OPINION:
Beto O’Rourke, one of the Democratic hopefuls for White House, 2020, landed on a new campaign message these past days, and it goes like this: Vote for me, and I vow to prosecute President Donald Trump to the fullest extent of the law.
Blink.
He’s gone.
O’Rourke, the guy with all the Vanity Fair love who, for a time in March, stoked Democratic passions with his “born to be in it” insistence about the presidency, and then, fast-forward to this past week in Iowa, when he was introduced as a “blank slate” at a campaign stop — by a supporter, no less — is grabbing at straws.
Tilting at windmills.
Digging nails deep to climb out of a hole that’s filled with a couple of dozen other candidates, all of whom have at various points over the weeks stomped Beto’s gold forehead star.
For the curious of mind, this is the sound of a man gasping for his last political breaths.
On “This Week” on ABC, host George Stephanopoulos asked O’Rourke, as Breitbart reported, “If you win in 2020, would you [order] the Justice Department to pursue charges against President Trump?”
And O’Rourke replied, “I would want my Justice Department, any future administration’s Justice Department, to follow the facts and the truth and to make sure at the end of the day there’s accountability and justice, without this, without that, this idea, this experiment of American democracy comes to a close. We were attacked unlike any other time in our 243-year history and we have a president who has yet to acknowledge it and a president who has yet to be brought to justice. Yes, no matter who that is.”
Beto for Jailbars.
Vote Beto, See Trump Imprisoned.
Trump, during his town hall, debates and campaign stops, made quite a splash with certain bases of conservative voters by pledging to prosecute Hillary Clinton, by vowing to go after one of the ideological right’s biggest political enemies.
But Clinton’s got a lengthy past of behaviors that spell criminal, like using a private home-based email server to send documents deemed sensitive to America’s national security. And like wiping clean 33,000 or so of those emails, rather than letting State Department peeps — or FBI investigators — have a peek. And like sparking headlines like this one from the New York Post: “Team Hillary wanted ’ASAP’ call with FBI after Comey reopened email probe” — an act by another name, another Trump name, for instance, would be smacked as obstruction, meaning criminal, meaning jail. No actual crime needed.
So.
Now O’Rourke wants to take a try down the same Vote Me, I’ll Prosecute path?
The narrative only works if the target of prosecution is guilty of something.
Trump’s not.
O’Rourke’s floundering.
And he’s seeking desperately to find a platform to keep alive his desperate, pathetic presidential campaign.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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