I do not know Eastman, I am not defending him.Let's recap.
There was some back and fort about Trump hiring incompetent lawyers.
KG1 stated (#1083) "Eastman was once thought of as a constitutional scholar. Trump trusted his counsel."
So I guess we could blame KG1 for all this. Seriously I'm not going to say KG1 is making a firm assertion here. Just saying that people thought of him as a constitutional scholar, and Trump trusted him.
SD4L (#1183) challenged Eastman's credentials as being unimpressive, citing the mediocre school he was teaching at. But, the main point of that post was in the second paragraph. Why did Trump seek out a nobody professor teaching at a nobody law school to evaluate this legal theory, when he could just take it to any legal council available to him as POTUS?
That was really the point of impugning Eastman's credentials, so he could ask the question, why Eastman and not someone better? And it was fair point that you should have addressed.
Instead, you dodged the question by implying SD4L is an elitist for using credentials to impugn Eastman's expertise. You said:
(#1187)
I would have NEVER thought of you as an elitist. As politicized as the Ivy League has become this is a silly thing for a conservative to say. Probably most of the best conservative lawyers will come from places the elites rate way below their indoctrination centers…
There aren't any actual facts expressed in that post, especially that answers why Trump is relying on a nobody. SD4L cited some facts about Eastman's credentials that tend to disintegrate Eastman's "election" scholarship. You devolved the discussion into essentially, "you should act like me" lecturing about elitism! That's a total dodge of SD4L's question.
My part of it was to challenge the logic that impugning Eastman's credentials as an "expert" is elitism. And maybe you don't like me summarizing SD4L's way to dismantle Eastman's "expertise" as "credentials". But that's what it is.
So. In post 1210, I said "Seems to me if he’s a preeminent constitutional scholar, they’re appealing to authority. Which Mike insists is elitist." You claimed in #1213 that I was changing the meaning of your posts. I think you didn't understand the point you replied to. When I said "preeminent" being an appeal to authority, I did not say you said that. I said it was an appeal to authority. And I was not claiming you said the words "appeal to authority". But the whole "elitist" thing is your sort of rebuttal SD4L. Both asserting expertise and attacking the credentials of the supposed "expert" are parts of the same fallacy. Neither guarantees that the conclusion follows the premise. When SD4L attacks Eastman's job, that's a form of the fallacy. But you called that elitist. I'm saying two things with the one statement.
In post 1212 I got to what I think is really behind the whole "elite" dodge in the first place. It's really the gist of the whole discussion on your part, which is that you need Eastman to be an actual expert. If he's not real expert, this makes Trump look pretty ****ing bad to consult a nobody. It makes it look like he couldn't get a real expert to agree with him so he sought out a nobody who would go along with it, and claim he's a scholar. This is why I asked:
"Is your belief in the validity of the legal theory that they tried to get Pence to go along with, influenced by the credibility of Eastman as a legal scholar? "
You didn't answer that, because you have see that if Eastman isn't an expert, then Trump falls into the typical political trap where where the politician must either admit to being corrupt or incompetent, where the best play is to admit to incompetence.
So. That's where we are. Those are my thoughts. Maybe I'm right, or maybe I'm wrong, but I did not claim you said something you didn't say.
On SD4L's pertinent question, can you salvage a win on Eastman as an expert? Or is the best explanation for Trump's actions that he's either corrupt or incompetent? I am confident you won't dodge this now, but will address the real question.
I am making the point that conservatives have to come to terms with the fact that among other things, news and legal opinions will not come from the places we once thought were the go to places. Even top law schools, not to mention elite law schools have been made into indoctrination centers.
Things are changing but conservatives are mired in normalcy bias…