Bob Ehrlich: This 'Murderers Row' Lineup Is Set on Destroying Donald Trump in 2020
The 1927 Yankees, widely proclaimed baseball’s greatest team, sported Hall of Famers throughout the lineup. The heart of the order (Combs, Koenig, Ruth, Gehrig, Meusel, Aaron) was famously dubbed “Murderers Row,” a moniker that reverberates to this day.
There is another incarnation of murderers row in 2019. But this hit-happy lineup plays on the political stage, not Yankee Stadium. Their goal is not to slam home runs or to beat the hated Red Sox.
Rather, they live to inflict enough damage over the next 18 months to beat one man, Donald J. Trump. Make no mistake, this lineup carries enough power to inflict serious damage on the president and his administration.
As the battle for 2020 is now fully engaged, it’s time to better understand the ways, means and ends of this anti-Trump juggernaut.
The Media
The so-called mainstream media has been at DEFCON 5 ever since the evening of Nov. 8, 2016. As the blue wall came crashing down and the tears began to flow at the Javits Center that fateful night, this group would be the first to take up arms against the incoming administration.
They have not disappointed. The usual suspects (New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, MSNBC, CNN, PBS) have worked overtime, ignoring presidential accomplishments and focusing almost exclusively on alleged, often irrelevant, weaknesses to degrade anything and everything connected with Trump.
That this unrelentingly critical coverage of the president and his supporters is one of the primary reasons he won in the first place seems lost on this segment of the third estate.
Nevertheless, Special Counsel Mueller’s gratuitous parting shot (a not-too-subtle call for impeachment) has further stoked the fires of those who buy ink by the barrel. Suffice to say it’s gonna be really ugly going forward.
Barack Obama and the Obama Administration
The Obama administration appears to have inflicted serious damage on their way out the door. The list of suspicious activities includes slow walking the Hillary Clinton email investigation to aggressive “unmasking” of American citizens in the course of a counter-intelligence investigation to reliance on a bought and paid for Russian dossier repeatedly submitted to a FISA court in the course of said investigation.
Alas, the failure of these (and other) operations has prompted Attorney General William Barr to appoint the so-called “bulldog” U.S. Attorney for Connecticut (John Durham) to investigate the investigators. The resulting howls of protest and manifest nervousness from aggrieved Democrats speaks to the potential seriousness of this additional investigation.
Progressive Tech/Investor Billionaires
How ironic that some who have gained the most from American capitalism are now in the vanguard of a movement intent on doing harm to American capitalism. Nevertheless, well-known entrepreneurs such as Tom Steyer, Chris Sacca, Donald Sussman, Reid Hoffman, and numerous others are serious, deep-pocket progressives willing to spend a whole bunch of dollars in order to make Trump a one-term president. (Steyer has also funded numerous state-based initiatives intended to convert red states into blue states.)
These folks saw their midterm investment in the Democrats pay off in a big way. Now, they are turning their attention (and wallets) to the big prize.
Progressive State Attorneys General
Little understood by the average voter, a number of the nation’s most hard-left attorneys general have brought lawsuits against the president on a number of front-burner issues, including the rescission of DACA, numerous travel bans, the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality, a new border wall, a citizenship question on the census, and Trump’s alleged violations of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause (a rarely pursued prohibition on a president’s ability to accept money or benefits from foreign governments.)
The aggressiveness of progressive state AGs is a rather new phenomenon but one that must be taken seriously by Republicans who now have yet another front to defend in the lead up to 2020.
Academia
I am not breaking new ground here, but things are getting worse on campus. Never has the American academy been more hostile to free (i.e., conservative) speech; never has religious freedom, border control, gun rights, market capitalism, or American exceptionalism been under such unrelenting and unapologetic attack by those charged to “teach” our children.
Precious few of our so-called institutions of higher learning are exempt from the progressive onslaught. What to do? Readers of my columns over the years will recall my repeated pleas to withhold annual giving dollars to these laboratories of indoctrination. It seems to me that hitting weak college presidents and their lefty administrators where they live provides the best opportunity to make our dissatisfaction known.
Hollywood
Where to begin? Robert DeNiro? Johnny Depp? Jim Carrey? Alec Baldwin? Still, the specter of Hollywood actors using their celebrity to make political pitches is not new. (Recall Frank Sinatra was quite helpful to JFK, while John Wayne helped a succession of GOP presidents.)
What is new is corporate America’s threat of boycotts to protest conservative state laws. Witness Disney CEO Bob Iger’s recent lament to the effect that his employees would likely object to working in the state of Georgia should that state maintain its new anti-abortion statute. Look for additional action on the boycott front, as Hollywood explores the outer limits of its reach within flyover America.
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