July 25, 2017
If we have been wondering why Congressional Republicans would continue to subject the country to the whims of a mercurial, ignorant and profoundly stupid man, the ACA repeal vote scheduled for today provides an answer. While we were distracted by the escalating chaos in The White House, diverted by palace intrigue stories of “Spicey’s” aggrieved resignation and mesmerized by the arrival of “The Mooch,” Mitch McConnell has been busily plotting to deprive 22 million Americans of healthcare and provide more expensive, worse health coverage for 200 million more who don’t have the good fortune to be members of Congress. He has convinced John McCain literally to risk making his head explode by flying from his sick bed in Arizona to Washington, D.C. for today’s vote. The irony of a man with taxpayer funded healthcare rushing to the Capitol to deprive us of ours is lost on no one. The heartlessness of a Majority Leader that would ask a colleague to risk their life in pursuit of such a savage end has been insufficiently noted. For all of their faux piety, McConnell and the Congressional Republicans are on an express elevator to Hell.
Meanwhile, vacant, criminal dilettante, Jared Kushner, borrowed the presidential podium yesterday to deliver a statement calculated to put the swirling questions surrounding his involvement in “L’Affaire Russe,” to rest. Typical of those who mistake inherited wealth for intellect, Kushner’s statement raised more questions than it resolved. As Zack Beauchamp detailed in “Vox,” on everything from his efforts to set up a back-channel with Russian Ambassador Kislyak to his meeting with Sergei Gorkov, Putin crony and head of sanctioned Russian financial institution, Vnesheconombank, Kushner offered explanations that can easily be checked by Robert Mueller’s team of topflight investigators and expose him to legal jeopardy.
Of course, Kushner’s vulnerability depends on whether legal jeopardy even remains an issue for Trump family members. As his increasingly unhinged tweets show, Trump is well aware of his pardon power, and determined to use it, potentially even to pardon himself. Those of us with a November 7, 2016 worldview patiently explain that the Constitution doesn’t work that way and that our racist rube fellow citizens elected a President, not an emperor. However, with our studiously indifferent Congress determined to turn a blind eye to all manner of malfeasance, there may be no functional difference.
Now is the time that we must choose to believe in the enduring power of our Constitution. In fact, we must insist on it. If our representatives abdicate the power afforded to them by Article I to serve as a brake on the exercise of unchecked power, we must seize the power afforded to us by the First Amendment to demand a government that works to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty,” rather than working to line its own pockets. Never forget that the power comes from the people. Now is the time to use it.