by Bob Barr | Dec 12, 2024 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller With President-elect Donald Trump’s recent nomination of Pam Bondi to serve as attorney general, and his naming of Gail Slater to head the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice, the groundwork has been laid to begin unshackling America’s marketplace, which has for decades been hampered by unnecessary regulations and — during the Biden Administration — subjected to out-and-out lawfare by the very Department of Justice supposed to protect the marketplace from anti-competitive forces. The question now is, how quickly can these abusive, economic lawfare practices be struck from the Department’s agenda and an originalist interpretation of the nation’s antitrust laws restored? The mission of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is to uphold federal law. The Department, however, cannot and has never carried out this mission in a vacuum. As a component of the executive branch of the federal government, it operates necessarily — and appropriately — according to the underlying policy preferences of the elected president. It bears reminding that Democrats lost the presidential election in November. Whether the losers like it or not, President-elect Trump has every right to choose individuals to occupy top positions at the Justice Department who will respect and implement the policies that clearly and openly were at the foundation of his Nov. 5 electoral victory. Moreover, Trump is fully empowered to populate the top echelons of the Department with men and women who – unlike his soon-to-be predecessor – actually respect the rule of law and who will not employ the powers of the Justice Department to undermine legal norms and the institutions our Founders so carefully crafted. For...
by Bob Barr | Nov 13, 2024 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller As with any national election, there are winners and losers. There are celebrations and there are postmortems. There is recrimination and there are congratulations. After their shellacking at the polls Nov. 5, Democrats unsurprisingly are pointing fingers, casting blame and channeling their anger; some already scheming for 2026 and 2028. Meanwhile, the one person most responsible for what still is unfolding as a historically significant election is doing exactly what he should be doing. Donald J. Trump is laying the groundwork to begin dismantling a federal government that has been allowed to grow into a morbidly obese and regulatory oppressive behemoth under successive Democrat and Republican administrations. Not since Ronald Reagan took on Uncle Sam in his first term has the left faced such a serious threat. What makes this go ‘round far different from Reagan’s 1980 drubbing of Jimmy Carter is the magnitude and multitude of attacks leveled at Trump before the election – a barrage no presidential candidate before him had endured. Sure, Reagan was attacked by the Democrat Party throughout the 1980 campaign, even as he had to fight off efforts by the GOP establishment that never really warmed to his anti-Washington rhetoric. But the campaign against Trump, which began even before Joe Biden was sworn into office Jan. 20, 2021, is something our country never previously had witnessed. To the horror and dismay of Democrats and many moderate Republicans, and against all odds, Trump still prevailed. Also unlike Reagan’s 1980 win (with his coattails ushering in a GOP majority in the Senate) — after which politics settled down into a “normal” transition — Trump’s opponents largely have...
by Bob Barr | Nov 7, 2024 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Hindsight may be 20-20, but it can be illustrative and reliable. Here are nine errors Kamala Harris should not have committed during the course of losing her admittedly truncated campaign. Above all, don’t define your campaign as one centered on “change” and then declare there was nothing at all you would change in your own record as vice president. I mean, who couldn’t see this one coming a mile away? Less than one month out from Election Day, Harris gleefully appeared on “The View” with its six uber-liberal glamour gals, and was thrown the softest of softball questions by co-hostess Sunny Hostin — “What, if anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?” The whiff of her milquetoast answer that she would not have changed a thing reverberated all the way to her drubbing at Trump’s hands on Tuesday. You’re a “change agent” who wouldn’t “change” a thing? Kiddo, you deserve to lose on that one alone. But there’s more lessons to be learned here. Use celebrities sparingly and certainly don’t rely on them. Sure, voters, especially young ones, love celebrities like Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Oprah Winfrey, and the host of others the Harris campaign trotted out over the four months of her campaign. But any campaign manager worth their salt will tell you that celebrities are like snowflakes – beautiful to look at but quickly melt. This lesson un-learned by Harris was especially obvious when compared to Trump’s campaign which wisely avoided playing the “look-at-me” celebrity card. Trump, after all, doesn’t need celebrities to burnish his image. Trump is his own celebrity. ...
