Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   5/02/2017

                             Polling divide; resistance shame

A stand-out item from last week’s news (not North Korea-related) had to be the polling that talking heads seemed all too adamant in proclaiming to be bad news, ominous and depressing for President Trump and his supporters. Except that it really wasn’t, as some analysts had to admit, when put in the context of a deeply divided electorate and a nearly tribal political class that easily—some would say justifiably—has been reduced to “our side, our guy/gal, our party good; their side, guy/gal and party bad, even evil.” (Psst—Trump’s gotten a lot of good things done!)

It’s gotten so polarized that Republicans and conservatives simply refuse to subject themselves to mainstream or cable news; they know it’s skewing every story and news item to put Trump and our side in the worst possible light. I know I can’t spend more than a few minutes watching the NBC/ABC/CBS nightly news casts; before they even come on the air, they can be relied on to ignore facts and elements of a news story—already available in online reports—that show a different narrative than that taken by their anchors, editors or reporters.

Just one example: I have seen reporting that refuses to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration and immigrants. Their elite group—broadcast/cable/print news employees—votes for, contributes to, and socializes exclusively with fellow Democrats. A recent Politico analysis revealed that they live among fellow liberals in major cities on the east and west coasts where they likely never meet someone who voted for Trump, or owns a Bible, gun or pickup truck. Nobody they know wants a wall on our southern border, thinks illegal immigration is a problem, or believes “sanctuary” cities and states are wrong to flout federal immigration law.

Back to the polling, the ones that I heard about seemed to agree that nearly 100 percent of Trump voters still support him (96% rounded up); Democrats and other non-Trump voters haven’t been persuaded to change their minds. Yet, not only would Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton again but, if the election reflected these polls, he would get more popular votes than she got, about 43 percent to 40 percent. That translates—if you dismiss the other voters or assign them in the same proportion—to Trump 52%, Clinton 48%.

This is significant: 15 percent of Hillary’s voters wouldn’t vote for her in a rematch. The popular vote advantage Hillary enjoyed never meant anything—it came entirely from LA and SF Bay counties; our Constitution set up a state-based system, which Trump masterfully won. To the extent that Democrats and the collective left believe Trump lacks legitimacy, they’re deluded.

To the extent that Democrat office holders and bureaucrats engage in sabotage and subversion of duly enacted laws and executive orders that conform to our Constitution, they undermine our democracy. To the extent that Democrats in our intelligence agencies violate their oaths and engage in unlawful, improper leaking of secret, confidential and privileged surveillance for the express goal of trampling on the privacy and rights of political opponents, they commit egregious crimes against our Constitution.

Witness violent, left wing “antifa” mobs threatening and committing violence against Trump supporters and other conservatives and shutting down their “right to assemble.” They even effected the cancellation of a traditional “Rose Festival” parade in Portland by emailed statements of intent to riot and assault Multnomah County Republicans if they participated. They bring into our nation and civic culture the shameful political activity seen in Hitler’s “brown shirt” brigades against opponents of his regime, as well as other left wing thugs serving socialist authoritarian despots from Castro’s Cuba to Chavez’s and Maduro’s Venezuela.

In Cuba (as well as the Soviet Union and other Communist regimes), the Castro’s were and are known to unleash state-sanctioned militias on anyone having the temerity to protest their dictatorial rule. In Venezuela, after disarming the citizens, Maduro has formed and armed vigilante-type groups to attack freedom-loving “enemies of the state.”

Finally, I’d like to summarize the abomination to our constitutional system of free elections and a fair transfer of power that took place throughout the last election: We know much from dozens of mainstream and conservative news reports—including on-the-record statements by Susan Rice and Evelyn Farcas. We know about how America’s national security agencies were enlisted (and directed by Obama) in illegal, improper activities to surveil, to leak confidential information from surveillance, and to malign—through those leaks or by lying about those leaks—the reputation and legitimacy of then-candidate Trump and now his presidency.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and its courts, electronic spying, “wiretapping,” and illegal sharing of private communications of Americans, without due process, was all enlisted—not by a foreign government or actors—by members of Obama’s administration, in ways that could only have involved Barack Obama himself. He effected the spread of illicitly revealed reports to 16 agencies so as to facilitate Trump’s impeachment.

It is, as I see it, an overreach and abuse of power that, were it committed by President Trump and his people, at the end of his term, to undermine the candidate that opposed Trump’s Republican successor, Democrats would rightfully call for hearings and inquiries and demand grand jury subpoenas, FBI investigations, charges, trials and convictions. They would not stop until they achieved a Watergate-like conclusion with Trump’s people in jail, Trump dishonored and impeached (or convicted post-term) and the Republican Party forever stained with the misdeeds of Trump and his people. Why should anything less now apply to Obama, Hillary, Mills, Farcas et al until punishment prevails and the crimes are never repeated?