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Shadowy methods loathsome

During the campaign the never-Trumpers have extended the Cleveland Convention three months after it ended. Now they want a mulligan, wanting to make an unprecedented decision to replace a nominee. In 1964, Barry Goldwater, despite numbers that made Trump’s situation look good, was not dumped even after committing blunder after blunder. But his opposition within the GOP was more forthright, the present group is more surreptitious and conspiratorial.

Led by a crew from Utah, by the shadowy and suspicious Mike Lee, they act like the elders of the Republican party. With Mitt Romney and a ridiculous candidate-in-waiting Evan McMullin, they have led coup attempt after coup attempt against Donald Trump trying to reverse primary results and the Cleveland Convention. Never in the history of American politics, at least presidential politics, has this been so brazenly practiced. Its implications for the future are alarming and hint at a “have a nice day” form of authoritarianism.

Even the last coup effort draws grow the perversion of the electoral system in 2000. Billy Bush, a cousin of Jeb Bush, played a role in the Access Hollywood tape release that threatened Trump’s candidacy in on Oct. 7. He also contributed to using Fox’s electoral division to alert his cousin George W. of Gore’s apparent failure to take Florida. What was he up to this time, an attempt to put Jeb in at the last moment?

Who knows what goes on in the rarefied elitest air of the Rocky Mountains or Palm Beach. Convinced that Hillary Clinton could  be easily defeated by a replacement, the strange camarilla arrayed against Trump has gone off the rails. And it coordinates with others in advance. That, my friends, is known as a coup d’etat.

Indeed the same attitude that presents President Barack Obama from advancing even the most modest proposals is ironically the one that badgers Trump. Self-appointed protectors of the Republican breaches all decorum and disrespects every rule in the pursuit of getting their way. They nominate Trump, set the procedures that anoint him and then, on a whim, remove him in a last ditch attempt to defeat Clinton. It is all convoluted and reeks to high heaven. After all, the chief practitioners of such dismal acts are those quick to yell freedom at the top of their lungs.

Utah and North Dakota had some of the most arcane procedures to select GOP delegates of anyone in the country. Lee, who deposed former Senator Robert Bennett, did at a closed convention. As with the New Left in the 1960’s, it was all about mastering the rule  book not the ballot box. Henry Jackson was defeated for re-nomination at the convention for the Senate but his anti-war opponent did not receive enough votes to prevent a primary. Jackson received 87 percent of the vote against Carl Maxey in the primary. Without the popular trigger, Jackson would have lost in a Lee style coup.

What is the most worrisome is the less legitimacy the coup-plotters have, the less respect they have for the popularly selected. This partially explains their vehemence against Obama which exploited Birtherism long before Trump. The shadowy methods are loathsome, the potential damage to the republic severe.

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