Civility in Politics

In a recent CNN interview Hillary Clinton made the comment:

You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about

The same comment could have been made by any conservative Republican in our government. With the Democrat party seemingly swinging further and further toward socialism anyone who respects and wants to maintain our Constitution could have made this statement against liberals.

Clinton went on to say:

That’s why I believe, if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and/or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again. But until then, the only thing that the Republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength.

To me this sounds like a veiled threat that the insanity will continue until voters start electing Democrat candidates. In the last section Clinton fails to realize the trademark of anyone with true strength is to be able to show it in a civil manner.

Later in the interview Clinton makes the comment:

I want to stop the degrading of the rule of law. The delegitimizing of elections. One of their priorities should be, let's protect our elections.

This coming from a person that

• illegally set up a private email server to skirt federal laws on archiving communications
• intentionally mishandled classified documents that eventually ended up in the hands of foreign countries when her illegal email server was hacked
• deleted emails requested from the server and destroyed communication devices which would be obstruction of justice normally
• rigged the primaries against Bernie Sanders to ensure she won the Democrat nomination
• helped pay for false research through foreign agents and Russian contacts to try to discredit President Trump during the election

I think if we use Clinton's standards for rules of law and legitimate elections we will all be in trouble.

Luckily there is some push back of this from Senator Heidi Heitkamp who said this about Clinton's comment:

"That's ridiculous, I mean, I can't imagine how you get anything done if you don't bring civility back into politics, and that goes for both sides."

Senator Heitkamp is right. Part of that civility has got to be making politics about helping the country rather than each respective political party. This means actually listening to each other rather than just picking snips from what the other is saying to try to score a political point. It means cooperation from both sides. Currently our politicians seem to be stuck in a mode of all or nothing. Congress needs to get back to accepting that individually they may not get everything they want and the topic in question should be looked at as to whether it is better or worse for our country.

Sources:
Clinton: 'You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for'
Dem senator Heitkamp slams Clinton call to abandon civility with GOP