“It’s time for Judge Wake to retire. He’s an embarrassment to the legal community.”
“There are third-year law students . . . that can write a more coherent opinion than the one that he put forward.”
“He stopped being a judge and started being a politician.”
“This is an activist judge.”
It sounds like something from one of Trump’s 3 a.m. tweet storms, but it’s not. Those quotes came from our generally mild-mannered, soft-spoken Governor Ducey. That scares the hell out of me. It means the take-no-prisoners Republican strategy outlined by Newt Gingrich, honed to a razor’s edge by the Tea Party and wielded like a bludgeon by Trump will not end when our current president leaves, or is driven out of office. Trump’s diseased style, his politics of personal annihilation, has metastasized. It has spread over the Republican body politic. Mild-mannered Doug Ducey is the latest politician to be infected.
The reason others have adopted Trump’s style is, it works. Trump has managed to neutralize or destroy his enemies and make others too fearful to challenge him. Why shouldn’t Ducey and other Republicans around the country give it a try? And if it works once and there are no negative consequences, why not try it again?
Who is this politically motivated, activist judge who is an embarrassment to the legal community? He is Neil Wake, appointed by George W. Bush with recommendations from then-Senators John Kyl and John McCain. As a private lawyer, he helped Arizona’s Republicans argue their case for redistricting. As a judge, he has made a variety of decisions, some favorable to Republicans, some to Democrats.
Wake is a down-the-middle judge with Republican leanings. But Ducey wasn’t satisfied to say, “I disagree with Wake’s recent decision,” or even “Wake made a terrible decision.” In Trumpian fashion, Ducey attacked the man’s competence and character because of one unfavorable call. That’s all it takes.
My fear is, this type of politics of personal annihilation will become a regular feature of Republican strategy, from president to dog catcher. It will be another part of Trump’s sick legacy. And if it’s effective, will Democrats come to think Michelle Obama’s notion that “When they go low, we go high” is a quaint leftover from the Obama era? Will Dems learn that “When they go low, we have to go as low, or lower”? That kind of political arms race is frightening to contemplate.
This post has been updated. It stated earlier that the court decision would block Prop 123 funding from the State Land Trust. The court decision does not block that funding.
This article appears in Oct 3-9, 2019.
There now appear to be many leftovers from the Obama era. Election tampering, sweetheart deals, lies, fraud, and deception. The Bidens appear to be the tip of the iceberg. Obama knew what the Bidens and the Clintons were doing and he allowed it. Where are his offshore bank accounts?
What would you have done of Trump had used bleach bit to eliminate his emails?
To the guy with the Obama conspiracy:
“And the net effect of all these endless pileups of conspiracies is that you, the little guy, can never change anything. For if you are living in a world where shadowy forces control everything, then what chance do you have to turn it around? In this murk, it becomes best to rely on a strong hand to guide you. “Trump is our last chance to save America,” is the message of his media hounds. “Only Putin can raise Russia from its knees,” say Trump’s Moscow counterparts.”
– Pomerantsev, Peter. This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War against Reality. PublicAffairs, 2019.
I take it not all of your readers were fans of the Obama’s, Clinton’s and Biden’s. Yet Trump likes taking credit for the economy that was left for him to ruin. The only thing he really knows about is grabbing! His own words.
We anxiously await the subpoenas, the indictments and the trials of the Obama administration including Hillary who James Comey let operate under a different set of rules than everyone else.
I hear the train a comin’…..it’s rolling down the tracks…
… newly declassified details of a Jan. 20, 2017 email written by Obama national security adviser Susan Rice in which Rice revealed details of a discussion 15 days earlier between the former president and then-FBI director James Comey about the investigation into Flynn, Rice’s deignated sucessor.
You remember Susan Rice. The six time Benghazi liar.
What will not change and should scare you even more Mr. Safier is the lack of journalistic integrity by activists such as yourself, who continue to refuse to do the hard work and research allowing readers to make their own decisions. The election is over, the experiment of having an outsider non politician lead the country had positive and negative lessons. If you’re just going to continue the blaming/shaming diatribes substituting McConnell, Ducey, et al for Trump, do me a favor…retire. We already have a multitude of lemming like political wonks, who think their personal, ahem, feelings, entitle them to abandon common sense, hard work, and a neutral agenda. You show promise as a political writer, why not start 2021 with a more creative sense than just echoing the same arguments used by MSNBC or the same hubris as FOX? Now that would be refreshing.