From: Dr. R. Andrew Robertson
Columbus
Lee Hamilton worries that a widespread belief that the upcoming election is rigged will hamper the next president’s ability to govern. He may be right, but he is wrong to treat it as an across the board issue. Where, after all, might citizens have gotten this notion of rigging? Could it be from Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who keeps telling them that the system is rigged against them? Or from Bernie Sanders’ assertion that the Democrat Party’s primary was fixed? Could it be because we now know he was right?
When I mention these inconvenient truths to my Democrat friends, the only response they can muster is to change the subject. I suppose it is painful for Mr. Hamilton, too, to consider the condition into which the Democrat Party has fallen, the party in which he spent his own political career. He must do so, though, if he is to be morally serious.
Hamilton is right to assert that economic growth should be a central issue in the current campaign, but he is wrong to suppose that it has not been. House Republicans have produced a legislative agenda entitled “A Better Way” that addresses economic growth, finally winning the “War on Poverty,” and other important public matters. It is a thoroughly considered, integrated plan and it has been introduced into the very heart of this campaign. Lee Hamilton was a House Member. Can it really be the case that he is unaware of this document?
Again, Mr. Hamilton is probably right that the next president will not have a honeymoon period in which she or he will be granted wide legislative consideration, but that won’t be for the reasons he cites. As I write, it looks like Hillary Clinton will be that next president. If so, she will take office with 56 percent of the public (according to one poll) finding her to be untrustworthy.
Mrs. Clinton has worked hard to earn this distrust, and she deserves every bit of it. Here are a few reasons for it:
- Many believe she broke the law as secretary of state by keeping classified information on her private e-mail server
- We now know beyond reasonable doubt that the FBI was corrupted in its investigation of that matter
- She lied to the public about Benghazi
- Her advisers compound a revived anti-Catholicism with an already apparent bigotry toward evangelical Christians.
Daily revelations show that the Clinton Foundation corrupts everything it touches, and the federal government is no exception.
These are recent examples. Clinton family scandals stretch back at least to the 1990s.
Facing such corrupt criminality, the only responsible position for Republicans (and Libertarians, Independents, Greens, etc.) is principled resistance of the sort demonstrated by Mr. Hamilton and his fellow Democrats when the shoe was on the other foot in the 1970s. Lee Hamilton found his voice then. What has happened to it?
