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Thursday, December 28, 2017

On Trumpeachment

The Omnivore has been leaning away from thinking that Trump would be charged by Mueller--much less impeached--and probably still cannot be removed from office (and, really, at this point, would the Democrats want to?).

Why?

The NRO's former prosecutor, Andrew McCarthy has been saying that Mueller is gearing up to exonerate Trump and charge a bunch of his people with crimes not-related to the campaign. Why? Well, because they charged Flynn with lying to the FBI. He says--and this makes sense--that when you are going after a conspiracy charge, you don't charge your (supposedly) key witness with being a liar--you charge them with the conspiracy. This makes sense. When you charge them with being a liar it's because you are hunting something else--like Obstruction of Justice, maybe--not conspiracy to collude with Russia.

However.

The Omnivore's calculus has changed on this--and not necessarily in a "good" way. What has changed?

The Omnivore has finally seen some legal analysis that makes as much sense as McCarthy's position: that the way that Mueller charged Flynn indicates he is serious--but reveals nothing. If Flynn had been charged with conspiracy to collude with Russia, the analysis said (can't find link right now) it would have given away strategy. It would have put cards on the table. Mueller hasn't--and very, very intentionally hasn't done that. This, to the lay-Omnivore's-eye makes sense at least on par with McCarthy's analysis. So who knows.

The Problem: Conspiracy Theory

The Omnivore's Twitter-Truther-Friend believes there was rampant election fraud in Alabama. He believes this for lots of reasons--but his go-to, and The Omnivore is not making this up, is a video of a Doug Jones volunteer who, in the midst of a Doug Jones-just-got-elected party is asked why he's so excited and says he and his friend volunteers came in from out of state and went door to door motivating people 'and voted.'

For Truthers this is an admission on video--from "the top" (it's a rando dude) that the bussed in activist illegally voted. It's RIGHT THERE ON VIDEO.

He also re-tweet's Bill Mitchell's statement that "election experts" claim there were "massive anomalies" in the AL vote. To be fair, here, Moore probably does believe the vote against him was illegitimate. After all, those black votes should only count 3/5ths and the women's votes shouldn't count at all.

But to the faithful--to the Roy Moore / Trump-voters--nothing can ever be convincing if it is bad about their candidate. They are easily persuaded that one of (apparently) the most stand-up guys in law-enforcement--one whom many Republicans breathed a sigh of relief when he was appointed--is now a political hitman working for the Clintons.

This is #pizzagate-level stupid--but then a surprising number of these guys believe in #pizzagate too.

Even pretty rational Trump-supporters The Omnivore sees online--are convinced that the fix is in because there is no "appearance of fairness" and Mueller was in charge when the Uranium / Iran stuff was happening. So they think he's clearly dirty.

The problem here is that there is no one other than Sean Hannity who could conduct the investigation and come away with proof of guilt. How does The Omnivore know? Simple: the people who believe this are getting their information filtered by Sean Hannity and other people like him. These people can present evidence so as to make a cogent case (by only showing a little piece of it) that Mueller is dirty--so they believe he's dirty.

Does it pass the sniff test? That Mueller has thrown away a lifetime of Republican principle and ethical behavior to go after Trump in illegal and immoral ways? Sure--but for the same reason it's okay for Trump to lie and self-deal and all that: because if you support Trump you have to believe that the deck is cheatingly stacked against him--so it's okay if he cheats back.

In other words: the conspiracy against Trump is baked into the Trump-position from the start. If the game isn't rigged, you don't need Trump. If you like Trump, ergo, the game is rigged.

So when / if Mueller does charge Trump with something--and it meets  a lot of people's standards of reasonability--but not Trump Supporters (which it cannot) what happens?

Well, you know what happens: Trump's popularity dives. Democrats take the House. If they get the Senate--and get Pence indicted in the bargain? Who winds up in the Oval Office?

First Woman President: Nancy Pelosi.

The Omnivore warned y'all.

12 comments:

  1. Why do you choose to mock people you interact with on Twitter? Does it make you feel superior? Or is it just so you can classify all Trump supporters as conspiracy theorists and have an example of one?
    Really sad Omni especially so this time of year. You should have mentioned Andrew McCarthy was an asst DA in NY and no fan of Trump

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    1. The person to whom I'm referring hopefully reads this. This isn't something I haven't said to him on DM's. I think one of Trump's big problems is his elevation of Conspiracy Theory.

      It's pretty pervasive, right? I mean--you're seeing the same things I am, I think.

      -TO

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    2. Difference being you put in DMs. Now they're on your blog and not in a flattering way.

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    3. If I thought this guy wasn't reasonably indicative, I wouldn't be posting it. I think he is. Maybe not to the *degree* he goes to--but certainly in terms of what Trump-support will be like if Mueller *does* charge Trump with conspiracy.

      Do you think differently? Do you think a carefully reasoned argument from Mueller would convince significant numbers of Trump-supporters if, say Hannity wasn't behind it too?

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  2. I see people believing what they want to believe. That hasn't changed. My mom would shut off the tv or change the channel when a newscaster said something she didn't want to believe. The media is so polarized and that's why you may see more of it now. I can't watch CNN because it's non stop Russia. You complain about the alternative media but I think the mainstream media's bias caused the alternative to exist

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    1. Sure--people believe what they want to believe--but part of that belief is that the system is *so* corrupt that they are lying baldly--and completely. That isn't the case: but that's what Trump and Fox are selling.

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  3. When Ken Starr was out for Clinton you had the same smearing going on from the other side. It's politics and always has been. I told you I voted Dukakis. I thought Reagan was an idiot. That's how the media made him out to be. He was a buffoon. Looking back I was the buffoon for believing that nonsense. I watched ABC, NBC and CBS for most of my adult life. Now I'm done with it.

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    1. You can say "it's the same as it ever was." It isn't. You can say "I don't care about AL politics or Roy Moore--they don't apply to me." They do.

      Read this if you haven't: http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2017/12/it_was_good_for_alabama_that_r.html

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  4. I read it. Moore is like a televangelist. He's a nutjob with a following. Look at the race in vs. The Dem candidate went to court to fight the ruling. These people are the exceptions Omni, not the rule. Most of us know there is no Santa and 9/11 wasn't an inside job. You always point out the extremes instead of the majority.
    And it is the same as it ever was. Go back and look at how Starr was beat up by Dems. Look at how Reagan was described by the msm.

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    1. I was a teenager for most of Reagan's terms, and I had a very pro-Republican family, but CNN and other major news networks were 24/7 in the house, and I do not recall Reagan being villified, at all. In fact I think it's a shame that there's no accessibel archive of older news reporting available, as it might shock people to realize how far down the rabbit hole we've gone. My "turning point" was in 1992 when Rush Limbaugh started his show on TV with "America Held Hostage" countdown, which I was subjected to on visits with my grandmother...it was my first evidence of the sort of dirty politics that were truly opening up in the wake of the death of the Fairness Doctrine.

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    2. This piece has some good examples of what I recall
      http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2011/01/the_media_reagan_and_obama.html

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    3. Thanks for the link. There were opinionated individuals and pundits back then (as that article points out) but they weren't an echo in the mainstream media, or even a unanimous opinion (like it seems to be today, where all media communication is divided into love/hate angles exclusively). Watching CNN or NBC back then and hearing a report on, say, Tip O'Niel didn't seem to imply that the reporting was endorsing what was said. Reading a newspaper columnist didn't carry with it the assumption the whole paper was slanted in the columnist's direction. The media today is bifurcated in such a manner that it's hard to disasocciate CNN with Trump Hate and Fox with Trump Love. It wasn't like that back then....people could rationalize the content and source more readily, and the journalism was (I hate to say it, but it's true) actually good. At least by comparison to what we have today.

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