal powers that make them more or less dangerous to the people and the Constitution.

This confusion about the separation of powers comes from our progressive sensibilities. We separate powers to promote limited government and avoid tyranny. Progressives, however, do not seek limited government, and they have long held that the separation of powers is an outdated concept that hinders the government required for the modern age. This progressive understanding is destroying our republic.

Conservatives Need to Figure Out What’s Going On

The progressive notion of a “living Constitution” has made self-government very challenging for individuals for decades. Now we are seeing what some argued months ago: the very notion of republican government and our ability to choose who governs us may be lost. Those who call themselves “conservatives,” especially “constitutional conservatives,” need to wake up to this reality.

Admittedly, Trump is not the champion of the Constitution many of us would have liked. He does not talk about the Constitution much. Like Reagan, he only invokes the Constitution when it suits his purposes. Even so, he seems to be restoring it without saying the word constitution. Perhaps we need less talk about the Constitution and more action to restore it.

It may be hard for conservatives that believe Trump is nothing but a con-man or a blundering buffoon. As to the former, Trump actually appears to be as he says he is, a man of his word. To the latter, I don’t know how anyone could argue it after he has won so much. But even if one must believe Trump is stupid, he has chosen to fight alongside those who are clearly not and who have a deep thoughts about politics.

If this does not convince you, as a thought experiment try assuming President Trump is a serious, intentional, and disciplined man who understands what is going on. Plenty of people assume the opposite, so it cannot hurt. Constitutional conservatives need to understand there are three essential political fights required to restore the Constitution.

Dismantling the Administrative State

The first and most urgent political fight to restore the Constitution is the fight against the bureaucrats of the administrative state. Trump has inspired a growing “resistance” inside of the executive branch that is a threat to the Constitution. Call them “career civil servants” if you want, but bureaucrats are really progressives who despise the Constitution. They are schooled in and professionally raised in progressivism to work within a structure built by progressivism.

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Trump will be needing hurcules to help out in cleaning up the mess Obama left behind

Nor is this confined to our National Security Agencies

Obama Appointees Preventing Mattis From Rebuilding The Military, Says Armed Services Chair

Holdovers from the Obama administration in the Pentagon are hampering efforts to fix the military’s major readiness problem, leaving Secretary of Defense James Mattis alone in his efforts to properly equip U.S. forces, according to the chairman of the House Committee on Armed Services.

“I am concerned that … to fix these problems [it] is going to take a lot more money, and yet a lot of the folks who are coming up with the budget to fix them are the same people who have been fighting every step of the way against our efforts to fix these problems,” said Chairman Mac Thornberry during a Capitol Hill press gaggle Thursday.

Thornberry noted that Mattis is “alone” in his attempts to alleviate the readiness problem at the Pentagon. He added that there are some people, including “political appointees and others from the Obama administration,” who have been “trying to deny there was a problem.”

The Vice Joint Chiefs of Staff warned the armed services committee last week that the lack of military readiness across all branches was putting the military’s capabilities at risk. Their reports revealed, among other substantial problems, only three of 58 Army brigade combat teams are ready for combat, while fewer than half of the Air Force’s aging aircraft fleet is ready to fight.

Thornberry emphasized that Mattis can’t solve the problem by himself, and that the slow process of filling defense roles at the Pentagon is preventing the Trump administration from fulfilling its promise to rebuild the military. He also said the the issue goes beyond budgets, and that the U.S. has a moral obligation to support the troops.

“I think it is wrong, immoral to ask men and women to go carry out a military mission for which they are not fully equipped, and fully trained, and fully supported,” said Thornberry. “And whether that is a counter-terrorism operation or a freedom of navigation operation in the south China sea, or whatever; if you ask somebody to go out there and risk their lives, you darn well better give them the best and fully support them.”

Trump’s New EPA Secretary Has Been Confirmed — And Employees are Vowing Acts of Defiance

Now, Scott Pruitt has been confirmed, despite the best efforts of his new employees to derail that confirmation. The Boston Globe reported:

Employees of the Environmental Protection Agency have been calling their senators to urge them to vote on Friday against the confirmation of Scott Pruitt, President Donald Trump’s contentious nominee to run the agency, a remarkable display of activism and defiance that presages turbulent times ahead for the EPA.

Many of the scientists, environmental lawyers and policy experts who work in EPA offices around the country say the calls are a last resort for workers who fear a nominee selected to run an agency he has made a career out of fighting — by a president who has vowed to “get rid of” it.

“Mr. Pruitt’s background speaks for itself, and it comes on top of what the president wants to do to EPA,” said John O’Grady, a biochemist at the agency since the first Bush administration and president of the union representing the EPA’s 15,000 employees nationwide.

The EPA was very active while working under the supportive Obama administration, generating thousands of new regulations.

Hyperbole aside, the reality is that Pruitt can’t simply begin his new job by firing a lot of people. Former EPA administrator and New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman notes that he could move them into other positions, however:

Whitman predicted a standoff between career employees and their politically appointed bosses, noting that Pruitt will be blocked by legal Civil Service protections from immediately firing longtime employees but would likely be able to retaliate against them in other ways, such as shifting them to different jobs. The showdown could embolden the White House and Congress to change federal Civil Service laws.

Although the preemptive strike by EPA staff to prevent Pruitt’s confirmation failed, the union plans to continue resisting whatever President Trump and Pruitt have planned for them:

We plan on more demonstrations, more rallies. I think you will see the employees’ union reaching out to NGOs and having alliances with them,” he added, referring to nongovernmental organizations. “We’re looking at working with PR firms.

Some EPA staffers have been engaging stealth activity to combat the president’s agenda, prompting Republican lawmakers to request a probe into the agency’s internal practices.

These malcontent EPA politically aligned workers forget one problem they haven’t considered. While Scott Pruitt may not be able to fire them, President Trump can both fire them, or if need be, close down the department.

Yet, even some Democrats are not supportive of former President Obama’s decision to become an unelected “Activist-In-Cheif”

Leaked Emails: Dem State Leaders Think Obama’s New Organizing Army is ‘Grade A Bullshit’

It is difficult to overstate just how enraged state Democratic activists and leaders are with Organizing for Action (OFA), the political and community-organizing army that grew out of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns.

The nonprofit, which functions as a sort of parallel-Democratic National Committee, was founded to mobilize Democratic voters and supporters in defense of President Obama’s, and the Democratic Party’s, agenda. Instead, the organization has drawn the intense ire, both public and private, of grassroots organizers and state parties that are convinced that OFA inadvertently helped decimate Democrats at the state and local level, while Republicans cemented historic levels of power and Donald J. Trump actually became leader of the free world.

These intra-party tensions aren’t going away, especially now that OFA “relaunched” itself last week to protect the Affordable Care Act, boost turnout at congressional townhalls, and train grassroots organizers gearing up for the Trump era.

“This is some GRADE A Bullshit right here,” Stephen Handwerk, executive director of the Louisiana Democratic Party, wrote in a private Democratic-listserv email obtained by The Daily Beast. Handwerk was reacting to news of OFA’s post-election retooling, which was shared “without comment” to the group of state-level Dems by Crystal Kay Perkins, executive director for Texas Democrats.

“It also to me seems TONE DEAF—we have lost over 1,000 seats in the past 8 years… all because of this crap,” Handwerk continued. “Let’s get through the next two weeks—but then we gotta figure this out and keep the pressure on. WOW.”

Others on the thread shared these sentiments.

“Yes, it sure is,” Katie Mae Simpson, executive director for the Maine Democratic Party, replied. “OFA showed up in Maine, organized a press conference on saving [Obamacare], with one of our Dem legislative leaders speaking, all without ever mentioning that they were in state and organizing. They hired someone I know, which is somewhat helpful, but my god, they don’t have a very good alliance-building process.”

Such grievances, though expressed privately, are nothing new among state Democratic Party leadership.

“[With] all due respect to President Obama, OFA was created as a shadow party because Obama operatives had no faith in state parties,” Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb told Politico last week.

“I love and adore everything about President Obama except for OFA,” South Carolina Democratic Party chairman Jaime Harrison (who is also running to chair the Democratic National Committee) said at a recent DNC “future forum,” according to The Washington Post.

This never ending crybaby anti-Trump activism, is getting old and annoying very quickly, and I think it is hurting the Democratic party far more that it is helping.