By Free Republic | Created at 2024-11-17 16:13:30 | Updated at 2024-11-17 18:52:10
2 hours ago
Elections Have Consequences: How Trump’s Second Term Challenges the Political Status Quo
https://amgreatness.com ^ | 11/17/2024 | roger kimball
Posted on 11/17/2024 8:12:03 AM PST by bitt
Democrats assert power after victories, while Republicans compromise—Trump’s 2024 return, with bold Cabinet picks, challenges this norm.
“Elections,” Barack Obama told a group of cowering Republican lawmakers early in 2009, “have consequences.” He then drove the point home by reminding them, “I won.”
In truth, Democrats tend to understand this law of the political universe more clearly than do Republicans.
The usual rule is this: when Democrats win elections, they wield power. When Republicans win elections, they seek, or at least agree to, compromise.
In Suicide of the West, the political philosopher James Burnham quotes the nineteenth-century French writer Louis Veuillot, who summed up the essence of this political dialectic in one elegant sentence. Quand je suis le plus faible, je vous demande la liberté parce que tel est votre principe; mais quand je suis le plus fort, je vous l’ôte, parce que tel est le mien. “When I am the weaker, I ask you for my freedom, because that is your principle; but when I am the stronger, I take away your freedom, because that is my principle.”
For examples of the latter, I invite you to ponder the behavior of Joe Biden’s Department of Justice, especially the behavior of the despicable Merrick Garland, the Attorney General, these last three and a half years.
Had the Democrats won the 2024 election, we would have seen many more examples of this principle in action. Assuming the Dems had kept the Senate, we would have seen them dispense with the filibuster, thus turning that chamber into what outgoing West Virginian Senator Joe Manchin called “the House on steroids.” They would have packed the Supreme Court, adding a few new “progressive” members to the bench to counter the power of Justices like Clarence Thomas. They likely would have imposed term- or age-limits
(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...
TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 2024election
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1 posted on 11/17/2024 8:12:03 AM PST by bitt
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2 posted on 11/17/2024 8:12:20 AM PST by bitt (<img src=' 'width=30%>)
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