by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
GOP politicians are undoubtedly crying bitter tears over the unfairness of it all. Donald Trump and his handmaid, Mitch McConnell, spent four full years of the Trump Presidency (when he wasn't playing golf) packing the federal courts with conservative judges, and now when Dear Leader needs a few friendly rulings, suddenly his judges are turning their backs, en masse, on their political benefactor.
Oh for the good old days when a politician who was bought stayed bought!
In the almost six weeks between Election Day on November 3rd and when the Electoral College met to confirm a winner on December 14th, Donald Trump dispatched his oddball group of lawyers into Court a total of sixty times in an effort to overturn Biden's victory in several key states. Judges either ruled against Trump (or threw the cases out of court outright) in fifty-nine of those sixty lawsuits. (On one occasion a court in Pennsylvania ruled in favor of Trump, saying that poll watchers would be allowed closer to poll workers as votes were being counted - but the Pennsylvania Supreme Court eventually overturned that very minor victory!). The Trump legal train had no evidence of vote tampering or election fraud - just a lot of noisy individuals who could not believe that someone as glorious as their Dear Leader had lost both the popular and electoral vote.
But Donald Trump would not give up, and neither would his diehard supporters. Yesterday another lawsuit was announced. This suit was filed by Rep. Louis Gohmert, a Texas Republican who is often reviled on social media as being the "dumbest" member of Congress, and by Arizona nutmeg and GOP Party Chrir, Kelli Ward, as well as several other lesser known Republican rebel-rousers.
An 1887 law known as the "Electoral Count Act" governs how the Congress officially arrives at a presidential winner, an activity which will occur on January 6th and represents the very last bit of the election process. The Vice President usually presides over that count in a ceremonial role. The lawsuit filed by Gohmert, Ward, and others asks a federal judge in Texas to strike down the "Election Count Act" as unconstitutional and allow the Vice President to overturn Trump's defeat in several key states - an act which would also directly benefit the Vice President!
For his part, Donald Trump retweeted a supporter who had urged Pence to refuse to certify Biden's win when Congress meets and does its count on January 6th. Apparently Trump has been heard grumbling that Pence hasn't done enough to help secure a Trump victory.
Some say it's sedition while others chuckle that it's just Gohmert being Gohmert, but it is yet again one more attempt by members of the Republican Party to subvert democracy and keep their unique brand burned upon the nation's soul. The US District Judge in Texas who will hear the case is a Trump appointee, and election law experts expect that he will rule that the litigants lack a legal right to sue.
All of those damned judges and only one very small victory - a victory which was soon overturned. It just is not fair!
Meanwhile Trump golfs, Pence skis, Americans suffer, and Biden and Harris are both hard at work trying to restore our faith in government!
1 comment:
I am old enough to remember when Republicans like Louie Gohmert were opposed to "activist" judges who rewrote legislation from the bench. But then that was before Donald Trump conned the GOP out of their values.
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