Elections are the ultimate term limit. Unfortunately, the ratio of those who will vote to, to those that just bitch about it is horrendously skewed. The worst thing the SC has done is ruling money donations as a freedom of expression. It's not. The Koch brothers & Soros donating millions give them a much bigger voice than you or I. In my world, people can donate to a central political fund. Then every canidate that makes it on the ballot gets an equal share from that fund. They cannot use money for their campaign that's not from that fund. Also, campaigns will have a set window when they can buy advertising, put up signs, etc. I'm sick of the year round random texts, commercials, etc
To a sizable portion of the GOP electorate, this is precisely the point. Mission Accomplished, if you will.
At the risk of getting real inflammatory up in here: https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-rural-trump-supporters-are-a-threat-to-democracy Kinda has the same thesis.
You ever get the impression that the Republicans are afraid of what the lunatics on the fringe will do to them if they don't keep pushing increasingly radical policies?
Definitely. There are lunatics on both sides, but Republicans elect their lunatics. Democrats elect a milquetoast old white dude who likes ice cream and the collegiality of the Senate.
Unanimous Supreme Court decision that only Congress can declare Trump ineligible to run on the Federal ballot, not the states. They didn't clear him of violating the 14th, they just said "it's not your punishment to mete". I'm sure Congress will get right on that.
This feels like a decision where SCOTUS is too far up their own ass in law books. The 14th specifically requires 2/3 of each chamber of Congress in order to render an insurrectionist eligible for office again, so how could the default be that an insurrectionist is eligible until and unless (far more than 1/3 of either chamber of) Congress declares them ineligible? To put it another way, if Congress failed to pass a law saying that non-citizens couldn't be President, would the court just default to allowing it, despite the obvious Constitutional prohibition?
This isn't surprising, as it would've left open the door for a deep red state to declare Biden ineligible for forgetting his 3rd cousin's middle name or whatever. It WILL be a fuck show if/when the SC is required to determine whether J6 amounts to insurrection, or if reality does bend around Donald Trump like we're in some orange-tard Matrix. My thinking is if the SC had said J6 was an insurrection, then this would have essentially forced Congress to remove him from eligibility, which....might be one of the reasons the SC was founded in the first place? But since this ruling happened first, it's just all a game of Shennanigans! from here on out. I like the argument that removing Trump from the ballot is infringing upon democracy, but like....ain't he infringe first? We fought a whole civil war already, and one of the outcomes was "no traitors in the treehouse", and this motherfucker facing ZERO consequences for J6 and raising funds off of people being mad about it is...kind of a failure of our system of government, that was explicitly designed, refined and updated to prevent this from happening.
Have we really not ruled on this already, in one Court or another? Gotdamn but this Republic is in trouble.
I mean where they get way too textual instead of just looking at what the law clearly means on its face.
The obvious solution to that feels like making eligibility something you can appeal to the federal courts. So Colorado rules Trump ineligible because of Jan 6, and the a Federal judge either affirms or overturns that determination (escalating up the appeals as necessary). Alabama rules Biden ineligible, and similarly a Federal judge says "that's obvious stupid bullshit, overturned." The problem here is that the law is simple, and the only thing worth appealing is the determination of fact (was it an insurrection or not). But for some reason the courts are enamored of their "appeals courts can't examine findings of fact by lower courts" and so SCOTUS twisted itself into a pretzel on procedural grounds.
But it's not? Like if they look at a section of the Constitution that says "Don't be a cunt" and then they start parsing some 16th century text about how "cunt" derives from "quim", and therefore is a reference to female genitalia, so this is obviously a prohibition on male to female sex change operations... no, shut the fuck up and just accept its plain meaning.
I say this as likely the most conservative person still posting here. Of course it was an insurrection. Just because it was a shitty attempt, does not make it not one. People marched on the capital instead doing the American thing, which is bitch about it for 4 years and hope you win next time. What true patriots have done since the founding.
But apparently what we all saw on TV the day of, and everything we've learned about it since, doesn't count until a judge formally slams their gavel on it.
But the point is they are supposed to look at the texts and judge the current state of affairs against what those texts say, that's the entire point of that branch of government. But that's not even relevant. The case wasn't even about whether he stay on a ballot, it's whether or not the states can make that decision. Courts should not be acting as de facto legislatures. It was wrong when the court has done that historically and it would have been wrong now.
I'm sure most people there that day were just fucking idiots that were not intent on insurrection. But some did take it that far, so it is what it is. Can't unring that bell.
As another board member who tends to skew more conservative, I agree. You know how I know it was an insurrection? Because the people trying to say it wasn’t are trying to argue that the people that actually did it were “on the other side.” You can’t say it wasn’t bad, while also saying that the bad parts were done by the people you think are bad. That’s not how this shit works. People need to be okay with their political heroes losing.