The disloyal opposition …

I expect Democrats to oppose Trump at every turn. I expect them to be angry and frustrated they lost the last election even against such a flawed candidate as Trump. 

But I’ve never seen so many people and groups actively working night and day to overturn the results of a legitimate  Presidential election.

At times, it seems overwhelming. 

Virtually all Democrats, most of the mainstream media, and a great number of establishment Republicans are doing their damndest to force Trump from office.  Then there’s what’s known as the “deep state” – the entrenched bureaucracy in the intelligence community, the State Department, and elsewhere – actively sabotaging Trump at every turn with leaks designed to embarrass him and further the perception that he is uniquely unfit to be President. 

I’ve never seen anything like this. There’s an open insurrection against a legally and democratically elected President by an unholy alliance of Democrats, the media, unelected bureaucrats, and even people in his own party.

They are lined up against him, and using every legal option and often illegal means at their disposal, not because he’s done anything wrong or committed “high crimes and misdemeanors,” but simply because he’s not one of them. He’s an outsider; a barbarian in their view, who doesn’t respect how things have always worked in Washington. 

He’s a clear and present danger to the status quo. 

They’ve decided we need what is, in essence, a coup d’état – something that’s never happened here since the founding of this nation.

Some Democrats have called for Trump’s impeachment, although they can’t seem to come up with any hard evidence to warrant that.  The media have been trying since he won his party’s nomination, and are now near hysteria, to find something, anything, to disqualify him. Some far-left celebrities have even called for the military to seize control.

What they want is to thwart democracy and ignore the will of the millions of people who voted for Trump. That’s especially rich since they claim Trump himself is a threat to our democracy. So they think invalidating a democratic election will help preserve democracy. 

If that sounds crazy it’s because it is. 

Now, that’s not to say some people have had second thoughts after voting for Trump. With the incessant drumbeat of negative coverage of his every move and statement it’s understandable that would have an impact on his approval ratings. Yet he still has the overwhelming support of his base; it may have dipped a bit since inauguration but it’s still high.

That’s remarkable is some ways, not so much in others.

He is a polarizing figure, not because he wants to be, but because that’s how he’s painted by adversaries in the Democrat Party, the media, and among establishment Republicans.

He’s either a monster or someone sent to Washington to kick ass and overturn the political establishment as he would say “big time.” There’s no middle ground.

His supporters still love him for the same reasons his adversaries will always hate him. Trump is challenging and threatening to overturn everything self-serving establishment politicians and bureaucrats have built over the decades.  To Trump, nothing is off the table for review simply because that’s how it’s always been done before.  

All of this would just be political theatre except for one thing: in the process of trying to hurt Trump and force him from office, his adversaries are also hurting the United States, perhaps irreparably. The citizens of this nation, and our institutions, have become collateral damage. 

With the aid of passive-aggressive establishment Republicans like John McCain, Lindsey Graham. Linda Murkowski, Susan Collins, and others in Congress opposed to Trump, Democrats have effectively regained control of the legislative agenda. That’s despite Democrats being the minority in both houses.  Even if Republicans wanted to pull together, which they clearly don’t, Mitch McConnell will never do what Harry Reid did to change Senate rules so Republicans could use their majority to push forward legislation that Trump wants. 

It’s as if the last election had no consequences. 

So repealing and replacing ObamaCare – something millions voted for and Republicans ran on for years – remains mired in petty politics and shameless grandstanding often from the same Republicans who voted to repeal and replace it many times before. Yet when the votes really counted this time, many Republicans turned tail and let it continue. 

The rationale? It’s really a complicated issue, they say. No, it’s really not.

It wasn’t all those times in the past when Republicans voted to repeal it. Sure, they knew Obama would never sign those their bills.  But now that they have a Republican in the Oval Office – Trump – who is eager to sign repeal and replace bills they can’t come up with anything. 

And that’s because they don’t want to. Part of it is because they don’t want to take any risk that some voters – especially those benefitting from the out-of-control expansion of Medicaid, the subsidies for insurance policies, and the silly rule allowing adults up to 26 years old to stay on their parents’ insurance plans – might be upset if ObamaCare is killed. 

But part of it is also to spite Trump. That’s what’s driving Senators McCain, Graham, Murkowski, Jeff Flake, Rob Portman and others who have been opposed to Trump since he ran for office.  They are determined to see Trump fail, regardless of the cost to the rest of us. 

Building the wall – another Trump campaign issue? Nope. Too many big businesses and agribusinesses here like cheap illegal immigrant labor. Cracking down on businesses that employ illegal immigrants?  Nope. See above.  Next?  

Tax reform? Again, the same rationale as healthcare: it’s really complicated. 

And again, no, it’s really not. 

As always, we won’t be getting substantive tax reform anytime soon because Republicans can’t agree on whose ox is to be gored. And real revenue-neutral tax reform means somebody’s will.  Nobody is willing to give up any of the ridiculous tax breaks they’ve enacted to help their deep-pocketed campaign contributors.  Or to scale back all the gratuitous credits and subsidies consumers receive to do what they should do anyway, or could easily afford without these. 

Trump wants to simplify the tax code.  He wants to close business loopholes. He wants to eliminate provisions that make it more advantageous, from a tax perspective, to send American jobs and profits overseas rather than keeping both here.  These were his campaign pledges. 

His supporters voted for that by electing him.  Here again, establishment Republicans in Congress will oppose him. Partly because they don’t want to change anything; partly because of Trump – they are working aggressively to keep him from fulfilling any of his campaign promises.  

They want him gone. They are sandbagging him so he fails.       

And since Republicans are in control of both the House and Senate, that means no meaningful legislation Trump has requested is getting to his desk to sign. Gridlock continues.   

It’s no wonder a majority of voters now would now prefer to see Democrats rather than Republicans in control of Congress. Why not? At this point, and considering what Republicans in Congress have done with their majorities, squandering opportunity after opportunity, would it really make a difference?  

In truth, many Americans and businesses are okay with gridlock in Congress. It works for them; they get to keep the subsidies, credits, and special treatment – no matter how senseless and expensive – they’ve won over the years from Senators and Representatives buying their votes and continued financial support with taxpayer dollars.   

To stop the gridlock and get spending and special-interest influence under control voters in the last election put more Republicans in Congress and a Republican into the Oval Office. 

Has it made a difference? That’s a big fat nope.  Not because Trump hasn’t been trying.  It’s because establishment Republicans despise everything he stands for – change. 

Some things have changed since Trump’s election.  Not for the better, however.

Democrat-appointed Federal judges have violated the Constitution’s separation of powers, as well as established law, to stop or at least delay the implementation of Trump’s lawful executive orders on restricting immigration. Even renowned liberal jurists like Alan Dershowitz – no fan of Trump by any stretch – have questioned the legal grounds for these rulings. 

When is the law not the same law for everyone? It now depends on which Federal judge you get.  That’s incredibly damaging to a nation, and a culture, that prides itself on impartial application of “the rule of law” rather than the arbitrary rule of man.  

Our intelligence community has also lost credibility by becoming more political. 

It’s hard to trust the FBI to be impartial when the then-director of the FBI – Jim Comey – admits he leaked government documents to the media to force the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate a sitting President.  Or when he admits he changed what to call an investigation to appease an Obama-appointed Attorney General.  Then there’s his refusal to bring charges against Hillary Clinton, after telling Congress she mishandled classified information in violation of State Department rules and didn’t tell the truth when questioned about her personal server and missing e-mails, because “no reasonable prosecutor” would either. 

Then there are the leaks from the intelligence community – often of classified information that threatens national security and the ability of any President to govern. These are intentional and belie the desire by some members of the intelligence community to take down Trump.

Leaks are also coming from within the Justice Department itself, prompting Attorney General Sessions to hold a press conference to warn that anyone, in any department, found to have leaked confidential government information will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. 

We’ll see.    

There are additional leaks from the Special Prosecutor’s office supposedly tasked with investigating alleged Russian tampering with the last election. But in reality – according to well-timed leaks – they are also investigating any financial dealings Trump or any of his campaign staff had over the past decade or more, whether or not these are in any way related to Russia.    

Trump is even under assault via leaks possibly coming from within his own administration. Some of these are the result of typical internecine battles in any administration.  But others, such as the release of full transcripts from his private calls with world leaders, which only a handful of people would have had access to, are far more troubling.   

Given what we now know of the intelligence community’s antipathy toward Trump, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that some government agency, or some employee in the NSA or another alphabet intelligence agency, has bugged the Oval Office.  That’s scary. 

When I was much younger, in my college years, a lot of us didn’t trust the government. There were too many shadowy groups doing stuff the government tried to keep secret. Plus, the government routinely lied to the American public – whether about CIA-sponsored coups in other countries, Vietnam, political assassinations overseas, secret experiments on ordinary Americans, or where government money was going and to whom and for what. 

However, I must say that I am now even more concerned with efforts by members of Congress, faceless bureaucrats in the intelligence community, Federal judges, and the media, to delegitimize a lawfully elected President of the United States.

I may not always agree with what Trump says or does – in fact it’s increasingly rare that I do – but millions of people voted to put him in office.  And in our democracy, voters have the sole authority to decide who should be President, not other politicians, bureaucrats, pundits, or the media.

It’s long past time to stop worrying about Russian meddling in our elections. The real threat to our democracy is from our own political establishment and political elites. 

They clearly don’t trust us, the voters; they’ve proven we shouldn’t trust them