Two weeks ago I traveled to Kansas City for the 153rd Missouri Press Convention. One of our speakers was Missouri Senator Roy Blunt.
Blunt did not have a prepared speech for the journalists gathered at the convention. Instead he asked those of us in attendance what we would like him to talk about.
After writing down a list of approximately seven topics, ranging from the whistle blower controversy to flooding on the Missouri river he proceeded to talk for his allotted 30 minutes.
One of the issues brought up was the source of political unrest in America. His answer was very insightful and one in which I agree with.
Blunt’s explanation of our current political unrest starts with the election in 2001 of George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States.
As many of you, who were born before 1980, will remember, Bush defeated Democratic incumbent Vice President Al Gore after a narrow and contested win that involved two recounts in the state of Florida, both won by Bush.
Bush was declared the winner on Dec. 9 — over a month past the election — after a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court put a stop to a third recount in Florida.
After that election many in the Democrat party declared Bush’s presidency illegitimate.
This goes back even further than President Bush. Many forget that Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992 with only 43% of the popular vote in a three-way race with George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot.
That caused some Republicans to question his legitimacy. Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole said President-elect Bill Clinton did not have a mandate to press ahead with any sweeping changes.
Of course we all remember the ‘birther’ controversy surrounding President Barack Obama where some -— including Donald Trump — claimed he could not be president because they didn’t believe he was a natural born citizen.
That brings us to our current president, Donald Trump. He is our fourth consecutive president where part of the electorate has questioned the legitimacy of the election. This is scary because it is growing worse.
A poll from March 2017 by the University of Chicago showed 57 percent of young people believed that Trump is an illegitimate president.
Andrés Martinez with the Washington-Post in January 2017 said this, “Trump doesn’t represent a new crisis for American democracy but rather an escalation of one that’s been building — one that we’ve all played a role in creating.”
Of course Martinez’s comments were before Trump was even sworn in to office, and before the Mueller investigation where 22 months and over 32 million was spent to find coordination between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign to influence the presidential election.
There was no evidence before or after the investigation. Many Democrats placed all their hopes in the Mueller Report. When no evidence was found that they could impeach Trump with they decided to look into obstruction of justice. That fizzled out.
Now the Democrats are putting all their efforts in Trump’s legitimate phone call with the President of the Ukraine.
In that phone call — which I read the transcript — Trump never threatens President Zelenskyy with stopping economic support if he does not help with an investigation into Joe Biden.
My question, that I have not heard anyone else ask is this — is Biden above the law because he is a candidate for President of the United States? Why can’t he be investigated?
This is just another attempt by Democrats to try and unseat a duly elected president, which many of them have been trying to do for the last three years.
Those who have called Trump’s presidency illegitimate are not just political pundits. They include Democrat political leaders such as President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
It doesn’t look like this will stop in the near future. Ex-Obama Attorney General Eric Holder last Monday said that it is a ‘reality,’ Republicans will ‘cheat’ in the 2020 elections.
It’s one thing to fight the policies of the opposing political party that you don’t agree with, it is another to claim that your opponent won an election illegitimately.
This could one day lead to an end to our republic and the end to the America we love.
