Bait and Switch - Cal Thomas on the Constitutional Crisis

https://calthomas.com/2025/02/whom-to-blame-for-the-crisis/

Unfortunately I must report that Cal Thomas is still producing commentaries and this one appeared in our local newspaper the other day.

It's a case of classic bait-and-switch tactics. He ignores the issues surrounding the Constitutional Crisis and instead ventures down a dishonest rabbit trail of revisionism and spin. In other words, it's classic Cal Thomas.

The US was once dominated by the Spoils System - to the political victors go the spoils. Your people are in and everyone else is out. It's cronyism and it politicised everything. Starting in the late 19th century and into the 20th century, this system was restricted - at least in part. The principle is checks and balances - the executive doesn't get to eliminate everyone they don't like. There are federal employees who enable the machine of government to run apart from political squabbles and stratagems. And many will tell you there's a positive element to that in the promotion of stability. The often incompetent and unqualified flashy political appointees come and go but the ship of state sails on.

Now if someone wants to argue that the federal bureaucracy is bloated and corrupt and that many employees are overpaid and lazy - that's fine. There's a way to deal with that and few would argue against some kind of reform. But what Trump is doing is in fact illegal and eventually this will be borne out in the courts (and in historical interpretation) but by then the damage will have been done - something the Trump team is fully conscious of. It's fine to eliminate departments and cancel programmes - but if they were created by Congress the president cannot shut them down with the stroke of a pen. This is why there's a crisis - the president is running rough shod over the Constitution.

But in the fantasy world of FOX and other such outlets - the realm inhabited by the likes of Cal Thomas, these are not issues. In fact they're not even being discussed. In the puerile world of Thomas, Trump and Musk are just trying to clean up. What's wrong with that? Why is everyone so upset?

The irony is that for all their talk of the Founder's vision, democracy and rule of law - Trump is pursuing an authoritarian path well known to history - a path the likes of Thomas and the Right zealously support.

In the late Roman Republic it was figures like Marius and Sulla that (in order to get things done) assumed an authoritarian mantle, purged enemies, and attempted to steer by force of will (as opposed to force of law) the empire back onto solid ground (as they saw it). In actuality they simply paved the way for civil war, Julius Caesar, and eventually the end of the Republic.

His complaint regarding regulations is unfounded and does not reflect the historical reality. The debates took place in the early American republic to be sure but it's inaccurate to just simply say this is what the Founders wanted or didn't want. There are times that's appropriate when there was a consensus. On the types of issues he cites, there wasn't, never mind the fact that the nature of the Constitution is such that it was meant to change and it has done so over the years at times in rather fundamental ways.

With regard to FDR, one may agree or disagree with his actions but the nation was in a crisis and it was one that only grew in magnitude with the new economy and other issues that would emerge in the aftermath of the war. Debts have skyrocketed under Republican presidents as well - Reagan, Bush, and Trump being among the worst. The issue it would seem is not debt and spending but rather who controls the reins and what is deemed important or valid. His framing of these questions is completely disingenuous.

As far as the debt itself, it's certainly a problem but it's easily solved by means of more equitable taxation and the sharp curtailment of the military budget - which is the elephant in the room when it comes to discretionary spending. We could point out that the Founders were also less than keen on standing armies and political parties for that matter. I agree the tax rates are outrageous but companies and the investor class often pay almost nothing and again, the military budget is outrageous. It's a budget for an empire - and one must ask is that what the Founders had in mind?

It's fine to quote Jefferson but he was opposed by figures like Hamilton, Adams, and George Washington. They did not share Jefferson's agrarian vision nor his Francophilia. Were they somehow less patriotic?

The whole essay is a distraction, once again an exercise in bait-and-switch. Elon Musk and Donald Trump are not trying to restore the old agrarian Jeffersonian America of the late 18th century. Thomas knows this and is being disingenuous - or he doesn't in which case his ignorance is pretty staggering. As someone who has listened to and read his commentaries for decades - I would say it's likely a bit of both. I realize that's less than kind but given the pernicious influence of this man in Christian circles, I don't apologize for speaking the truth. For someone who supposedly abandoned the Christian Right's vision of Dominion, he certainly still echoes all the talking points.

The issues he raises are worth discussing but in a serious manner - not in the superficial way he approaches them. However these are not the issues that have generated the controversy. One is left wondering if Thomas actually understands what a Constitutional Crisis means? Maybe he thinks the whole Watergate business was overblown? And we could talk about other episodes like Iran-Contra that should have generated such a crisis but didn't because the Democrats rolled over and played dead. The same is true in the aftermath of 9/11 and the lead-up to Bush's invasion of Iraq. As I recall, Thomas was rather supportive of these crimes and debacles. For someone who boasts about his '40 years' of journalism, he sure hasn't learned much.

In the end we could say that Thomas himself is characterized by bait-and-switch. He played an important role in Falwell's so-called Moral Majority in the 1970's and 1980's and then kind of denounced it all - even though he continues to produce Right-wing commentaries. His message is effectively that he agrees with the Right but grows concerned when Christians get too caught up in politics or entwined with these factions - but apparently their larger cause is so worthwhile that Thomas will continue to act as a partisan for them. It boggles me that some Dominionists actually point to him as some kind of retreatist - or even a Two Kingdoms type.

I will give him one thing - his commentaries are consistent and those that read them regularly and rely on them for information are guaranteed to be marked by ignorance and a misguided understanding of what Christian thinking entails.