"... fears of how Mr. Trump would govern, given the contempt he has shown for traditional democratic norms and the rank ignorance of the Constitution he has displayed." Contempt and rank ignorance-- just what we need. NOT.

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Memo to Republicans: Democracies don’t lock up political opponents
By Editorial Board, July 20, 2016

The theme of this year’s Republican National Convention was visible early, in the “Hillary for Prison” T-shirts being hawked outside the arena. Republicans expanded on it during the first night of speakers, when a macabre parade of the grieving blamed the deaths of loved ones directly on Hillary Clinton. It descended to a new low Tuesday night when delegates assembled in Cleveland kept repeating their favorite chant: “Lock her up! Lock her up!” “Make America Great Again!” is emblazoned on the walls of the convention hall, but “lock her up” captures the frenzied, angry mood.

“Embarrassed for my country by this chant,” Stanford University professor (and Post contributor) Michael McFaul tweeted Tuesday. “Dictatorships lock up the opposition, not democracies.” Mr. McFaul should know: He was U.S. ambassador to Vladimir Putin’s Russia and is a leading scholar of that country’s turn toward authoritarianism.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie led the crowd in a trial by mob Tuesday night, lobbing accusation after accusation at the former secretary of state, asking the crowd after each one to declare her “guilty or not guilty.” “Guilty!” was the predictable reply, though nearly all of his charges concerned policy choices, not behavior that was even conceivably illegal. After absurdly accusing Ms. Clinton of being “an apologist for an al-Qaeda affiliate,” Mr. Christie criticized her for being too soft on dictators and the Kremlin. He, of course, said nothing about Donald Trump’s recent praise for Saddam Hussein or Mr. Trump’s admiration for Mr. Putin and other despots.

Mr. Christie, a former prosecutor and would-be attorney general, presumably knows that the U.S. legal system is meant to be insulated from politics. He should know better than to weaken that all-important separation. But you could say as much about many formerly self-respecting Republican leaders who have let themselves sink to Mr. Trump’s level this year.

Every convention spends some time rabble-rousing against the opposition, and this one is particularly focused on Ms. Clinton’s alleged wrongs because the Republican Party cannot agree on much else this year. But the Trump campaign’s descent from standard red-meat partisanship to unprecedented accusations of criminality displays contempt for the rule of law and a startling disinterest in fact and reason. Investigation after investigation into Benghazi, Libya, and Ms. Clinton’s emails have not uncovered the sort of rampant abuse Republican rhetoric suggests. Even if FBI Director James B. Comey had recommended she be charged — an action, he rightly said, no reasonable prosecutor would take — there is essentially no chance she would have seen conviction and jail time.

The “lock her up” motif rightly heightens fears of how Mr. Trump would govern, given the contempt he has shown for traditional democratic norms and the rank ignorance of the Constitution he has displayed. But it is a bad sign for the next four years even if Mr. Trump loses. When the critique of political opponents becomes so disproportionate and divorced from reality, democracy, which requires goodwill and compromise, cannot function.
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