Barking up the wrong tree
When the Colorado Republican party appealed to the state’s supreme court after Donald Trump was disqualified from its primary ballot, they lost. They lost, quite rightly, on Constitutional grounds. They lost because they were barking up the wrong tree. The Constitution clearly says that such matters should be taken up with the Congress of the United States.
Only the US Congress can override the Constitutional disqualification of a president. The Constitution clearly states that anyone who engages in insurrection against the United States is automatically ineligible for public office. If you don’t like that you can put it to a vote in Congress. The Constitution clearly says that only a supermajority of House members can abrogate the fourteenth amendment’s disqualification clause. Period.
Now the Colorado Republicans are taking the matter up with the United States Supreme Court. Again, they’re barking up the wrong tree. SCOTUS is not qualified to make that decision. How do we know this? The Constitution says so.
What are we missing here? We are missing the loud and clear political fact that Colorado Republicans understand that SCOTUS is composed of a majority of Republican loonies. While it’s true that Congress also has its share of Republican loonies, there aren’t a supermajority of Republican loonies necessary to overturn Trump’s disqualification.
So Colorado Republicans are doing what Republicans do, they are effectively going outside the law to get what they want. Will they succeed this time? Probably not, but it’s the only chance they have.
One thing those Republicans need to understand is that the justices of this particular SCOTUS (Clarence Thomas aside) don’t really like Donald Trump. And they certainly don’t need him. So their history of deciding against Trump has nothing to do with moral courage. Unlike members of Congress, Trump can’t hurt them.
The problem Colorado Republicans face is that taking their appeal to Congress is a guaranteed failure. You don’t need to be Nostradamus to know that a 60% congressional vote restoring Donald Trump’s eligibility is a nonstarter. It’s not even clear that Trump could find a 50% vote in the current House with its tiny, creaky, creepy majority, let alone 60%..
So SCOTUS, like Obi Wan Kenobi, is their only hope. If they don’t get SCOTUS on their side then Trump has lost 10 electoral votes before he even starts his misbegotten run for the presidency. More states could follow in Colorado’s footsteps.
What will that mean? It could mean that the Republicans will have no choice but to nominate someone else for their candidate. If Trump is missing too many electoral college votes to win, they will have no other option. And if Trump is still able to do so in the midst of his current criminal and civil turmoil, he will have to run as a third party candidate.
Trump running under a third MAGA party will guarantee a Republican loss in November. Trump will be unable to win, but MAGA Republicans are too stupid to know that. A third party Trump candidacy will therefore split the Republican vote right down the middle, and that means a non-Trump Republican candidate, no matter how promising or charismatic he or she may turn out to be, cannot possibly win. That means Joe Biden has a guaranteed lock on the election.
Whether or not the SCOTUS will even hear the Colorado appeal is unknown so far. But if they do and if they decide against Trump, that makes it certain that Trump’s lost cause could turn out to be no cause at all. And that would be a bit of terrific news for the coming new year, don’t you think? And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.