Op-Eds

Win or Lose, Donald Trump Just Did the GOP a Yuuuuuuge Favor

2 Comments
English: Donald Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 in...
Donald Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Fresh off his plurality win in the South Carolina primary, Donald Trump looks stronger than ever in his bid for the Republican Party’s 2016 presidential nomination. Whether or not he goes the distance to the nomination and then to the White House, he’s done the Republican Party a major service by helping it put the Bush dynasty in its rearview mirror.

Nobody doubts Trump’s willingness to say unpopular things in politically dangerous venues. But some observers felt that it might have been a bridge too far even for Trump to bust Jeb Bush’s “my brother kept us safe” balloon in South Carolina (uber-hawk Lindsey Graham’s stomping ground) the week before the south’s first major primary. Would this be the mistake that brought his campaign to grief?

Nope. Trump won the primary handily, Jeb ended his campaign … and from this point on Republican candidates for the presidency and other offices will finally feel free to openly disown — or at least quit feigning nostalgia for — the eight nightmare years of George W. Bush’s administration.

Dubya’s legacy — 9/11, two failed wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, and the  worst economic collapse since the Great Depression — may not have been entirely his fault. In fact, I think most reasonable people can agree that bad luck and bad advice were major contributing factors.

But what happened happened. It destroyed any chance of victory John McCain might otherwise have enjoyed in 2008, then dogged Mitt Romney’s heels in 2012 as well. Sure, Romney was the weakest Republican nominee since Wendell Willkie anyway, but the Bush legacy certainly didn’t do him any favors.

The GOP’s rut really goes back to 1990, the end of the Cold War, and yet another Bush White House. Ever since, the party’s establishment has had to work overtime, with the aid of convenient menaces (Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, 9/11, etc.) to keep its post-WWII raison d’etre — maintenance of an expensive gravy train for its military-industrial complex backers — on the rails. This meant marginalizing, at every opportunity, the party’s non-interventionist wing, most famously in the persons of Ron and Rand Paul over the last three election cycles.

Those non-interventionists could be marginalized, dismissed and put to pasture because they owed a modicum of loyalty to their party. But the Donald knows no loyalties except to himself, and perhaps to his own view of the truth. By stating that view and not paying for it with the loss of a major presidential primary, or with a hit to his overall nomination prospects, he has set the Republican Party free … if free is what it wants to be. Which remains to be seen, and is a question almost certainly weighing heavily on the minds of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Op-Eds

Farook’s Phone: The FBI versus Apple (and Everyone Else)

8 Comments

RGBStock Binary Background

The Federal Bureau of Investigation wants to know what’s on Syed Farook’s Apple iPhone. As the old saying goes, people in hell want icewater too.

The San Bernardino killer’s phone is encrypted. More than ten attempts to guess the correct six-digit pass code (out of a million possibilities) will result in destruction of all data on the phone. They’re stuck. At least they say they are (I’m skeptical). They want Apple to help.

Forcing Apple to do so would be a simple matter of issuing a subpoena if the company had the information in question, but it doesn’t. So the FBI wants Apple to create an entirely new version of its operating system that allows them to bypass the ten-try limit. And  a federal judge, citing an 18th century law called the All Writs Act, has ordered Apple to just that.

As I write this, Apple has, quite reasonably, refused the demand. Presumably there’s a court battle in the offing.

Apple should win in the courts, and in any event what the FBI is demanding should be impossible. If what the FBI is demanding isn’t impossible on this generation of iPhones, Apple should be working overtime on a system update that MAKES it impossible , just in case the courts side with the FBI.

This is not about Syed Farook, nor is it the equivalent of a demand to hand over the key to an apartment because the cops have a search warrant. This is about you, and it’s the equivalent of a demand to hand over the keys to 700 million apartments just in case the cops ever take a notion to rummage around in your closet.

Am I worried? No, and yes.

No, because if Apple folds and does the FBI’s will, people who value their privacy will simply switch to devices and/or third party encryption software that neither the FBI nor Apple can compromise in that particular way.

Yes, because this is a red line in terms of precedent. The US government has been at war on the rights and the privacy of every phone and computer user in the world for decades, but this is an open declaration of that war, the moment when the gloves come off.

The state doesn’t own your phone. The state doesn’t own your data. The state doesn’t own YOU. Time to put the tyrants on notice: We’re all out of icewater, fellas.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Op-Eds

Election 2016: The Courtpocalypse and How to Delay It

Leave a comment
English: President Barack Obama and Vice Presi...
English: President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden with the members of the Supreme Court and retiring justice David Souter (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Presidential election campaigns tend to follow a predictable issues timetable, but certain events can upset that timetable in a big way. The death of US Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia is precisely such an event, and its consequences will be felt in November.

By the time Scalia’s body reached the funeral home, US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had already handed Democrats a great talking point and turnout motivator with his announcement that he intends to put off Senate confirmation of any replacement for Scalia for a full year, until a new president has been elected and sworn in.

The usual tactical approach when a president of one party nominates a candidate for approval by a Senate of the other party is basically brute obstructionism — dragging out the committee investigations, perhaps pushing back with the discovery or manufacture of scandals, and so on. McConnell could have almost certainly pulled that off. There would have been grumbling, but heck, there’s always grumbling.

Alternatively, a “consensus” appointee acceptable to both sides of the aisle might be allowed to run the gauntlet. In this case, the likely pick would be DC Court of Appeals judge Srikanth Srinivasan, who clerked for “conservative” justice Sandra Day O’Connor, worked in the Solicitor General’s office during the Bush administration, and was confirmed by a 97-0 Senate vote when Obama appointed him to his current post.

Instead, McConnell laid out an entirely new doctrine: When the Senate doesn’t like the sitting president, he says, it will just hold off on confirming Supreme Court appointments until it gets a president it DOES like.

Why is that such a big deal? Because the implications stretch far beyond the replacement of Scalia.

At least three more SCOTUS justices — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer — are, as was Scalia, in their late 70s or early 80s. Along with Scalia, they cover the whole range from “liberal” to “conservative.” And like Scalia, there’s every reason to believe that they will each retire or die during the next presidential term.

The Supreme Court is soon to be re-made in a big way, almost certainly altering the “liberal/conservative” balance. Scalia’s death puts that re-making front and center in the presidential race.

In a normal election year, presidential primary candidates talk to their parties’ “bases” about appointing hardcore conservative or liberal justices. Then during the general campaign they move toward the center, avoid ideology, and claim their only concern is finding  “qualified” justices. Scalia’s death and McConnell’s declaration of war on the confirmation process have the effect of keeping everyone in their initial corners for the long haul. If you worry about polarization in American politics, welcome to the Courtpocalypse.

But let me suggest a grand bargain to defuse the situation. Congress has changed the size of the Supreme Court before. Why not pass legislation reducing the number of justices to seven, contingent upon Ginsburg agreeing to retire? That would preserve the balance and put the whole question off. For a little while, anyway.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY