If you’re like me, you’ve had it with Democrats allowing Republicans to walk all over them. You’ve had enough of them always wanting to play nice-nice. You’ve had it with them continually bringing a knife to a gun fight. You’ve had it with all that feel good, bipartisan, reaching-across- the-aisle malarkey.
As the canonized former president (Ronald Reagan) once said, “we don’t negotiate with terrorists.” Republicans have long shown us who they are and, as Maya Angelou would say, you need to “believe them.”
Already there are signs that Democrats will go soft on Trump and his cronies once they regain power. Sources are reporting that Biden, forever the institutionalist, is not in favor of investigating and possibly prosecuting Trump for his many proven and alleged crimes.
“He’s going to be more oriented toward fixing the problems and moving forward than prosecuting them,” said one Biden adviser, drawing comparisons to former President Barack Obama’s refusal to prosecute the Bush-era architects and perpetrators of CIA and U.S. military torture.
If the tables were reversed, could you ever imagine Republicans letting bygones be bygones? Could you ever dream of them doing the right thing, even if it meant going against their political self-interest? Never. Well, that’s exactly what Biden seems to want to do. Some unnamed sources are saying Biden believes that pursuing charges against Trump would further divide a deeply divided nation and distract from his administration’s agenda.
Joe, if you go easy on Trump and let him off the hook, you’ll be riling up another base … yours! Polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans want Trump criminally investigated. They don’t want retribution. They simply want justice. Fail to investigate Trump and his cronies, and you will lose a good chunk of those who voted for you.
As Matt Ford, writing for The New Republic, put it, “If Biden truly wants to move the country forward, he needs to show that there are consequences for the misdeeds perpetrated under Trump. Only by revisiting this grim chapter in American history, and by penalizing those who broke the law, can this country move forward.”
So I’m with Rep. Bill Pascrell, chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee.
“In 2021 the entire Trump administration must be fully investigated by the Department of Justice and any other relevant offices,” Pascrell said. “Trump along with his worst enablers must be tried for their crimes against our nation and Constitution. Importantly, any further abuse of the sacred pardon power to shield criminals would itself be obstruction of justice, and any self-pardons would be illegal.”
Look, we either are a nation bound by the rule of law or we’re not. If Trump’s crimes are simply swept under the rug, forgiven for the “good of the country,” we wouldn’t have much of a country, would we?
Yes, it goes against their very nature for Democrats to play hardball. They would rather “go high” when others “go low.” And maybe, in a more perfect world, one ruled by decency and honor, it might be best to turn the other cheek.
But we don’t live in such a world … and haven’t lived there in quite some time.
So, it is high time for Democrats to abandon WWJD (what would Jesus do) and adopt WWRD (what would Republicans do). Sometimes you just have to listen to Trump when he once described his favorite Bible passage (Exodus 21-24): “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”
Photo | thehill.com
