It is 2022, and the wind has shifted

It is now an open secret that the rules of good governance were changed in 2016 to oppose what the establishment perceived as the “danger” of a Trump presidency. The Durham Report has yet to arrive, but there are things we now know to a certainty, either because they are self-evident, or because the details have finally emerged. I’m not going to list them here, because we all know the long list of multiple standards that were applied, the fraudulent FISA warrants, the two impeachments pursued on the flimsiest of pretense, and on and on. If anyone still, at this late date, doesn’t understand what we all witnessed as it happened in real time, they are beyond anything I might say. One might fairly argue that these things needed to be done and rule of law be damned, but it is impossible to claim they didn’t happen and hope to be believed or taken seriously. The rules of the game were changed. It is going to be very difficult to change them back.

Yet that is the hope of the Democratic Party as they prepare for an ass-shattering whipping in November. That the GOP will take the House seems a certainty, and odds are very good they will also claim the Senate.

Under the new standard, it is the job of the Congress, if Congress is held by the party not in control of the White House, to do everything in their power (or, even outside of their legal authority) to destroy the sitting President if they deem him icky enough. Fair minded people might argue whether Biden rises to that level of onerous, but the tools created to oppose Trump will still be in the arsenal when the GOP takes control.

There will be no reason, once the GOP holds Congress, to not fully explore the relations the Biden family has had with China and Ukraine and how they have profited. Any Congressperson will be perfectly able to give press conference after press conference a la Adam Schiff, claiming to have “proof positive” that Chinese money was funneled to the accounts of Joe Biden. Hunter will be entirely fair game. Congress, having the power of the purse, can decimate the budget of the FBI, or even disband the agency entirely, if they deem it is corrupt and has worked to tip the scales for the Democratic Party (which it is and most certainly has).

The only question will be: Can the GOP be as vindictive and petty, as blind to the constitutional limits of their reach, as willing to criminalize their opposition, as the Democrats have been?

I don’t think the people who cheered the abuse understand the table that is now set. If the January 6th committee can cast the widest of nets to “prove” Trump fostered an “insurrection”, why can’t the GOP prosecute Biden and Harris (and a large number of other Democrats) for fostering the destructive rioting of 2020? Why can’t the GOP impeach Biden for flaunting American law and flying illegal immigrants to every corner of the country under the cover of darkness? Can a GOP run Congress make the debacle of abandoning Afghanistan a criminal offense? Why not, if Trump could be impeached for a phone call?

As November approaches, Democrats in the know are going to begin making noises about a “return to normalcy” and “renewed civility”, exactly as if they haven’t behaved as pompous bullies for the last six years. And they do not have a leg to stand on.

It is going to be vicious, and it should be. Game theory dictates that tit-for-tat is the best way to cause an opponent to behave within the rules. A reckoning is long overdue.