I just read a blog post that seemed intended to sooth conservative fears that President Donald Trump is issuing too many executive orders. I boiled the post into three sentences: One, can a limited-government conservative be happy with the results of Trump's executive actions after questioning and criticizing President Barack Obama's use of the pen for eight years? Two, are all executive actions similar? And three, the test for conservatives should be whether an executive order is restoring or acting within the letter and spirit of the law.
To me, the post's conclusion appeared to be: Obama executive orders bad; Trump executive orders good.
But people who espouse that theme are hypocrites or Republican apologists. They justify Republicans applauding tactics they just recently bemoaned. They did the same thing about private email and unsecured phones. Now they're trying to say it was the way Democrats used private servers, private email, and unsecured phones that made it bad. Republicans are using unsecured phones, private servers, and private emails in ways that avoid the legal pitfalls ignored by Democrats.
Republican politicians come off as rapacious predators using public resources and funds to the enrichment of their already rich masters. Meanwhile, bigots, Nazis, and Christian dominionists make excuses for a misogynist, racist oligarch because they rationalize that he'll appoint Republican God's choice for Supreme Court Justices. Is that so we get an apartheid, theocracy, or the rapture - after billionaires fix the system that made them billionaires.
Those unsecured phones, executive orders, and private emails will facilitate a shower of trickle-down to the temporarily embarrassed millionaires who have no use for unions or regulatory agencies. The Jolly Green Giant might become the Pragmatic Green Giant who lets rat poop into his green beans, but the free market will sort that out.
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Dennis LaUrion
Duluth
