Two weeks ago, news broke that the New Hampshire Secretary of State was investigating whether Donald Trump should be removed from the NH primary Ballot next year.
The Uniparty is promoting lawsuits in states nationwide in a last-ditch effort to derail his likely nomination.
That is not a statement of preference. It is what the polling has been telling us all year. Candidate Trump has been blowing the doors off the competition since day one. His challengers are trying to stop it. The Biden administration is out to get him. Democrat Prosecutors are bringing indictments. Third parties are filing lawsuits. The non-partisan Americans for Prosperity continue to run ads and send mailers claiming Trump is the only candidate Biden could beat, and please choose someone else.
It’s quite the spectacle. Huge sums are being leveraged, and to what end? He’s more popular among primary voters than ever.
Amid that three-ring circus comes the rise of 14th Amendment challenges to Donald Trump’s eligibility. He’s not been convicted of treason, so on its face, they are shadows of penumbras of the desires of never-Trumpers and the Democrats who fear another four years of his snooping around in their swamp. I understand their compulsion, but not everyone agrees this is how things should be conducted. Something about Democracy and counting every vote, which – silly rabbit – only applies to uniparty-approved candidates and policies.
And the swamp wants what the swap wants.
Enter Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray. After hearing about Dave Scanaln’s investigation, he ‘penned’ a letter to the man asking him to stop this crazy thing.
On Thursday, Gray sent a letter to New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan urging him to put Trump on The Granite State’s 2024 presidential election ballot. Gray, who was endorsed by Trump in his 2022 Secretary of State campaign, urged Scanlan, a Republican, to resist partisan politics and “grievances” and to not abuse his power by removing Trump from the ballot. ..
Gray told Cowboy State Daily he met with Scanlan earlier this year and remains concerned he is considering removing Trump from the ballot.
“It is crucial to communicate concerns with states like New Hampshire, as removal of a candidate from early primary elections will not only affect those states, but will have far-reaching ramifications in other states with later primaries, like Wyoming, and in turn the entire election process,” he said.
Any individual opinion about applying the 14th Amendment to the circumstances surrounding President Trump, real or contrived, appears to center on feelings. If you hate the guy or have been convinced he needs his train derailed for the good of the country, you are likely inclined to go with whatever makes that happen. Supporters will be predisposed to think the opposite.
I’m willing to give it all a fair shake but with an understanding much like that in SoS Gray’s closing paragraph to SoS Scanlan.
“We cannot allow authoritarian election officials to use outrageous legal theories to remove their political opponents from the ballot,” he wrote. “To so is not only un-American, it is also shocking to the conscience and utterly sickening.”
Until the man has been convicted of treason, he is innocent. Clause 3 of the 14th Amendment does not apply to feelings or preferences. Until the court case(s) have worked through the entire legal process, including appeals, if Mr. Teump met the requirement for a state to be allowed on the ballot, he should remain there. Efforts to alter laws at any level to remove him will have wide-ranging implications for Democracy and elections. On that point, I am reminded of my written testimony to the NH House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee regarding HB 1159.
I am deeply honored to be the target of Democrat Sponsored speech suppressing legislation. The effort confirms what I have long claimed. A point that Noah Rothman just made in Commentary Magazine. Free Speech is a threat to the authoritarian tick.
That’s an amalgam of his thesis. He’s referring to a politician’s urge ” to criminalize the forms of expression [they] find distasteful.” What he calls “an old idea…that your freedom of expression is a threat to the public good.”
But HB1159 is more than that. It is a political test for speech defined by partisan lawmakers.
They decide when an interaction with a constituent is offensive to them and when they have had enough. This could be the third interaction or the tenth, the first, or never. The decision to claim you are being bullied stalked, or harassed (and when) is not only entirely subjective and decided by the lawmaker, the potential object of HB1159’s force has no way to know what or when they will have broken the law.
Perhaps I can frame it another way, in terms that might elicit the opprobrium suited to this effort. If you would not want this power in the hands of President Trump, then you had damn well not, under any circumstance, give it to yourselves.
Because while you feel like it may at this time serve some purpose that is, in reality, nothing more than personal interest (not for the good of the people), imagine that same power in the hands of your political opponents when you are the citizen and they are the public official.
I would oppose it regardless of who proposed it, you should as well.
Be careful what you do with political power. Abusing it can, in all likelihood, come back to bite you in the ass.
HT | The Cowboy Daily
