Pushing law aside, violating norms, politicizing justice and all the other stuff the Democrats claim Trump will do while they're doing it right now the themselves.

Oh, the righteous rage of it all! But with a note of caution to our side.

In the course of attempting to steal the senatorial election in Pennsylvania (Democratic incumbent Bob Casey conceded after the effort fell through), Democratic County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia of Bucks County let the cat out of the bag. (The tape is here; she starts at 0:12: https://x.com/BucksGOP/status/1857129301092807028?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1857129301092807028%7Ctwgr%5Ecd0d8ca5575b9933e7ac7c973494b7d11f2011a8%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdailycaller.com%2F2024%2F11%2F14%2Fpennsylvania-election-officials-violate-state-law-dem-senator%2F).

Unlike Kamala Harris, it didn’t take that long for Ms. Ellis-Marseglia to get to the point, which was, to quote her, “...precedent by a court doesn't matter anymore in this country. And people violate laws anytime they want. For me if I violate this law, it's because I want a court to pay attention to it."

Of course a court had already paid attention to it, specifically the (Democrat-dominated) state supreme court, which had previosly ruled that, under explicit state law, mis-dated or undated mail-in ballots cannot be counted. Ms. Ellis-Marseglia’s position to the contrary — that all ballots should be counted legal or not — had nothing to do with wanting a court to pay attention. It had everything to do with gambling that, with enough time and a little more “persuasion,” the state supreme court might be bullied off its prior principled ruling (which was not precedent so much as it was the law of the case, but that’s just a detail).

Later, Ms. Ellis-Marseglia apologized, sort of, as described here:

At Wednesday's meeting, Ellis-Marseglia said the [earlier] comment was taken out of context and that it was about provisional ballots and missing signatures. Still, she apologized at the meeting. "Last Thursday, when I spoke at the meeting that you're all here about, the passion in my heart got the best of me, and I apologize again for that," she said.

Two things to note here. First, her “court-rulings-don’t-matter” comment was not taken out of context, as you can see from the tape of it. Second, the comment wasn’t really that bad, she tells us, because it was motivated by the “passion in her heart.” Oh, OK — but as liberals relentlessly (and correctly) lecture us about Trump, it’s not passion but law that must control in governance. And Ms. Ellis-Marseglia’s position wasn’t about passion anyway. That’s just the next lie. It was about trying to shove into the count enough would-be “votes” to drag Casey over the finish line notwithstanding that his Republican opponent had won on election day by about 40,000 votes. Ms. Ellis-Marseglia knew exactly what she was doing.

My point is not that the Democrats are hypocritical, since they’re hardly the only ones. Nor is it about just one Democratic County Commissioner. It’s that our politics have become polluted not so much by Trump’s frequently fact-free, wahoo populism (although that too) as by the Democrats’ trying to retain power by cheating and lying. Indeed, they very likely rue having not lied more, since Ms. Harris probably fumbled away whatever slim chance she had of gaining the Presidency the one time she gave a straight, direct answer: That she couldn’t think of a single thing she would do differently from Joe Biden.

That would be the Joe Biden with a 40% approval rating “leading” an electorate more than 70% of whom think the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Not for nothing did Harris almost always refuse to give a direct answer on issues. It wasn’t merely that she lacks the mental resources to do so — the word-salad answers were more calculated than the Republicans ever gave them credit for. It was that anything resembling a truthful answer would have been damaging and she knew it. The country really doesn’t want higher taxes, higher prices, racial preferences, looking to the working class to pay the college bills of deadbeat poetry majors, placating Iran, and lecturing Israel, etc. The one time Harris really needed a word salad — when asked about any differences she might have with Joe — her normally steadfast vacuousness inconveniently vanished.

What a shame.

One of the main subjects Democrats make prominent in their lying concerns their supposed compassion. We probably saw this most vividly in their use of George Bush’s less-than-apt response to Hurricane Katrina: The problem wasn’t so much that Bush didn’t have the wattage to know how to respond, but that, unlike Democrats, he and similar Country Club Republicans just don’t care, particularly when — ready now? — the victims are disproportionately black.

The attack on Bush’s character was false, but for however that may be, it’s remarkable how much less Democrats have had to say about this more recent hurricane story — less to say, that is, other than to minimize it. From that right-wing mouthpiece, NPR:

A Federal Emergency Management Agency worker has been fired after she told a team responding to hurricane [Helene] survivors to not go to homes with yard signs showing support for President-elect Donald Trump, the agency said.

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell called the employee’s action “reprehensible,” and said the matter had been referred to the Office of Special Counsel.

I’ll take bets on whether the MSM tells us anything about what if anything the Special Counsel does.

“This is a clear violation of FEMA’s core values & principles to help people regardless of their political affiliation,” Criswell said in a statement on Saturday.

The agency did not identify the employee or say when or where their actions happened.

What a surprise! About as surprising as the fact that the reporting of this scandal comes after the election.

I want to emphasize that, while the Democrats make a living off this sort of breast-beating “we-are-lawful-and-compassionate” stuff, and the people unplugged enough to buy it, the incoming Trump administration has done its share of mindless bluster, and it’s only three weeks old. The most notorious example, as Paul has shown in gruesome detail, is the nomination of former Rep. Matt Gaetz to become Attorney General.

The idea that Gaetz is qualified for a post with that much power, and requiring that much knowledge, judgment and discipline, is not merely wrong but preposterous. I have seen Republicans defend it on the grounds that, given Justice Department’s deep-state political bent and its sponsorship of lawfare against Trump, the President-elect is justified in choosing someone personally loyal to him. DOJ is corrupt and hence must be torn down — so the thinking goes.

Assuming arguendo that the premise of this argument is correct — and there is, regrettably, no little evidence to support it — the conclusion is wrong and, worse than wrong, disastrous. First and obviously, governing consists not just of the momentary joy of tearing things down but of the much longer and harder job of building them back up. There is next to no evidence that Gaetz is capable of that or even aware of the need to.

The second and deeper answer is that, while the AG is accountable to the President, he should not be loyal to him, not in the sense Trump is talking about. His first loyalty must be to the impartial and fair-minded enforcement of the law — ironically, the very thing that Trump was denied but now proposes to remedy by making the problem even worse.

Making it worse is tempting, but only to instincts that will corrode rather than fortify the rule of law.

The Democrats’ relentless lying and phony breast-beating is not a reason to beat them at their own game. It’s a reason to show the country, as Ronald Reagan and Ed Meese did, that there’s a better way.