Trump and the Rule of Law

Ace of Spades links to this twitter thread by John Hayward.

John Hayward @Doc_0
This "rule of law" talking point is the most absurd example of NeverTrump and Democrat desperation yet. It's the nook-nook they're sucking on to get themselves past the disappointment of Impeachment Theater not only fizzling, but backfiring spectacularly.

By any objective standard, Trump is far less of a threat to the "rule of law" than Barack Obama was. In fact, the big reason the anti-Trump circus is squawking about "rule of law" right now is they remember how concerned conservatives were about it during the Obama years.

Obama's entire agenda was an all-out attack on the rule of law. When Obamacare crashed and burned, he was out there giving speeches where he told people to just ignore the broken law and promised not to prosecute them for it.

If anything, Trump is clearly the target of people who disdain the rule of law, using laws and administrative procedures to sabotage his administration. The proverbial Crazy Hawaiian Judge is the real threat to rule of law, not Trump. Abusive injunctions are a threat.

And Trump is clearly on the right side of the biggest single Rule of Law issue there is: immigration, citizenship, sanctuary cities, border defense. The Dems, ALL OF THEM, are sworn enemies of the rule of law and openly promise to undermine it as vigorously as possible.

Trump is also on the right side of the second biggest Rule of Law issues, free speech and gun rights. The enemies of those things are the ones declaring open war on the rule of law. The 1st and 2nd Amendment are inextricably linked in defining what the law means and how it rules.

And Trump spent most of his first term under attack by one of the worst abuses of the Rule of Law this nation has ever seen, the Russia collusion hoax and its attendant abuses of the FBI, FISA, etc.

No one willing to give "the Resistance" and Obama a pass on the Russia hoax can be taken seriously when they talk about the Rule of Law. They're just tossing around loaded political terms without any commitment to what those terms actually mean.

Worse, they're perverting the Rule of Law to mean "the rule of the permanent administrative state." The Rule of Law is meaningless, indeed inverted from its true meaning, if there are no laws to bind the administrative state, no accountability, no consequences.

Argue the merits of Trump's policies all you want, but let's stop this charade that he's some kind of unique existential threat to the Rule of Law. Every Dem running in 2020 is vastly more of a threat than Trump on his worst day. /end