Elissa Slotkin wants to scare, threaten young Republicans away from politics

Elissa Slotkin is a Democratic senator from Michigan, and supposedly one of the more moderate members of her party. But even Slotkin wants to use the power of the federal government — power she hopes to wield if Democrats take back the Senate — to punish her political opponents.

In recent remarks of hers that went viral, Slotkin brags about wanting to discourage young Republicans from getting involved in politics and joining the Trump administration by making them fear the threat of prosecution. Take a look.

That footage came courtesy of The Chicago Thinker, an independent paper at the University of Chicago, where Slotkin spoke last week. And did you get all that? She’s talking deterrence: She wants young Republicans to fear that they will face legal consequences for getting involved in government. That’s what she wants to do with the congressional majority: wage lawfare against Republicans and members of the administration so totally and completely that no one will even want to work for President Trump, because they can’t risk it.

That’s pretty awful. It’s an attitude of absolute moral superiority of certainty Slotkin possesses that her side is right about everything and thus justified in effectively cheating at politics. She wants to rig the system. She wants to punish people who disagree with her. Is that what we’re coming to? As that the vision the Democrats have for the country? Why not prosecute people if they break the law, not simply because we don’t like them and want them to suffer in hopes it sends a message to others?

And keep in mind, Slotkin is supposedly a moderate. When far-left Democrats aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America get into Congress, their reign of terror will be even further reaching. It will be even more illiberal. It will be aimed at making it difficult or impossible to dissent from their agenda.

This is not how politics should work in a free country that holds democratic elections. We don’t want to be the sort of nation where everybody goes to jail when there’s a turnover election. But the Democrats continue to push things in this direction. Unfortunately it’s going to get much worse.

So let’s take them at their word. A Democratic victory in the midterm elections, a Senate majority in addition to a House majority, will mean they’re coming after everybody. That’s their theory of deterrence, and their plan to make it so that the federal government is even more ineffective than it was previously: drive young people who disagree with them away from politics forever. Brace yourself, lawfare is coming.

Robby Soave is co-host of The Hill’s commentary show “Rising” and a senior editor for Reason Magazine. This column is an edited transcription of his daily commentary.