Well, they got another one.  This time it's Stephen Moore, Trump's nominee for the Federal Reserve Board.  Most fair-minded people would say he is eminently qualified, a serious, accomplished and respected economist whom some credit with being a driving force, along with Larry Kudlow, behind Trump's Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 and, accordingly, the current economic boom.  He's also smart, articulate, quirky, funny, and to many quite charming and likable.

Yet, after sober, informed, high-level consideration of Moore's ideas, it was decided that, no, other ideas, other approaches, other than his should prevail.

Just kidding.  As usual, his ideas rarely came up, other than as roadside carcasses, victims of journalistic drive-by shootings that pronounced them lousy and unworthy of consideration, all without subjecting them to actual debate by the guy promoting them.  Moore has argued that the reasons his ideas didn't hit the big screen is because they're good ideas, and good ideas are allowed to spring only from Democrats who have the approval of the sainted, completely neutral left-wing media, who must provide their stamp of approval, also neutral, only completely left-wing.

Instead, reflexive opponents of anything Trump launched a withering, entirely personal, all-hands-on-deck slime campaign, taking a crony-abetted can-opener to, among other things, Moore's otherwise sealed divorce records.  Ultimately, and quite understandably, he has decided to spare his family the necessity of continuing to endure this ugly assault by a mob of morally vaunted (just ask them) Progressives who, not incidentally, consider themselves the most compassionate people on Earth.

Yes, it's the bio-archaeology approach that is fueled by the certitude that if you dig deep enough and go back far enough, you can find some tidbit, tranche, or treasure trove to demolish in an instant the reputation a person has spent a lifetime earning.

Step right up, folks; knock the bottles off the shelf and win a Kewpie doll.

Perhaps it is overstated to say that it is a game that is literally revolting, but perhaps not.  The people who engage in it show up time after time, puffed large with a sense of their own righteousness, their amen corner gleeful as penguins as they excuse, even applaud, the worst kind of noxious, dishonorable, entirely ad hominem smearing, so long as it takes down the enemy.  It doesn't matter how tendentious or beside-the-point it is to excavate an antiquated, dirt-encrusted shard of some past rhetorical transgression, one that might not have even been considered a transgression when it occurred — but which is now pronounced dispositively obliterating in our current state of Olympian wokeness.  No, it doesn't matter at all so long as you can bring the bastard down, and by "bastard" I mean anyone whose qualifications (defined by their political positioning) compare unfavorably to the breathtakingly crackpot economic crayon boxes of, say, Beto O'Rourke and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

It can't be done without ravening, complicit media, down with the assassination agenda.  They jump on board, bringing you this important biographical "bombshell," this "breaking news," so breathless and insistent that, as a happenstance, it crowds out anything exculpatory or ameliorative or even explanatory.  It's all about the bullfight, and in the end, the bull is supposed to die.

Unless, of course, the bull is a Democrat.  Joy Reid seems to be doing just fine. 

I wish Moore had said to them what Adlai Stevenson reputedly said (some say the attribution should go to Konrad Adenauer, but still...) when Stevenson was confronted with a statement from his past that conflicted with something he was currently espousing:  "I reserve the right to be smarter today than I was yesterday."

That's what I wish Moore had said; that's the approach I wish he had taken, because this nasty, nasty game needs to end.  I wish he had put his foot down.

That's essentially what Moore did, more or less, when anyone was listening, which no one was.  It's also what Joy Reid said.  Odd, isn't it, that it worked with one and not the other?  Hmmm...how whacky is that?  You'd almost think there's a rock-solid double standard that will, among other things, in a hundred years cause people to look back on the state of journalism in our time and pronounce it to be the worst, most irresponsible in our history.

If this vicious character assassination from the Left is allowed to detonate the nominations of good, qualified people, however much the opposition might feel threatened by their ideas, the ones they avoid grappling with in a fair fight, if it continues and gets worse, if it wins, we're done.  Period.  And not just one side.  All of us.

Enough.  At long last, dear Democrats, at long last, dear left-wing media, have you no decency?  If not, how about this?  There was a time when I voted for Democrats and believed they were what they claimed to be: kind and broad-minded, tolerant and fair-minded.  But I reserve the right to be smarter today than I was yesterday.

Henry Scanlon is a writer and photographer from Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.  See more at www.henryscanlon.com.  Twitter: hscanlon33.