DAVID HARSANYI: You Opposed Donald Trump, So Why Aren’t You Freaking Out?

If you’re genuinely interesting in being an effective critic of the next president, acting like Adolf Hitler is pounding at your doorstep every time Trump tweets something might not be the most effective plan in the long run.

Not to mention, the left has been such an astonishing hypocrite on so many issues related to Trump that it’s a bit difficult to move forward without pointing it out. Joining activists who’ve spent years attacking the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth and Tenth Amendments—and now the Electoral College—in a newfound veneration of the Emoluments Clause is a bit much. Of course, Trump should be held accountable for his potential conflicts of interest, and one hopes conservatives who value good government will stand up when tangible evidence emerges that they exist. But the critics on the left aren’t serious about the Constitution. They’re serious about the Democratic Party.

Who can take journalists seriously—who’ve never once uttered a word of concern over the Democratic Party’s crusade to empower government to ban political speech by overturning Citizens United—when they lose it over a tweet about flag-burning? If it were up to them over the past eight years, Trump would now be imbued with far more power to achieve the things they fear—unilaterally. There was more angst over the president-elect ditching a reporting pool to have a steak than there was over any of President Obama’s numerous executive abuses. So when you hear people say democracy needs journalism “now more than ever,” remember that they’re admitting they weren’t doing their job yesterday. We also needed journalism more than ever back then.

Those who kept telling us that Hillary Clinton’s corrupt foundation and blatant favor-trading with the world’s most illiberal regimes were merely a conspiracy theory now act as if the republic will crumble if Trump’s hotel hosts the same Bahraini princes that were buying access in the Obama administration. . . .

What’s really upset Democrats, it seems to me, is that traditional conservative policy proposals—the sorts of thing Republicans have campaigned on for years, and the policies that have helped them win over 1,000 local seats and governorships and two wave elections—will probably be moving forward.

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