(Opinion) My eyes fill with tears.
How could 6 out of 8 wannabe GOP presidential candidates sharing the first debate stage of the 2024 U.S. Presidential primary campaign show their willingness to support a candidate for the Presidency of the U.S., even if that candidate had been convicted of a felony by a jury of his peers?
Isn’t that an affront to common sense?
“The elephant not in the room” as the Fox News debate umpire put it, was in fact, everywhere, looking over every shoulder.
All but two of the eight Republican candidates participating in the primary debate, raised their hands in the affirmative when asked directly if they would still support a convicted Trump.
At any other time in U.S. history, that act alone would have signaled the end of their political careers.
Recent polling indicates that they may be swimming against a rising tide.
Nearly two-thirds — 62 percent — of Americans in a new poll said that the former President should not be allowed to serve as president again if he is convicted of a “serious” crime.
How could we imagine watching a newly elected president take the oath of office, swearing to …” preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” when that person taking that oath had just been convicted of violating that very Constitution?
It’s an upside-down, ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ world but one that is definitely today’s America.
Recently we watched the TV networks panting with anticipation over whether or not ex-president Trump would agree to a mugshot when he presented himself at the notorious Fulton Georgia County jail to be processed like any other charged criminal.
Agree to it? “They insisted on a mug shot, and I agreed to do that,” he told Fox Digital.
Forgive me: If he were truly to be processed no differently than any other criminally indicted prisoner, he could hardly have expected the courtesy of being asked.
He would also not have arrived at the jail in a motorcade, a triumphal taxpayer funded procession of many large black SUVs and police motorcycle outriders which escorted him from his New Jersey golf club to the steps of his private jet and when arriving in Atlanta, from the airport to the jail.
Motorcades are hardly how all but a very few arrive.
Could there have been a better juxtaposition of the rule of ‘above the law’ and ‘equality under the law’?
And about that mug shot. Of course, he would sit for it.
How else could he project the perfect angry fighter likeness replete with the sheriff’s seal, which appeared less than 24 hours later on a wide range of for sale merchandise to help pay his $40 million in legal bills, just for the first half of the year and, if anything is leftover, to raise money for his campaign.
He’s made a good start pulling in $7.1 million in the first 3 days since his now iconic photo session.
More than one third of Republicans in a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll said they would still cast their primary ballot for the former president, even if he had been convicted as a felon .
They believe that the 91 felony counts against him, even if proven, are meaningless acts of a politically motivated enemy, false charges intended to prevent Trump from having a chance to regain the presidency.
Is that truly common sense?
Does it mean that lawlessness is today’s new normal, that if I don’t believe the laws are fair, I can at no peril to my freedom, just decide to ignore them, that I could, to use Trump’s old example, shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes?
That’s a dangerous idea for any democracy.
Fortunately, believers would appear to be in the minority as 66 percent of respondents to a new Yahoo News-YouGov poll said that conspiring to overturn the results of a presidential election was a serious crime.
Is it common sense to believe that the results of free and fair elections can be set aside because one of the candidates decides to ask the Secretary of a given state to “find” enough votes to change the results from red to blue or the other way around?
That too, is a dangerous idea for a democracy?
“The heresy of heresies” wrote George Orwell in his iconic novel, ‘1984’, “was common sense.”
It is common sense that tells us that democracy is in great danger and common sense would tell us that our presumptive leaders should refuse to raise their hands in support of lawlessness.
Unless this common sense is embraced by leaders and followers of both political persuasions, democracy is racing towards a steep cliff.