She was an early and consistent opponent of WBD, just about the only Republican pundit who has been. I still don't read her much.
Today, however, she has a column that bears thinking about:
In other words, if the president can pardon anyone who defies court orders to enforce constitutional protections, then those constitutional protections are rendered meaningless. It is a creative argument, but then, this president has created new and disturbing challenges to democratic norms.In 1953-4, Eisenhower was too afraid to criticize Joe McCarthy in public but (we now know) did engineer a secret cabal to control him. It wasn't effective but it was an attempt.
Unless some such secret maneuvers are being undertaken against Trump, nothing whatever WBD can do will disturb the Republican Party sufficiently to resist. We now know that. The enbrace of the racist, court-defying Arpaio makes it clear to even the blindest that Trump has no intention of complying with the laws or of respecting constitutional boundaries.
The nice thing about taking the obvious for one's field is that it's hard to go wrong.
The behavior of some of his top cabinet members, the Generals included, tell me they believe to have something of a containment circle over Trump. And it's been somewhat effective, up to now.
ReplyDeleteMaybe. Dan Drezner would not agree, at least as regards Tillerson.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/08/31/why-secretary-of-state-rex-tillerson-should-resign/
As a student of history (as they are not), I would advise them to study the career (and the end) of Schleicher.