CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Where are today’s democrats who would urge caution on the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump? The ‘get Trump’ wing of their party is so strident that more reasonable voices dare not speak.
Surely intelligent Democrats know that two prominent members of their party will be in legal jeopardy when Republicans control the government again. Hillary Clinton kept an illegal server in her home in Westchester County. James Comey, who oversaw the investigation, said publicly that this was illegal but no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. In today’s new political environment, the GOP should be ready to test his judgment. That Joe Biden has no knowledge of his son Hunter’s business dealings is the flimsiest lie in Washington. If Hunter-cash found its way to his ‘big guy’ father, the next Republican attorney general will be under enormous pressure to prosecute.
Let’s pause for a moment to consider the wisdom of our 38th president, Gerald Ford. He took over after Richard Nixon resigned amid the Watergate scandal. There was a time of wishful thinking that Nixon’s exit from the political stage would bring that chapter of American politics to a close. As Nixon-haters were ready to pursue the case up to criminal charges, Gerald Ford stepped in. He considered the spectacle of a former President of the United States facing a criminal trial. It was unimaginable. The scalp that Nixon’s opponents would get was resignation, nothing more. Ford issued a presidential pardon one month and one day after Nixon’s exit.
Doing the right thing ruined Ford’s own presidential campaign. He’d be unviable for the rest of his time in office. But he did the right thing. President Ford told us that “ is a tragedy… It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must.”
Democrats of today, where is your Gerald Ford. How long must the nation wait for a reasonable person to appear? When might the final chapter of this vengeful strain of politics be written?
Chris Conley
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