Trump diehards are now focusing on Vice President Mike Pence’s role on January 6, which is to read off the states’ electoral votes. They think he can arbitrarily pick and choose which states’ electoral votes count. That’s preposterous on its face.
Louis Gohmert (R-TX), universally regarded as the dumbest member of Congress (see, inter alia, here, here, and here), sued Pence on Monday, December 28, 2020, in a vain attempt to force him to do just that. By “vain,” I mean both senses of the word, i.e. vanity and hopeless. Joining him as a plaintiff is Kelli Ward, who was chosen to chair Arizona’s Republican Party after an unbroken string of three consecutive defeats in U.S. Senate races, and now one of the loudest Trumper foghorns.
The Hill said (here):
“Typically, the vice president’s role in presiding over the meeting is a largely ceremonial one governed by an 1887 federal law known as the Electoral Count Act. But the Republican lawsuit … asks a federal judge in Texas to strike down the law as unconstitutional. The GOP plaintiffs go further: They ask the court to grant Pence the authority on Jan. 6 to effectively overturn Trump’s defeat in key battleground states.”
Well, he can’t do that, folks, and no judge will require him to:
“’The idea that the Vice President has sole authority to determine whether or not to count electoral votes submitted by a state, or which of competing submissions to count, is inconsistent with a proper understanding of the Constitution,’ said Edward Foley, a law professor at the Ohio State University.”
That’s being too kind. The suggestion is not only preposterous, it’s also absurd, and ridiculous; not mention subversive, seditious, tyrannical, un-American, and worthy of Stalin, too. Please note it was Republican polling firm Rasmussen Reports, not me, who praised this idea as “worthy of Stalin”:
To read the rest of the tweets in that string (but why would you want to?), click here.
This isn’t going anywhere. I won’t belabor the legal aspect of it. Just read the 12 Amendment, then look up the words “shall” (which means “must’) and “all” (which means “all”), both of which appear in strategic places in the 12th Amendment.
But just for fun, let’s fantasize for a moment that the vice president could choose — at his sole discretion — which electoral votes to count. That would turn presidential elections into a charade and give him alone the power to decide who will be president. No one but crazy diehard Trumpers believes the Constitution says this. That’s just stupid, folks. If this was true, Nixon would have appointed himself president in 1960, and Al Gore in 2000, just to mention two that immediately pop into my head.
It does, however, put Pence in an untenable position: If he tries it, he’ll be shot down, and go down in history as a subversive who tried to overthrow our democracy; but if he doesn’t, Trumpers will hate him. Either way, his political career will be finished, which is fitting reward for his 4 years of servile loyalty to Trump.
Maybe Trump and his allies planned it that way, to clear the 2024 field for someone else.
Gohmert “universally regarded as the dumbest member of Congress” and of course he is a Republican.
Thoughtful intelligent people don’t fall for these schemes.
The cult of trumpanzee’s need to be deprogrammed to reality.
Cure for crazy right wing conspiracy theorists:
1. Listen to actual news networks based on facts and evidence. Read articles by journalists who actually have documentation, truth and fact based evidence, not opinions based on made up conspiracy, lies and no evidence in order to rile up and stir the uneducated cult followers.
That would mean discipline to actually turn the dial away from fox to actually enlighten one’s self and improve their mind and thinking from fox entertainment presented as news. Alt-right followers deadened to truth could actually learn something instead of repeating their latest conspiracy mantra, as if their whispered theories based on fanciful, wishes were their only oxygen of sustenance in their alternate reality.
Cult faux news followers need to remove their tilted tin foil red hats made in China and join the real world.
Truth is based on facts and evidence, not wishful thinking and lies.
January 6, 2021 is going to be interesting and the likely outcome is Biden will become President, but the United States is not a democracy, It is a republic with Congress being the main political branch. It is the proper place for this contest and not the courts, should Biden prevail the courts will bless it, and should Trump come out the winner the courts will bless that as well. Fortunately for Democrats the Presidents coattails were not a bit long enough to flip the house as that would keep Trump in the White House, and even now should the House and Senate decide then Trump would be the likely winner. One need only to look at the election of 1876 to see an eerily similar set of circumstances. The ice Presidents role in that debacle was more than ceremonial and 12 electoral votes were tossed out.
The scenario while unlikely is possible should Congress not accept enough votes to give either candidate a majority. In many aspects the process is undemocratic with millions of votes being lost by winner take all systems rather than votes being apportioned. In at least 5 or more states both candidates should be receiving half of each states electoral votes. That and the fact the House should be larger than it is would be true democracy. which does not truly exist in our Republican form of government. Congress could choose Trump as the President and Pence as VP for the net four years and that would be completely constitutional and legal.
That’s silly, Mark. Biden won an Electoral College majority and will be inaugurated on Jan. 20, no “if” or “maybe”. Pence has no authority to reject any state’s electoral votes. The place to litigate election fraud claims was in the courts, where the Trump camp lost 60 lawsuits for the simple reason they had no evidence because there was no fraud. There’s nothing to see there except sore losers having a toddler tantrum. This scheming violates the rights of the 81 million people who voted for Biden. Why do you keep making excuses for people trying to overthrow our democracy? What kind of person are you? I hope this opens people’s eyes to what the Republican Party has become. One of our major parties no longer supports democracy or free elections.
1, There is no democracy if all legal votes
aren’t counted.
2. There is no democracy if republicans are
in charge and are trying to prop up a
wannabe dictator based on false
allegations of voter fraud WITH NO
EVIDENCE, based solely on
conspiracies and lies.
3. The only fraud in the 2020 election is
Donald Trump, who should never have been
Putin propped up for US president.