‘Flat-out wrong’: Conservatives clobber Trump’s ‘total' power boast

[Formerly Once-Ler]

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/14/trump-absolute-power-conservative-backlash-186887

First, there were the Republican politicians who rebuffed Trump’s claims.

“How & when to modify physical distancing orders should & will be made by Governors,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) wrote Tuesday morning in a tweet that didn’t mention Trump directly but unmistakably rejected his stance. “Federal guidelines ... will be very influential. But the Constitution & common sense dictates these decisions be made at the state level.“

There were also staunch proponents of executive power, like former George W. Bush Justice Department official John Yoo, who said Trump had gotten out too far over his skis.

“The federal government does not have that power. The Constitution’s grant of limited, enumerated powers to the national government does not include the right to regulate either public health or all business in the land,” Yoo, now a University of California at Berkeley law professor, wrote bluntly in National Review. “Our federal system reserves the leading role over public health to state governors. States possess the ‘police power’ to regulate virtually all activity within their borders.”

The pile-on continued on conservative blogs, with Ed Morrissey of Hot Air pleading with Trump to reverse course.

“Not just wrong on the merits, but inexplicable in the implications,” Morrissey wrote, adding that the president’s stance was both a constitutional and political error. “Regardless of what made Trump offer this argument … it’s flat-out wrong. The sooner he realizes that mistake, the better off he’ll be, unless he wants to assume responsibility for every error made by governors around the country for not having exercised this supposed authority from Day One.”

more at link

This is clobbering?  There is no conviction in their criticism because they gave up their principles 3.5 years ago.  I'm surprised Republicans even remember the Constitution.

[The_Reader_David]

The most critical voices on the right of Trump's recent constitutional faux pas hardly gave up their principles when he was nominated or elected.  For example, National Review's writers range from the moderately pro-Trump Victor David Hansen to the usually critical of Trump on most everything Kevin Williamson.  It wasn't the conservative media, intellectuals or elected officials who gave us Trump, but the GOP rank and file in the first instance and the electorate as a whole (in enough states to give an electoral college victory) in the second.  Supporting Trump to some degree once he had the nomination was and is not an abandonment of principles but simply following the wisdom of Rumsfeld's remark “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time," in the political sphere. 

[jafo2010]

Spending hours in front of a hostile media every day is foolish.  Trump says more than his share of dumb stuff.

[Formerly Once-Ler]

The most critical voices on the right of Trump's recent constitutional faux pas hardly gave up their principles when he was nominated or elected.  For example, National Review's writers range from the moderately pro-Trump Victor David Hansen to the usually critical of Trump on most everything Kevin Williamson.  It wasn't the conservative media, intellectuals or elected officials who gave us Trump, but the GOP rank and file in the first instance and the electorate as a whole (in enough states to give an electoral college victory) in the second.  Supporting Trump to some degree once he had the nomination was and is not an abandonment of principles but simply following the wisdom of Rumsfeld's remark “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time," in the political sphere.

That's a pretty good post.  I'll counter with a question "Have you ever gone to see a movie only to realize within 15 minutes or so you are watching one of the worst films ever made, but you sat through it anyway?"  We all go through life thinking we make rational decisions but social experiments show we actually make decisions tainted by the emotional investments we accumulate.  The truth is one doesn't have to go to war with the army one has, just because one bought the red hat.

[The_Reader_David]

Most of the critics on the right never bought a red hat.  But Trump is the "army we've got" because in the present moment, he's the only thing standing between the doors of the Oval Office and someone who will push for confiscatory taxes on the rich, regulatory destruction of the oil and gas industry, Federal funding of abortion on demand, reinstatement of no-due-process star chambers at universities to try accusations of sexual misconduct, a "fairness doctrine" to suppress right of center media, legal sanctions against people who won't play along with choose-our-own-gender-adventure delusions,... should I really enumerate the rest of the baleful effects of full Democrat control of the Federal government?

I'd be a lot more anti-Trump if the folks opposed to him weren't so ghastly in their own right.

[Smokin Joe]

Spending hours in front of a hostile media every day is foolish.  Trump says more than his share of dumb stuff.

Yep. And by pushing for sole authority, he got the push back, the definitive decision that the Governors will have the power to reopen their states, and thus, they also have full responsibility for the results.

No one size fits all policy would fail to be too early in some areas, nor too late in others.

Either way, now, the Governors own the results of opening or not opening their states, whether too early sparking another wave of infections, or too late wrecking the economy, and Trump is out of the loop and all the criticism that would inevitably come with such a decision, is now on the Governors--and they insisted it be so.