Four more years

Posted on by Fritz Pettyjohn

I’m running out of time. Babbie looked it up on the internet and says I have 8.8 years left. I think I’ll live till I’m 90. Time will tell.

So, my reaction to the election was relief. Having Harris as President would have been extremely depressing four years, and I thank God I don’t have endure it.

I believe DeSantis could have beaten her more soundly than Trump did. For every Trump lover there’s a Trump hater. You didn’t have to like him to vote for him, and that’s what a lot of people did. Including me. But a lot of people, some my friends, could never stomach voting for Trump, and refused to do it.

Just like in 2016 the media nominated Trump. Back then, they had the Hollywood Access tape, demonstrating that he was a sexist pig. They could have released that tape before the Republican Convention and torpedoed his nomination. Instead, they saved it for the general. It leaked early, and Trump had a few weeks to recover, and won in spite of it.

This year the Democrats used lawfare to make him a martyr. People were so pissed off at this that they switched from DeSantis to Trump. At the beginning of this year Democrats were in desperate shape. All the signs pointed to a landslide loss, so they decided to gamble on another Trump nomination.

Oops! In their defense, they were desperate.

The people who hated Trump before the election still do. They always will.

Trump knows this, but he doesn’t care. He’s just going to kick ass and take names. He doesn’t have to worry about his approval rating.

This country will remain divided for four years. Then, we can all hope, we’ll get a President everybody can get behind. Then we’ll get an honest to God landslide. A new political coalition will form. It will include Trump haters.

The next four years will reveal who will lead this next phase of American renewal. Unlike the Democrats, we have a deep bench.

Gaetz

Posted on by Fritz Pettyjohn

Lisa Murkowski is itching to vote against firebrand Matt Gaetz as Attorney General.  She may not get the chance.  If the new Senate leadership recesses the Senate for three days, Gaetz can take office as a recess appointment, circumventing the confirmation process.  It remains to be seen if Senate Majority Leader Thune will play ball.

The Gaetz appointment is a giant middle finger to those in the Justice Department who have harassed Trump since before he took office in 2017.  It started with the Russia hoax, and it’s been going on, nonstop, for eight years.  The final straw came when the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, including searching Melania’s bedroom, purportedly looking for evidence of a crime.    

Trump will not allow this invasion of his wife’s privacy will not go unavenged.  Heads will roll down the entire change of command which was responsible for this travesty.  If these people are smart, they’re already packing their bags.

If Thune refuses to allow a recess appointment , it’s highly unlikely Gaetz can be confirmed.  If that’s the case Trump’s replacement appointment, regardless of who it is, will look reasonable by comparison.  

Gaetz also serves to distract attention from other controversial appointments, such as Hegseth for Department of Defense.  

The Department of Justice is infused with arrogance.  These people think their loyalty is to their ideas about the law, not to the democratically elected President who appoints them.  As the execrable James Comey put it in the title of his book, they have “A Higher Loyalty”.

But the courts decide the law, not the Department of Justice.  They are the President’s lawyers and are obliged to advocate for him.  President Trump, with his appointment of Gaetz, is putting these people in their place.

It’s pleasant to think that this is just the beginning of four years of fearless leadership.

The Art of the Deal

Posted on by Fritz Pettyjohn

A few years before I was born, a very long time ago, we lost the Supreme Court. It had defied Franklin Roosevelt, and blocked parts of the New Deal, but its defiance didn’t last long. Roosevelt failed in his 1937 attempt to pack the court. That failure effectively put an end to his New Deal improvisations, but the Court got the message, and soon adapted itself to the new political reality. It would no longer stand in the way of the expansion of the federal government. For 80 years it stood by while the constitutional limits on federal power were ignored, even ridiculed. This all culminated when the Court, and Chief Justice Roberts, gave its blessing to Obamacare in 2012.

Then things began to change. Gorsuch replaced Scalia in 2017, but that left Roberts as the swing vote. What tipped the scales were Kavanaugh in 2018, and Barrett in 2020. These were Trump appointments, but the real credit goes to Leonard Leo, and the Federalist Society.

As a candidate in 2016 Trump was, at first, flippant about who he might put on the Court. He even suggested his sister might make a fine Supreme Court Justice. This attitude horrified conservatives. We remembered George W, Bush, and his ridiculous appointment of Harriet Miers, his Deputy Chief of Staff. She was forced to withdraw, but the lesson was learned. Presidents could make really stupid appointments.

Trump was impulsive, and capable of getting it into his head that someone like Judge Judy belonged on the court. We asked ourselves, what were the chances that he would appoint real constitutional conservatives? It all came to a head with the death of Justice Scalia.

Trump was smart enough to realize that there were a lot of traditional conservatives who were very reluctant to vote for him. When Leanard Leo and the Federalist Society offered him a deal, he took it. He agreed that he would only nominate candidates who had been vetted, and recommended, by the Federalist Society. Trump made that deal, and as a result a critical bloc of voters supported him. He kept his end, and we got three outstanding conservatives as a result.

The Federalist Society is dedicated to, of all things, federalism! When the time comes, and these Federalist Society Justices are asked to rule on the epitome of federalism – Article V – we can hope they will be sympathetic.