So much for my internal pledge to make this a Trump–free week. When Trump signals the perpetual bureaucracy that neither foot–dragging nor outright insubordination will be tolerated, it’s such a break from past GOP tradition that attention must be paid.
The Bush administrations had reached a go along to get along detente with the perpetual bureaucracy that was essentially go along to get nothing.
The bureaucracy would acquiesce to a declaration of war on the occasional foreign nation, and in return the federal blob would continue spending, obstructing, leaking, and undermining anything else the administration wanted to do in the way of what passed for conservative domestic policy.
Early indications are this rapprochement may be in for revision after Acting Attorney General Sally Yates walked the plank Monday evening.
Her offense was directly defying President Trump by instructing Justice Department lawyers not to defend his temporary ban on entry from seven terror-supporting nations.
Yates, a loyal Obama holdover, told her staff, "At present, I am not convinced . . . the executive order is lawful . . . for as long as I am the acting attorney general, the Department of Justice will not present arguments in defense of the executive order, unless and until I become convinced that it is appropriate to do so."
That’s when President Trump told her to hit the road.
It’s not the president’s job to explain his executive orders to the satisfaction of some functionary with an inflated sense of her importance. Yates’ job is to follow orders.
If her finely-tuned sensibilities — sensibilities that incidentally never found anything wrong with Obama executive orders — are troubled by an order from Trump, she has a choice: Hold her nose and enforce the order or resign. Her options do not include defiance.
The choice Yates made typifies the mindset of the perpetual bureaucracy.
An amoeba–like blob that only reacts when threatened by efficiency, accountability or a Republican president. The federal bureaucracy considers itself an independent fourth branch of government that doesn’t answer to the popular vote or the Electoral College.
It’s a hive mind of big government intrusion and cultural Marxist "social justice" policies.
That’s one reason there were so many stories before the inauguration about federal agencies on a hiring binge to prevent Trump’s rumored freeze from having an effect.
It’s why a routine changing of the guard at the State Department was positioned as a Trumpian purge of accumulated wisdom.
And it’s why I wrote earlier the only way conservative reform will ever have a chance is if entire agencies are disbanded. (Complete details here.)
Meanwhile, don’t waste your sympathy on the hypocritical Yates. The media is already busy deifying her. The last time reporters were on a story this big, Trump banned the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s bust from the Oval Office.
She’s the principled hero of the Monday night massacre where, according to the media, she stood up to Trump’s bigoted edict banning Moslems.
In truth Trump didn’t ban Moslems.
He banned people from seven terror-supporting countries.
In another example of the media’s religious test for Republicans — one we never pass — a geographic ban immediately becomes a "Moslem ban" as far as the opposition media is concerned because the nations in question happen to have Moslem majorities.
But domestically when a follower of Islam conducts a terror attack it’s never a Moslem terrorist doing the shooting, bombing or ramming. He’s always described as an "extremist" or "lone wolf" who was "radicalized" by the Acme School of Radicalization, rather than an attack by a Moslem jihadist.
Hysterically, the firing is also being compared to the Saturday Night Massacre. That was when President Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the Watergate Scandal. Nixon was accused of burglarizing his political opponents and covering up the crime, while Trump is accused of winning an election.
The comparison doesn’t hold up since in the Nixon instance the people with integrity resigned rather than be fired, while Yates violated her oath of office in the pursuit of cheap political gain.
Sally will land on her feet. Before a year has passed she’ll be the keynote speaker at every George Soros–sponsored conference, a full professor at an Ivy League school and a the subject of a made–for–Netflix movie.
Obama will probably send her an autographed photo of himself.
Yates’ fate is not what’s important. What is important is the message her firing sends the embedded Trump opposition in the perpetual bureaucracy. Trump will not play nicely with obstructionists and time–servers whose loyalty is to the left and not the nation.
Here’s hoping Trump keeps up the pressure and insists the federal workforce submit to the will of the people, otherwise Yates may only be the first of many.
Michael R. Shannon is a commentator, researcher for the League of American Voters, and an award-winning political and advertising consultant with nationwide and international experience. He is author of "Conservative Christian’s Guidebook for Living in Secular Times (Now with added humor!)." Read more of Michael Shannon's reports — Go Here Now.
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