When the Cato Institute, vanguard of the “Libertarian” movement, created in 1977 by Charles Koch and others, decides to dump on trump, with some choice caustic words, you know trump is done.
This article written by Clark Neily, senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute, is quite a read. I will paste some snippets here, you can read the full article here — www.cato.org/…
I believe yesterday’s indictment in Georgia sealed Trump’s fate.
If the case goes to trial, which seems likely, the jury will either believe that characterization or they will not. I think they will, for three reasons.
1. Trump’s disdain for truth.
America has seen its fair share of lying politicians, but Donald Trump is in a class of his own. He appears to view literally any interaction with another human being as an opportunity to be exploited and a game to be won. In Trump’s world, rules are for chumps, norms are for losers, and the truth is whatever you can get another person to believe— nothing more. And of course, history makes clear that this approach has been quite effective at advancing Trump’s interests in certain settings—preening on the set of a game show, for example, or spinning up a fawning, frothing crowd at a campaign event.
But not only will those antics not work in a courtroom, they will backfire. Given the nature of the allegations against him, Trump will have to take the stand even though he has a right not to, and given his nature, he will lie to the jury just like he has lied to everyone else his entire life.
2. Trump’s disdain for process. Again, Donald Trump doesn’t see the world the way normal people do. Instead of institutions to be respected and rules to be followed, he sees marks to be gulled and systems to be gamed—emphatically including elections and trials. Trump’s complete disdain for fair procedures—and for people who meekly accept the results of those procedures when they lose—will be on full display throughout every stage of all four of the criminal cases against him.
3. Complexity. The third reason Trump will be convicted in one or more of the cases against him is this: complexity. Litigation complexity is hard enough to manage with a client who plays it straight, both with the court and with their own counsel. But Trump doesn’t play it straight—he never has, and it appears he’s constitutionally incapable of doing so. So he will lie: in court, in public, on social media and—fatally—to his own lawyers.
Judges will become increasingly disgusted by the shenanigans and stop giving Trump any benefit of the doubt
So you can put a fork in Donald Trump—he’s done.
So, looks like the Cato Institute is ready to move on to some other candidate (DeSantis?) to advance their agenda — which really is no different than the republican agenda — total control of government and bending government to serve the needs of the oligarchs, all hiding behind the fig-leaf of the word “liberty”.
Of course, these facts about trump and his character have been known to the civilized world for years, including Cato Institute members, so why the sudden urge to state the obvious?
Also, the article does not comment on the factual basis of the indictments or how illegal, nefarious and un-American the alleged acts were. No, that would be self-inculpatory.
Note that the Institute makes no bones about its disdain for Biden and the Democratic party and how their flying monkeys plan to resort to their time-tested tactics of poo flinging to bring down Democratic candidates and office holders.
Some reactions to the piece —
Additional lines from the article -
Will other republican think tanks flush trump down the toilet soon? Will the donor class close the money spigots?
Let’s hope so. Let’s also keep in mind that the republican party is a danger to Democracy (and science and education and the economy and women’s rights and mother earth and civilization ...) and we have to keep educating the electorate about the truth, so that they don’t get caught up in the relentless lies and falsehoods perpetrated by the right.