← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

SUPREME COURT SAYS NO.

[NOTE: I’ve added a lot of material over the last few hours to this post, and will continue to do so as commentary on the president’s failure at the Supreme Court grows. Scroll down.]

Man oh man oh Manischewitz. I really sweated this one. I LOVE MY COUNTRY.

************

From Georgia’s response to this thoroughly rejected grotesquerie:

This election cycle, Georgia did what the Constitution empowered it to do: it implemented processes for the election, administered the election in the face of logistical challenges brought on by Covid-19, and confirmed and certified the election results — again and again and again. Yet Texas has sued Georgia anyway.

************

Ben Sasse: “Every American who cares about the rule of law should take comfort that the Supreme Court — including all three of President Trump’s picks — closed the book on the nonsense.”

***************

Steve Schmidt:

‘You saw it coming this summer — the astounding moment when the Republican platform became nothing more than a loyalty oath to Donald Trump — an oath of obedience, complete obedience, to Trump. Not even a pretense of policy ideas in it…

So today’s an historic day… [We] can [sometimes] overstate the importance of an event, [but] today was a before and after moment in the life of the nation: 106 members of Congress broke faith with American democracy today. They did something the fascists, the Nazis, the Confederate army, were unable to do. They broke faith with the idea that the people are sovereign.

Democracy definitionally requires one side be willing to lose an election… What we saw today [was a] breaking of faith which followed the poisoning of faith and belief in the system — the American system, the American republic, which has endured since 1776. It was poisoned this month, … and we’re going to live with this now for all the balance of our lives. Because the competition in American politics is now between a democratic party, meaning a party that believes in democracy, versus an autocratic party. And we’ve never seen that.

When you see that many members of Congress breaking faith with their oath [in order to] overturn an election because they don’t like the result, we’re off the reservation to a place that we might not be able to get back on it from. … We’re one election away from losing the country to people who no longer believe in democracy.’

*****************

“His whole life has been transactions and expectations [of a] degree of loyalty, and that’s a total misunderstanding of what to expect from the three justices he appointed, as well as a misunderstanding of [Justices] Alito, Thomas and Roberts. They’re not going to burn down their court to rescue Donald Trump… they’re neither stupid nor crazy. And for them to do what Trump’s asking them to do, they would have to be both stupid and crazy.”

**************

‘When the case was dismissed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the lawmakers who signed onto the lawsuit “brought dishonor to the House” and chastised them for choosing “to subvert the Constitution and undermine public trust in our sacred democratic institutions.”’

**************

‘“With each loss we get to celebrate the Biden/Harris victory all over again,” Ken Martin, a vice-chairman of the Democratic National Committee and the state party chair in Minnesota, said. “It’s like the gift that keeps on giving.”’

*************

“[O]ne of our political parties is openly hostile to our entire political system…

Too many Republicans have gone from being anti-Democratic — that is to say, hostile to the liberal political party — to being anti-democratic — that is to say, hostile to the liberal political system and antagonistic to the idea that the will of the people should prevail — and unwilling to accept political defeat.

This trend represents an existential threat to our system.

… Since the election, the party has only more fully warmed to Trump’s demagogy, moving from the uncomfortable passivity that Republicans used to adopt in the face of his provocations to downright enthusiasm for overturning a free and fair election…

[The Republican party] no longer respects the fundamental basics of our democratic process — voting and the peaceful transfer of political power — let alone good governance.”

*****************

“This embrace of the president’s attempt to overturn the results of the election is both shocking and horrifying. As Trump’s fraud claims and legal cases have steadily failed, the arguments he has pursued have become more outlandish and absurd, and they have also become more disturbing. Many Republican voters agree, and in refusing to stand up to him and them, Republican officials have gone from coddling a sore loser to effectively abandoning democracy…

[T]hese Republicans have set a course of being willing to oppose the results of elections simply because they don’t like them. That is by definition antidemocratic…

Republican officials aren’t afraid of Trump so much as they are afraid of Republican voters. And Republican voters appear to be afraid of democracy.”

************

Sedition is a serious charge, but it’s the right word. Most House Republicans and 17 state attorneys general are standing against the right of Americans to choose their own leaders. As elected officials, they are using the power granted to them by the people to declare that the people should not have such power. Even if they lose this case, this time around, the fact that so many traitors hold elected office in America is a major crisis all by itself.”

************

“The health of a democracy rests on public confidence that elections are free and fair. Questioning the integrity of an election is a matter of the utmost seriousness. By doing so without offering any evidence, [the Texas Attorney General] and his collaborators have disgraced themselves.

… This new policy of election denialism … is the latest manifestation of the Republican Party’s increasingly anti-democratic tendencies.

… This isn’t really about Mr. Trump anymore. He lost, and his ruinous tenure will soon be over. This is now about the corruption of a political party whose leaders are guided by the fear of Mr. Trump rather than the love of this country — and who are falling into dangerous habits.

… [W]here does a party that rejects democracy go from here?”

**********

David Frum, in 2018:

“Maybe you do not much care about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.

Perhaps the very darkness of the Trump experience can summon the nation to its senses and jolt Americans to a new politics of commonality, a new politics in which the Trump experience is remembered as the end of something bad, and not the beginning of something worse. Trump appealed to what was mean and cruel and shameful. The power of that appeal should never be underestimated. But once its power fades, even those who have succumbed will feel regret.

Those who have expressed regret will need some kind of exit from Trumpocracy, some reintegration into a politics again founded on decency.”

Margaret Soltan, December 11, 2020 7:16PM
Posted in: democracy

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=65607

Comment on this Entry

Latest UD posts at IHE

Archives

Categories