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Just Imagine



Just Imagine!           Gerry O'Shea


Join me in a trip to la-la land. Dream with me that instead of the Electoral College our president is elected by popular vote and Hillary Clinton is in the White House.


Imagine what the Republican leaders would be saying if she was complaining  every day about the media, dubbing it the enemy of the people, a mischievous trope suggesting that CNN and reputable newspapers like the New York Times are trying to thwart the wishes of the majority of the people. Would these Republican leaders allow her to assert her innocence of any culpability when one of her extremist followers sends a pipe bomb to the offices of CNN?


Think for a moment of the loud guffaws from Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham if any Democratic president stated publicly that she "fell  in love" with the North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un, boasting that Kim had written her "a beautiful letter." Just imagine the condemnatory rhetoric such language would elicit especially among right-wingers in Washington.


Consider the reaction among Republicans if the Washington Post  documented over four hundred lies by a President Clinton - a daily barrage of untruths and exaggerations where every achievement, real or imaginary, is the greatest or the biggest ever. Imagine if a Democratic president pronounced in her own defense "I always tell the truth - when I can!"


President Trump claimed recently that 52% of women voted for him in November 2016 when the actual percentage was 41%. Think of the opposition response if Hillary was off 11% on such a basic statistic. Similarly, the president claimed that only 3% of illegal immigrants show up for a scheduled court appearance. Official records reveal that the figure is closer to 70%. Would we see a red-faced Mitch McConnell ask her if she had any shame or any pride in her role as the leader of the free world?


Imagine if a Democratic president refused to provide reams of relevant material to the Senate Judiciary Committee about a supreme court nominee by asserting that she already gave a lot of other documentation which she deemed sufficient. Would Chuck Grassley and company just refuse to be part of such an obvious charade?


How would Ted Cruz or other long-serving members of the Armed Services Committee or Rand Paul in the Foreign Relations Committee react if a President Clinton identified as terrorists a group of poor people from El Salvador and Honduras walking over a thousand miles to achieve some modicum of opportunity for themselves and their families, away from their troubled countries?


 How would these Republican leaders react to the President's declaration, without the slightest regard for truth, that she had to summon 15000 troops to confront and overcome these bad people? Think how Hillary would be lambasted for her inhumanity, for playing the old sordid blame-the-foreigner tune.


Just imagine if in response to the recent dire warning from the United Nations about impending ecological disasters without major policy changes away from solid fuel and other harmful pollutants, a President Clinton rejected the overwhelming scientific evidence and dubbed the ecological crisis a hoax while instructing her government to ease off on laws and protocols that protect the environment. Would the Republicans go along with this Neanderthal thinking?


Think about the hostile reaction from the dormant Republican intelligentsia if HIllary in the White House said the 14th amendment to the constitution, which plainly grants citizenship to anyone born in the United States, could be amended by executive order - just on her say-so! The outcry from the Right would be heard in Kansas!


William F Buckley, considered by many the father of modern conservatism, warned that deficit spending could never be allowed because  he argued very cogently that, except in the case of all-out war, passing on debt to future generations conflicts with sound moral reasoning and plain fairness. Indeed, some Republican leaders were so opposed to a few of President Obama's budgets that they threatened to close the government down rather than yield on this sacred principle.


 Imagine how they would treat President Clinton if she dared to introduce a budget that breached this unmovable belief in fiscal rectitude by more than a trillion dollars. Just imagine the disgust among the Republican leaders about dramatically increasing the deficit, the bill that future generations will have to pay.


Back from la-la land. Hillary is in Chappaqua with her family, and the man in the White House is still shamelessly leading crowds in Lock Her Up chants.


 

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