Quote:
Originally Posted by bobman0330
There's a political angle to this. As you know, the only way Trump gets impeached is if Republicans decide to do it. Conceivably it's much more difficult for them to pull the trigger if it's Democrats explicitly sourcing the damning information on Trump. It makes is more partisan, whereas if it's anonymous leaks showing up in the newspaper, it's Trump vs the nonpartisan (or even R-leaning) intelligence community. Not sure that those kind of calculations are really driving anyone, and it doesn't make the harms to democracy any milder, but it's something to think about.
This is fair. It's also true we don't know the precise source of the leaks. And to Fly's point -- namely, why doesn't Trump just dismiss it all as a lie -- presumably even by Trump's own ham-handed admissions, the leaks are true. So the strategy has, to some extent, gotten even Trump to admit the outlines of the facts in ways he might not have had it simply been the Democrats pitching a fit.
Still, though, it feels like a highly disreputable way to bring down a government. The argument as you formulate it here is basically that the climate of the country is so partisan that the GOP delegation, the Democratic delegation in Congress (at least the ones that get briefed) and the IC -- or some combination of them -- are colluding to systemically leak to damage the WH.
That is of course entirely better, in some respects, than a few mid-level IC agents taking it upon themselves to determine which bits of information are worthy of leaking and which politicians to embarrass. But you have to wonder aloud about our national health that this is being left to subterfuge and innuendo. I mean examine it in the meta: we're co-opted at the highest level of government by a foreign power and the counter-insurgency is being left to anonymous leaks because of the perceived political fallout if not failure of the strategy from a more transparent tact? Like we have some kind of broad consensus and highly credible evidence our President is under the undue influence of a foreign autocrat but better slow walk this via our contacts at the WaPo, Mom and Pop Angry Midwesterner might get the wrong idea from Fox News and InfoWars if we're a little too aggressive here, and we need to give the GOP political cover for this.
I guess all I can say is it must be nice to be a GOP Congressman in this scenario. Look at how far the world bends to your will, operates singularly to ensure your political standing remains stable. Sure Trump is co-opted by a foreign power and endangers us all, but we really need to bend-over backward with Rube Goldberg public relations schemes to let the public know slowly so as not to make AM radio hosts and Bill O'Reilly reflexively leap to Trump's defense or GOP Congressmen might just bail on the whole country and leave it to Trump's whims. I realize this is likely an entirely likely scenario for the empirical reality here but for FFS, these people, never has a party that enjoyed so little actual popularity acquired so much power and so much dismissal or downgrade of literally every national priority to ensure their best interests first and foremost. First we give the GOP Congresscritters the ability to circle the wagons, and then maybe America gets to be safe and secure from our corrupted President if we can really give them the political safe space to operate in, they might act on this, just maybe, if we're nice.
Last edited by DVaut1; 02-16-2017 at 06:40 PM.