A question for the shills and throne-sniffers: is it really worth this?

Strong objection to Donald Trump is interesting in terms of its breadth. Those who harbor it span the spectrum, from The Weekly Standard to Antifa. It's true that, depending upon the point on the spectrum at which they're found, their reasons differ. Still, presidents who are controversial don't generally get such equal-opportunity negative reaction.

I still consider Robert Mueller an enigma. He has a stellar record in both military service and law enforcement. He doesn't and has never conducted himself like any kind of agenda-drive hot dog. But the recent shift in his investigation from a focus on Trump campaign relations with Russia to campaign finance is interesting, to say the least. 

It's certainly being treated differently than previous such instances of this kind of behavior:

The National Review’s Andrew McCarthy appeared on Fox News (video above) to discuss the differences between how election law violation cases are routinely dealt with and the way Trump’s case is being handled. McCarthy said:

The campaign finance stuff is not usually handled as a felony prosecution. I think that’s characteristic of a lot of what’s gone on in this investigation. So you have these Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) violations which are typically not handled as a felony prosecution. In this investigation, they are. You have everybody who tells a lie to the FBI agent being, it seems, prosecuted for lying to the FBI. That’s not typically how these investigations go. They’ve ratcheted up the formal standards or the very technical standards of criminality in this investigation vs. other investigations and I think what upsets people is the difference in the quality of justice that Hillary Clinton got vs. what is happening to the Trump campaign.

McCarthy's view is echoed by Alan Dershowitz:

Alan Dershowitz weighed in. He called for people to employ the “shoe on the other foot test.”

If Hillary Clinton were president and Republicans were saying ‘Lock Her Up,’ everybody would be on the other side…How dare you expand criminal statutes? How dare you expand the criteria for impeachment?…Now all these liberal Democrat fair-weather civil libertarians are saying the hell with the constitution, the hell with civil liberties, put all that aside. Get Trump. That’s the most important consideration. Get him by any means possible.

Dershowitz agrees that this is a classic textbook example of extortion. Therefore, I ask again, how can a victim of extortion be considered a felon? The answer is: When his name is Donald Trump. 

But, damn it, there's a supremely important point to be made here: None of this would be transpiring if Trump had not had simultaneous affairs with a porn actress and Playboy model shortly after his third wife had given birth to his fifth kid.

And Roger L. Simon's attempt at PJ Media to wave it all away with whataboutism spin is really lame. (No linky love.)  He brings out the obvious examples: JFK and Clinton, Grover Cleveland. He even cites a couple of cases that are far from historical certainties: Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, and Dwight Eisenhower and Kay Sommersby.

What's your point, Roger? Is it along the lines of, "Our presidents have never been choirboys. Let's all grow up and quit expecting it of them."

But, you see, Roger, there have also been a whole lot of presidents of strong character who adored their wives and were faithful to them.

Another recent development that is providing fodder for the Trump-observation industry is the way that, once again, an inner member of the White House staff, this tie John Kelly, is let go in a chaotic way.

And, as I mentioned the other day, there's that tweet about Rex Tillerson being "dumb as a rock."

Even on a policy level, Trump's foreign-policy initiatives are not bearing the rapidly-growing fruit he'd promised. China is balking at the idea that a trade deal is a fait accompli, and North Korea is still building missile bases.

So I ask all the cult followers: At what point do you start to say, this trade-off isn't worth it.

And, once again, this is not to overlook the great moves. Pulling out of the Paris climate accord and the JCPOA, the tax cut, the judicial appointments.

But also, again I say, we'd have had those accomplishments with an actual conservative president without all this embarrassment and instability.

And we could have had such a president. Madame Bleachbit was imminently beatable by any number of the contenders on the GOP bench.