August 30, 2023

The first Republican debate was a disappointing disaster—for the candidates and America. Not one of the questions addressed the elephant in the room. In fact, the list of questions selected by Fox News, which likely received enthusiastic approval from the Democrat Party, helped highlight the elephant. Candidates were asked about a viral blue grass song, inflation, Ukraine, China, Israel, and other foreign relations issues, crime, energy, the border, climate change, abortion, and more. But as important as these things are, they pale by comparison to the single most important issue, the one posing the greatest threat to our Republic since the 1850s.

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The greatest threat to our Republic, to our democracy, to our country as we know it is the unholy alliance that has been exposed between the Democrat Party, federal agencies, and the media—resulting in the greatest level of corruption we have ever witnessed.

Saying this just a few years ago was called a conspiracy theory. But sadly, we know that this cabal’s most significant effort—Russiagate—involved almost innumerable illegal acts of conspiracy, perjury, collusion, propaganda, and censorship. These were often requested and/or committed, not by a rogue staffer or two, but by top leadership in governmental agencies. The debate moderators didn’t ask a single question about or even mention what many call the greatest political scandal in our nation’s history.

Russiagate was not an isolated scandal that is now old news. Rather, it was a very large signpost showing a deep level of corruption within our government. That corruption has not faded away. Quite the contrary.

Image: Republican debate. YouTube screen grab.

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Given that Democrats, the media, and government agencies didn’t experience negative consequences for their behavior, they’ve now reached new, unprecedented lows in their willingness to ignore the law. They target Republicans and conservatives for harassment and prosecution, putting the two-tiered justice system on full display; pushing false narratives about a pandemic for their own benefit; urging partisan propaganda and censorship; ignoring the exploding violence and theft in our cities; ignoring immigration law; pushing to indoctrinate our children with Marxist theories about race and gender while punishing parents who object; applying those same theories to destroy our military by replacing merit and readiness with wokeness as the top priority; illegally and arbitrarily dismissing hundreds of millions of dollars in student loans; and ramping up using the DOJ to eliminate not merely political opponents but anyone who supports them, including their lawyers. Yet again, not a single question or mention of these issues in questions to or responses from candidates.

While the moderators did not have any of this on the agenda, and the ridiculous 30- and 60-second windows provided precious little opportunity for the candidates to provide any sort of detailed answer, the candidates themselves are not blameless. Even with these limitations, they could have worked parts of the evidence into many of their responses, starting with the very first question put to them about why Mr. Anthony’s soulful lament has been so well received. To his credit, Vivek Ramaswamy at least decried the massive growth of government, the FBI in particular, albeit referencing their redundancy as opposed to their corruption.

A candidate could have kick-started the debate on the first question, calling out the corruption enriching those men north of Richmond. A strong candidate would have pointed out that there is already enough evidence for any objective jurist or journalist to conclude that tremendous corruption enriched the Biden family. Far more evidence exists for this than was ever involved in the predicate for Russiagate.

A strong candidate could have refused to play along with the hand-show for the loyalty pledge and perhaps parried the question with a response, “It’s the wrong question. How about asking how we stop the DOJ persecution of political dissidents in the first place?” That likely would have been the most memorable line of the debates and drawn the most applause.

In fact, in response to just about any of the questions, an effective candidate could have pointed out that the candidates’ views, values, experience, or plans for action as president are completely irrelevant if the current corrupt cabal is allowed to continue unchecked. He (or she) would point out that any one of them could easily be the next in line for frog-marching, mug-shotting, and imprisonment. They could all have pointed out that dealing with any given subject, from inflation to foreign relations to handling COVID, requires an uncorrupted system. Our Constitution demands, and our republic requires, fair and balanced political and justice systems. Most Americans do not believe we have that today.

The Democrats want us to ignore this elephant, of course. They want us to behave as if this is just another normal debate in the middle of a normal election cycle. Fox News and the Republican candidates obliged them. It is not a normal election cycle. It is a referendum on whether we will return to a constitutional republic, or whether we will support the huge and growing corruption that now permeates our society – starting with the uppermost leadership.