How Republicans Are Digging Their Own Grave By Being Overly Defensive

(Un)Popular Statement of the day: By defending Flynn on unrelated personal misdeeds, the conservatives helped perpetuate conspiracy theories and false narratives.

Frankly, by ceding moral ground on various issues in the course of last year's elections, Republicans have made both the president and the party as a whole more vulnerable to baseless attacks. Had more of them been willing to stick by issues, while calling out various officials when they warranted it, instead of adopting the head-in-the-sand approach with regards to every accusation from the left, we would not be wasting our money on an investigation into obstruction of justice claims by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and giving free ammunition to Mueller.

Trump Campaign's Best Defense Against Accusations of Collusion Is Lack of Central Planning

So the narrative that George Papandapolous was unimportant, had no connections to anyone important, and was not an authorized member of the campaign is failing. He appears to have been present at a national security briefing with Trump himself in attendance.

On the other hand, the campaign was chaotic, and it sounds like any random idiot could get into national security meetings without a specific authorization, a trend that continued well into the White House, until COS Kelly put a kibosch on that. What this tells you is that

1. Trump's campaign was more incompetent in basic security matters than it was malicious and conspiring

and

2. Current apologists are trying way too hard. Trump's best defense is not the attempt to diminish the significance of GP, but actually the inherent flaws of his campaign.

There was mass miscommunication and disorganization, which we have seen with the rollout of the immigration EO early at the start of administration. The right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing. You can't have a properly masterminded collusion there. Rather, it sounds like a bunch of haphazard opportunistic contacts at various levels and for various reasons.

When the Cover-Up Is a Crime, and the Actual Act Being Covered Isn't

I'm of mixed feelings on the George Papadopolous case. On the one hand, it's commendable that the White House is not covering up for obstruction of justice in the form of George P's lies to the FBI, and fully cooperated with the probe, and gave everything that was needed to build the case.

On the other hand, I can't really rid myself of a nagging feeling that George P. may have been lying per the request FROM the White House, and if so, he is being made into a scapegoat for not only the thrust of misguided initial policy towards Putin, but engaging in crime for the sake of the President who is perfectly ok with having someone else commit a crime just to avoid scrutiny of non-criminal but bad policy.

I mean, I wasn't sure what Papadapolous thought would happen as a result of his lies, and it was remarkably stupid and unethical for him to do that, regardless of whether he did that of his own initiative or was asked to do so. But there is something altogether Nixonian about having low-level grunts engage in obstruction of justice to cover up for someone with an enormous ego who is likely not man enough to face the political consequences of strategic mistakes made during his presidential campaign. Again, the irony of this is that none of the initial comments about Putin or even meetings with Russian diplomats are in and of themselves criminal.

It's the cover-up that raises legal questions, and it's unclear why it's even necessary, since it makes the whole thing look significantly worse than it was originally was.