“What if?” The Evelyn Farkas Fracas

I

’m sure you’ve noticed that conservatives and Republicans (no, they are not necessarily the same) enjoy playing the counter-factual game of “What if?”

• What if a Republican had presided over Benghazi instead of Ms. “At-this-point-What-Difference-Does-It-Make” Clinton?

• What if a Republican administration had intervened to prevent Arizona from enforcing federal immigration laws?

• What if a Republican had decided to enforce provisions of the Affordable Care Act selectively, omitting, for the time being, those that were politically inexpedient?

• What if a Republican had made a deal with Iran that all-but guaranteed their acquisition of nuclear weapons within a few years?

• What if a Republican administration had spied on a rival presidential candidate, who then, to the surprise of wise men everywhere, became the disfavored president-elect?

• What if a Republican administration had illegally leaked, from classified intelligence reports, the names of private citizens to the media?

• What if, what if, what if?

You know the answer: The well-oiled outrage machine of the media-industrial complex would have been wheeled into action. Oh my God, Mitt Romney once carried his pet dog on the roof of his car! Can you believe it? There are reports that he was mean to a kid in his high school! Obviously the heartless bastard is not qualified to be president. When asked in 2012 what was the most serious national security America faced, he said Russia. Russia! What a rube. And there was Barack Hussein Obama, really letting him have it: Now the 1980s are calling and asking for their foreign policy back! Yuk, yuk, yuk.

And here's more:

I write on Sunday night. By the end of the week, and very likely sooner, this story will either be definitively discredited (which I doubt) or we will be looking at one of the biggest political scandals in American history. If it is shown to be true, then the question is: will the ruling consensus get away with it? Or will the forces that brought Trump to power strike out and put an end to this arrogation of power to a largely unaccounted bureaucratic elite?

As I say, I think Ted Cruz was right that the “Trump-colluded-with-Russia” meme was a giant “nothing burger.” The “Obama tapped my wires” meme, however, which Trump dropped on March 4, is looking more and more like a five-course meal with all the fixings.