Plan B Forum

Chris Christie delivered easily the most chilling speech of the Republican National Convention. He didn’t just attack Hillary Clinton. He led the crowd in a mock prosecution of Hillary Clinton.

Christie’s conceit — a prosecutor inviting a mob to condemn the accused on count after count — resembled a show trial more than anything else, free of any and all protections for the defendant.

Obviously it wasn’t a real trial of any kind. But the implication was nonetheless clear: Clinton deserves to be dragged to court for what she’s done when what she’s done is pursue policy options that Chris Christie doesn’t like. The implicit threat, too, was clear: Christie is clearly auditioning for attorney general in a Trump administration, and his audition was to lay out the reasons he would try to jail the leader of the opposition party.

It was a performative case for criminalizing disagreement, a perverse and authoritarian pageant that preyed on the worst, darkest tendencies of the Trump movement.

Christie's charges against Clinton were numerous, and went beyond even the most extreme of Donald Trump’s talking points in some places. They included:

• ● "Ruining Libya and creating a nest for terrorist activity"
  
  ● "An apologist for an al-Qaeda affiliate in Nigeria resulting in the capture of innocent young women"
  
  ● "Putting big government spending financed by the Chinese ahead of good paying jobs for middle-class Americans"
  
  ● "She called Assad a different kind of leader. There are now 400,000 dead. Think about that: 400,000 dead. At the hands of the man that Hillary defended."
  
  ● "An inept negotiator of the worst nuclear arms deal in American history"
  
  ● "A failed strategist who has permitted Russia back in as a major player in the Middle East"
  
  ● "A coddler of the brutal Castro brothers and betrayer of the family of fallen Trooper Werner Foerster"
  
  ● "Lying to the American people about her selfish, awful judgment"

After each of these accusations, Christie would ask the crowd: "Guilty or not guilty?" And the crowd would roar back, "GUILTY!" occasionally adding in a chant of "Lock her up!"

There were two genuinely unusual and somewhat shocking dimensions to Christie’s speech. One was the sheer severity of the charges he leveled against Clinton. He didn’t merely accuse her of mishandling Boko Haram. He directly accused her of responsibility for Boko Haram’s schoolgirl kidnappings, calling her an "apologist" for one of the most brutal terrorist groups on the planet. He didn’t merely accuse her of mishandling Syria but also implied she was responsible for every death in the Syrian civil war.

These are truly grave charges for which there is no evidence, yet Christie leveled them casually, like they were any other campaign talking point. That’s a remarkable escalation of rhetoric — even for this bananas election.

The second shocking element of the speech was the ease with which Christie essentially called for the criminalization of political disagreement. You can like or dislike the Iranian nuclear deal. But helping negotiate it, and supporting it, is not a crime. Doing that is participating in statecraft. Christie suggested that bad policy should put you before a jury ready and eager to condemn you for anything they deem mistakes.

But what made Christie’s speech genuinely scary was that it was a distillation of the Republican convention so far, not an aberration from it. Both nights featured the crowd breaking into frequent, raucous chants of, "Lock her up!" Former Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn repeatedly stopped his own speech to echo the crowd’s call to imprison Clinton.

Jailing the presumptive Democratic nominee has been the one point of enthusiasm and consensus in a Republican convention that has otherwise been listless and unfocused, with primetime speakers frequently addressing a half-empty arena and party leaders delivering speeches that go out of their way to avoid much mention of their nominee, Donald Trump. Absent the unifying power of proud partisanship, Republicans have turned to a particularly toxic form of negative partisanship, and have come together around not just their hatred of Clinton but their belief that she is a criminal.

And not merely that she is a criminal because of conduct that might run afoul of the law, not merely because the crowd thinks her email handling crosses a line that FBI Director James Comey didn’t think it crossed. They think she deserved to be tried and convicted for pursuing the public policies she believes to be correct.

That is not a healthy attitude for a major political party to embrace. And it’s an actively dangerous case of norm erosion for mature political leaders like Chris Christie to encourage. The jailing of political opponents is something that happens in dictatorships and banana republics. It is not something an advanced democracy can accept as a normal demand.

LJ, did you watch any of tonight's speeches? Last night's?

Would you be bothered by the tone of the convention if it was exactly like this, but Kasich was the nominee?

Econoline wrote:Yeah, but *NONE* of the 1968 Democratic candidates for POTUS, and *NONE* of the floor speakers at the convention, were calling for the Republican nominee to be arrested and sent to prison. And *NONE* of the Republican politicians at the GOP convention (not even Dick Nixon) were calling for the Democratic nominee to be arrested and sent to prison. (That sort of political rhetoric would have been beyond the pale even for segregationist George Wallace, who you might recall got 13.5% of the vote and carried 5 states that year.)

And despite the fact that the (arguably) most likely Democratic nominee had been assassinated by a Palestinian gunman only a couple of months before, *NO* politician of *ANY* party was calling for all Muslims or all Arabs or even all Palestinians to be rounded up and interned or deported.

Mitch McConnell And Paul Ryan Barely Say Anything About Trump In Their RNC Speeches

CLEVELAND ― Mitch McConnell took the stage at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night shortly after Donald Trump formally received the party’s nomination. It was a primetime opportunity for the Senate majority leader to sing the praises of his party’s standard-bearer on a national stage.

But the most McConnell could muster was that Trump would sign the bills that McConnell would send to his desk.

The Kentucky senator’s speech was long on pillorying Hillary Clinton and short on celebrating the Republican nominee. He only mentioned Trump’s name when he rattled off a series of bills that the GOP Congress passed and President Barack Obama vetoed. Each time, he simply said, “Donald Trump would sign it.”

“With Donald Trump in the White House, Senate Republicans will build on the work we’ve done and pass more bills into law than any Senate in years,” McConnell said.

Translation: If nothing else, at least this guy is a Republican.

McConnell devoted almost the entirety of his time to attacking Clinton, who’s slated to accept the Democratic nomination next week at the party’s convention in Philadelphia.

And yet McConnell still managed to utter the name “Trump” more than his counterpart in the House of Representatives, Speaker Paul Ryan. The Wisconsin Republican only said the nominee’s name twice during his speech to delegates.

His praise for the real estate mogul was, well, underwhelming: “Only with Donald Trump and Mike Pence do we have a chance at a better way.”

It’s no shocker that McConnell and Ryan were reluctant to gush over Trump at the convention. Ryan has said he doesn’t consider Trump the right kind of conservative to carry the Republican banner, and he waffled on the idea of endorsing Trump before finally giving him his formal backing in early June. McConnell has given Trump some equally unemphatic support, suggesting his backing is more about party unity than any affinity for the candidate.

As Ryan put it on Tuesday, “Democracy is a series of choices. We Republicans have made ours.”

The lack of enthusiasm for Trump even revealed itself as New York’s delegates put him over the threshold needed to secure the nomination. As “New York, New York” blared over the speakers and spotlights played and delegates from New York, Pennsylvania and California stood and swayed, whole delegations at the sides and back of the convention hall remained largely seated.

What about other Republicans here? Is this tone really reflective of regular everyday Republicans in this country?

oldr_n_wsr wrote:Trump, despite all his flaws/lies/inconsistencies is not one of the DC elite who have sold them and the country down the tubes.

Scooter wrote:

oldr_n_wsr wrote:Trump, despite all his flaws/lies/inconsistencies is not one of the DC elite who have sold them and the country down the tubes.

If they and their country have been sold down the tubes, they and it have been sold to people like Trump. And yet we're not supposed to call them stupid for turning to him as their saviour?

no leadership, no direction and their lives getting worse despite working harder.

Burning Petard wrote:A Philly radio station this morning included the question: why are members of the Country Club considered rich elitist snobs, while the owner of several Country Clubs is such a friend to the ordinary white blue-collar worker?

Lying Hillary belongs in jail, while the Donald can say anything and it is not a lie, just ordinary puffery, like any used car or real estate salesman would do. The Donald clearly believes he can be the next teflon president.

By the way, he never, ever would drink Trump Wine or Trump Vodka, his Trump ties were imported, and his books were all ghost written and he never had time to actually read them. Early on in the primary season I bought a red 'make America great' cap from the campaign website and it was made in China. I bought a hat from the Bernie website and it was made in America.

snailgate

Scooter wrote:

no leadership, no direction and their lives getting worse despite working harder.

Is this really true, or is it a line they are being fed to make them believe that only "something different" will do? And if it is, are they not stupid for being sucked in by it?

Crackpot wrote:Oldr I don't disagree with your description of the problem but your approach to a solution worries me.