Donald Trump appeals to a large segment of American conservatives because he is exploiting a weakness they have long recognized and grown increasingly angry over as the condition worsens.  Republican Party leadership, especially in Congress, are a craven bunch who so fear the liberal media and the tyranny of political correctness that they have allowed media-protected Democrats to walk all over them, even in matters where Democrat bureaucrats are criminally culpable.

I am reminded of this by the latest dismissive letter sent to two Senate committee chairmen by hotshot Washington attorney Mark MacDougall on behalf of his client, Bryan Pagliano, Hillary's I.T. guru, in which he essentially tells them to go pound sand, chiding them in the process for relying on the media for their legal misinterpretation of his client's constitutional rights:

"With all appropriate respect, whether and when a citizen may assert a constitutional right is not up to your legal staff," the lawyer wrote. "Whatever agreement Mr. Pagliano may have reached with the Department of Justice in no way constitutes a waiver of his Fifth Amendment rights.

"Much of the media reporting with regard to Mr. Pagliano – that is apparently relied upon by your Committees – is inaccurate and misleading."

From Fast and Furious through the IRS scandals and Benghazi to the present Hillary e-mail investigations, the Democratic Party's entrenched bureaucrat buddies have spit in the collective eye of the Republican congressional leadership – not quite ignoring them completely, but responding to them with such deliberately disdainful delay and minimal compliance with their demands as to casually convey the Democrats' utter contempt for the supposed equal powers of the legislative branch of federal governance.  And how does the Republican congressional leadership react to such disrespect?  Well, for example, Republicans supposedly responded to the Obama administration's complete intransigence in the case of Fast and Furious by citing Attorney General Eric Holder for both criminal and civil contempt of the House.  And what did that get them except for a pair of big sneering middle fingers on Holder's way out the door more than two years later?

Three years after IRS official Lois Lerner was exposed for politically weaponizing the IRS to suppress conservative voting in the 2012 elections, nothing has been done to this federal bureaucrat, who hid her criminal behavior during the performance of her job behind the Fifth Amendment.  That is a protection that should not exist for federal employees when it regards criminal job activity.  Nevertheless, while Republicans in Congress blustered and threatened to no end, Lerner is free and drawing a six-figure retirement, protected by her bosses and a co-conspiring federal Justice Department full of Democrats.

The Obama administration knew from the outset as it took power in 2009 that the way to consolidate political power was to politicize the prosecutorial process in such a manner as to be able to punish enemies and protect friends, the essence of Chicago politics.  It is the prosecutorial form of jury nullification: no matter how clear the criminality, you simply ignore it until it has faded into political oblivion or, if pressured, devise murky justifications for why it is not possible to indict.  A nation of laws survives as such only as long as those responsible for enforcing those laws willingly apply them to themselves, which the Obama administration clearly never had any intention of doing.  We should have known that a political cartel with its toes splayed deep in the muck of Chicago's Democrat swamp would quickly move to corrupt the Justice Department so that it then had nothing to fear, so that any criminality involved in expanding its power could be nullified.

Eric Holder was perfect for that job because he had learned at the feet of the Clintons, masters of the legal obfuscation process, and Holder held a card the Clintons didn't: the Black Ace of Race, which he didn't hesitate to play to counter criticism and block congressional investigations.  In this he was constantly aided and abetted by Democrats, especially members of the Congressional Black Caucus, sitting in committee meetings, solemnly nodding agreement every time Holder slapped that black ace down on the Republicans' evidentiary table.  Had we had a courageous contingent in Congress to counter such corruption, Republicans should have been able to have contained it, especially once we had gained back our Republican majorities.  The Constitution does grant enforcement powers, including incarceration, to Congress to deal with such nullification of the nation's laws by executive scofflaws, but it takes men and women of principle to enforce the necessary provisions.  And as we have seen, they simply were not there.

With the Obama administration and its completely politicized Justice Department poised once again to nullify the crimes of another media-protected Democrat, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump's appeal to America's conservatives sick of this flouting of law and order on behalf of protected elites can only grow.  This ongoing Republican chicken-heartedness has left conservatives holding a vacuum of fortitude.  While Donald Trump's vows to prosecute Crooked Hillary may sound like nothing but hot air to some, such threats may well carry him to victory because even in politics, nature abhors a vacuum.  Trump has found the vacuum, and he's filling it.

This brings the question: if Trump wins the presidency, will the Republican leadership finally grow a spine?