Knight says Clinton win would assure a continued assault on the two-party system
By Robert Knight –
A Hillary Clinton presidency would bring many things, but one consequence is assured: a continued assault on our competitive, two-party political system.
We don't have to guess about this. Election integrity has been under siege for many years, particularly the past eight. Under Barack Obama, the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service, and even the FBI have been politicized and turned into blunt instruments against efforts to ensure honest elections or to hold miscreants accountable.
Under the dubious guise of a threat from Russian hacking, the Department of Homeland Security is laying the groundwork to interfere with the states' constitutional delegation of control over elections.
The federal judiciary has been filled with radical appointees who legislate from the bench and think constitutional self-government by the people and for the people is for suckers. Increasingly, Congress has relinquished its Article I powers without as much as a whimper.
A Supreme Court remade by Hillary Clinton would seal the demise of the separation of powers and close the door to any defense of lost constitutional liberties. Mrs. Clinton herself recently said, "The Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment," and in accepting her nomination said, "We need to appoint Supreme Court justices who will get money out of politics and expand voting rights, not restrict them. And we'll pass a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United!" Well, so much for the First and Second Amendments.
She also said that, "deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed." Got that?
And if you don't want to change your beliefs, forget about asking elected officials for protection. Progressives are transforming America by changing its electorate. Like-minded judges have struck down efforts to require proof of citizenship to register to vote and common-sense photo voter ID laws, while upholding fraud-enabling mail-in balloting and same-day voter registration.
At the same time, recent investigations have turned up thousands of noncitizens voting in Pennsylvania and Virginia, and dead people voting in California and Colorado.
Hillary Clinton wants automatic voter registration, a steppingstone to mandatory voting, which President Obama has already endorsed. Coercion would be simple; just use the tax code to fine nonvoters the way Obamacare penalizes those who forgo health insurance.
The left has been working overtime to make our elections vulnerable to fraud. After 2010, the IRS kneecapped the tea party movement and persecuted conservative activists. True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht was subjected along with her husband to inquiries and audits by multiple federal agencies.
Imagine what the IRS would do under Hillary Clinton, whose key staff members have been caught by WikiLeaks in emails disparaging Catholics, evangelicals, Southerners and "needy Latinos."
Under former Attorney General Eric Holder and current Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division has functioned as a partisan political machine that brooks no opposition. As former Justice Department attorney J. Christian Adams documents in his book "Injustice," the Voting Section is now a left wing hothouse full of former staff members from the ACLU's Voting Rights Project and other George-Soros-funded groups that advocate illegal immigration.
These include the Advancement Project, the SEIU and the League of United Latin American Citizens. One of the first hires in the Voting Section was a leader of the "Queer Resistance Front" at Harvard University.
Does anyone think that a Clinton-appointed Justice Department will act impartially with regard to religious liberty, racial neutrality, gun ownership or election reforms aimed at protecting the security of the ballot box?
Mrs. Clinton was also caught calling for "a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders" in a 2013 speech on behalf of a Brazilian bank. The toxic mix of unlimited immigration and lax election security will make citizenship meaningless. Mrs. Clinton and other progressives are bent on replacing the current American electorate with millions of foreigners who can be bribed into becoming a permanent voting bloc.
Suppose Mrs. Clinton begins to crack down on dissent from her radical agenda? Where could Americans turn to get the truth? Certainly not from a "mainstream" media that has left no doubt about their shameless support of her candidacy.
How about talk radio or the Drudge Report? The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has asserted jurisdiction over the Internet without any congressional authorization and despite a federal court ruling to the contrary. The progressives have clearly stated their intent to shut down their ever-widening classification of "hate speech." President Clinton would be able to replace the most outspoken conservative FCC member. Now, imagine Hillary Clinton's FCC out to punish its enemies.
With a full-scale assault on the integrity of our election process, unbridled illegal immigration and the breakdown of constitutional limits on executive power, it does not take a crystal ball to see where America would wind up.
We might still have elections, but then, so did the old Soviet Union. They would be just as meaningful.
* Robert Knight is a senior fellow at the American Civil Rights Union.
First published in the Washington Times.
