[r_hoods_ghost]

You're defending an argument that is blatantly self contradictory within the space of two sentences.

A) "anything he suggests should be categorically rejected because he’s just not in a position to be trusted."

B) "If what he suggests are good ideas then hopefully we can arrive at them in some other way with a clean chain of custody."

These sentences directly follow each other and directly contradict each other. Logically you can't categorically (the categorical is important here. Categorical means something like "treat as a universal law") reject a conclusion because it is espoused by someone you dislike, while at the same time saying you will accept that conclusion if arrived at by some other route.

"I will reject P if X proposes P, but will accept P if Y proposes P." is just poor reasoning.

[brookst]

More clearly said than I managed, yep.

But I suppose it comes down to priorities. If good policy is less important than contradicting P, I suppose that approach makes sense.