The domestic terrorist organization fka the Republican Party is an anti-democratic, anti-constitution, anti-rule of law, anti-American crypto-fascist personality cult of Donald Trump.
As veteran Republican campaign manager Steve Schmidt prescribes, the GOP must be destroyed: ‘Burned to the ground’: Anti-Trump Republicans set new goal of defeating the GOP Senate:
Many argue that GOP senators must pay a steep price for their unabating fealty to Trump, even if it hands Democrats complete control of the federal government.
“The analogy would be in the same way that fire purifies the forest, it needs to be burned to the ground and fundamentally repudiated,” said Steve Schmidt, a Republican-turned-independent political strategist who now works for The Lincoln Project, one of the most pugnacious of the anti-Trump GOP groups. “Every one of them should be voted out of office[.]
A handful of QAnon-MAGA cult members in the House of Representatives, primarily the members of the misleadingly-named GOP House Freedom (sic) Caucus, in reality a crypto-fascist GOP authoritarian caucus chaired by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), intend to challenge the Electoral College vote counting in Congress on January 6. In order to engage in this anti-democratic chicanery, they need at least one Senator to back their actions to force extended debate in Congress on January 6.
There has been speculation that senator-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) would support these GOP traitors in seeking to overturn the election by rejecting the Electoral College vote and substituting their own unsanctioned and uncertified slate of Trump electors in swing states in which voters elected Joe Biden. Tuberville is a former college football coach, and a demonstrated moron.
Today a so-called “rising star” in the Republican Party who has presidential aspirations in 2024, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), a lawyer no less and the former the Attorney General of Missouri, announced that he would support this “GOP Clown Car Coup” attempt to overturn American democracy. He should be disbarred from legal practice today. Hawley to challenge Electoral College results in Senate:
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said on Wednesday that he will object during Congress’s counting of the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6, becoming the first GOP senator to back the effort by House conservatives.
The decision by Hawley would ensure a debate and vote in the House and Senate on the Electoral College results.
“I cannot vote to certify the electoral college results on January 6 without raising the fact that some states, particularly Pennsylvania, failed to follow their own state election laws,” Hawley said in a statement.
And I cannot vote to certify without pointing out the unprecedented effort of mega corporations, including Facebook and Twitter, to interfere in this election, in support of Joe Biden. At the very least, Congress should investigate allegations of voter fraud and adopt measures to secure the integrity of our elections. But Congress has so far failed to act,” Hawley added.
* * *
Hawley’s decision comes as a group of House conservatives, led by Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), have pledged to make a long-shot bid to overturn the results of the presidential election next Wednesday by objecting to the Electoral College results.
In order to force a debate and a vote on their objection to a state’s results House members need the support of a senator who will also object — something they didn’t have before Hawley’s announcement.
It will be the third time Congress has had to debate an objection since 1887, according to the Congressional Research Service. The other two times, in 1969 and 2005, were ultimately unsuccessful in changing the results of the election and the objections were rejected.
Congress will convene a joint session on Jan. 6 to formally count the election results. If an objection has the support of both a member of the House and Senate, lawmakers split off into their respective chambers to debate it for up to two hours and vote on whether or not to uphold the objection.
The objection is not expected to win majority support in either chamber given opposition from Democrats and some Republicans, meaning the efforts in Congress to change the results of the election will fall short.
Let’s be clear: every Republican who participates in this “GOP Clown Car Coup,” from Donald Trump and Mike Pence, to Senator Hawley and any Republican members of Congress are traitors to their country and to their oath of office in seeking to overturn the will of the people in a fair and free election that was a “landslide” win for Joe Biden in both the popular vote and Electoral College, and to impose Donald Trump and Mike Pence as the first GOP authoritarian autocrats of a banana republic. They should forever bear the stain of “traitor” to their country, and their political careers ended forever.
These Republicans are the modern-day equivalent of the Confederate traitors who engaged in insurrection and treason against the United States in seceding from the Union after the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. It is part of their far-right cosplay civil war fantasies of waging a new civl war in America.
Congress must invoke the 14th Amendment, Section 3 against these Republican traitors to their country:
Section 3.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Every Republican conspirator who participates in this “GOP Clown Car Coup” must be removed from office, and disqualified from political office in the future. This attempted coup d’état against the lawful government of the United States cannot be treated lightly, nor go without severe legal sanction.
UPDATE: The Hill lists those traitor Republicans who have already said they will challenge the electoral tally.
This “GOP Clown Car Coup” will fail, but these traitors must be punished and suffer consequences.
Neal Katyal, a law professor at Georgetown, and a former acting solicitor general of the United States, writes at the New York Times “on Jan. 6, the vice president will preside as Congress counts the Electoral College’s votes. Let’s hope that he doesn’t do the unthinkable — and unconstitutional.” Will Pence Do the Right Thing?
President Trump recently tweeted that “the ‘Justice’ Department and FBI have done nothing about the 2020 Presidential Election Voter Fraud,” followed by these more ominous lines: “Never give up. See everyone in D.C. on January 6th.” [This is incitement to insurrection from Trump’s Red Cap thugs. Trump’s desire for ‘wild’ protest sparks fear among US officials].
The unmistakable reference is to the day Congress will count the Electoral College’s votes, with Vice President Mike Pence presiding. Mr. Trump is leaning on the vice president and congressional allies to invalidate the November election by throwing out duly certified votes for Joe Biden.
Mr. Pence thus far has not said he would do anything like that, but his language is worrisome. Last week, he said: “We’re going to keep fighting until every legal vote is counted. We’re going to win Georgia, we’re going to save America,” as a crowd screamed, “Stop the steal.”
And some Republicans won’t let up. On Monday, Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas and other politicians filed a frivolous lawsuit, which has multiple fatal flaws in both form and substance, in an attempt to force the vice president to appoint pro-Trump electors.
Mr. Trump himself has criticized virtually everyone’s view of the election, from that of the Supreme Court to the F.B.I. to Senator Mitch McConnell, but he has never attacked Mr. Pence, suggesting he has hopes for the vice president.
But as a matter of constitutional text and history, any effort on Jan. 6 is doomed to fail. It would also be profoundly anti-democratic and unconstitutional.
Both Article II of the Constitution and the 12th Amendment say that the votes of the Electoral College are to be opened by the “president of the Senate,” meaning the vice president. The Electoral Count Act, passed in 1887 to avoid chaotic counts like the one that followed the 1876 election, adds important details. It provides a detailed timeline to tabulate electoral votes, culminating with the final count to take place on Jan. 6, and it delineates the powers of the vice president.
He is to be the “presiding officer” (meaning he is to preserve order and decorum), open the ballot envelopes, provide those results to a group of tellers, call for any objection by members of Congress, announce the results of any votes on objections, and ultimately announce the result of the vote.
Nothing in either the text of the Constitution or the Electoral Count Act gives the vice president any substantive powers. His powers are ministerial, and that circumscribed role makes general sense: The whole point of an election is to let the people decide who will rule them. If an incumbent could simply maneuver to keep himself in office — after all, a maneuver to protect Mr. Trump also protects Mr. Pence — the most foundational precept of our government would be gravely undermined. In America, “we the people,” not “we, the vice president,” control our destiny.
The drafters of the Electoral Count Act consciously insisted on this weakened role for the vice president. They guarded against any pretense he might have to throw out a particular state’s votes, saying that the vice president must open “all certificates and papers purporting to be” electoral votes. They further said, in the event of a dispute, both chambers of Congress would have to disagree with a particular state’s slate of electoral votes to reject them. And they made it difficult for Congress to disagree, adding measures such as a “safe harbor” provision and deference to certification by state officials.
In this election, certification is clear. There are no ongoing legal challenges in the states of any merit whatsoever. All challenges have lost, spectacularly and often, in the courts. The states and the electors have spoken their will. Neither Vice President Pence nor the loyal followers of President Trump have a valid basis to contest anything.
To be sure, this structure creates awkwardness, as it forces the vice president to announce the result even when personally unfavorable.
After the close election of 1960, Richard Nixon, as vice president, counted the votes for his opponent, John Kennedy. Al Gore, in perhaps one of the more dramatic moments of our Republic’s short history, counted the votes and reported them in favor of George W. Bush.
Watching Mr. Gore count the votes, shut off all challenges and deliver the presidency to Mr. Bush was a powerful moment in our democracy. By the time he counted the votes, America and the world knew where he stood. And we were all lifted up when Mr. Gore, at the end, asked God to bless the new president and vice president and joined the chamber in applause.
Republican leaders — including Senators McConnell, Roy Blunt and John Thune — have recognized the outcome of the election, despite the president’s wrath. Mr. McConnell put it in clear terms: “The Electoral College has spoken. So today, I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden.”
Notably, Mr. Pence has been silent. He has not even acknowledged the historic win by Kamala Harris, the nation’s first female, first African-American and first Asian-American vice president.
He now stands on the edge of history as he begins his most consequential act of leadership. The question for Vice President Pence, as well as other members of Congress, is which side of history he wants to come down on. Can he show the integrity demonstrated by every previous presidential administration? The American people accept a graceful loser, but a sore loser never goes down well in the history books.
We urge Mr. Pence to study our first president. After the Revolutionary War, the artist Benjamin West reported that King George had asked him what General Washington would do now that America was independent. West said that Washington would give up power and go back to farming. King George responded with words to the effect that “if he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”
Indeed, Washington did so, surrendering command of the army to Congress and returning to Mount Vernon for years until he was elected president. And he again relinquished power eight years later, even though many would have been happy to keep him president for life. Washington in this way fully realized the American Republic, because there is no Republic without the peaceful transfer of power.
And it’s now up to Mr. Pence to recognize exactly that. Like all those who have come before him, he should count the votes as they have been certified and do everything he can to oppose those who would do otherwise. This is no time for anyone to be a bystander — our Republic is on the line.
Yes, our Republic is on the line. The Republican Party no longer believes in American democracy. It has become a crypto-fascist personality cult of Donald Trump, a despicable criminal who wants to be an authoritarian dictator for life. Too many Republicans are perfectly OK with this. They are disloyal, and un-American, and traitors to their country. They will receive no mercy or quarter from me here.
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WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin writes, “Josh Hawley reminds us that the GOP is the sedition party”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/31/seditious-party-still-attacking-democracy/
There is no irregularity or evidence of fraud that justifies this move. It is pandering to a party’s base which has lost touch with reality and fidelity to our Constitution.
Like the 126 Republican House members who signed on to a lawsuit to throw out votes of states that voted for President-elect Joe Biden, Hawley has joined the authoritarian right-wingers who openly seek to overthrow the results of an election he does not like. He is a reminder to voters in Georgia of why allowing Hawley’s party to retain its Senate majority puts our democracy (not to mention our financial security and health) at risk.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro called the lawsuit “seditious abuse.” That’s an apt description for Hawley’s latest move. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) accurately explained that Hawley is “engaged in the attempted overthrow of democracy.” Whatever you call it — sedition, a coup, an anti-democratic putsch — Hawley’s move violates his oath of office.
[W]hat is particularly reprehensible about Hawley’s move is that, unlike some of the deluded House members who signed onto the lawsuit, he knows his complaint is groundless. He is a graduate of Yale Law School, the former attorney general of Missouri and a law professor at the University of Missouri School of Law. He clerked for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and subsequently wrote Supreme Court briefs. He knows that what he is doing is antithetical to the Constitution, his oath of office and his obligations as a lawyer. Yale should ask for its diploma back; the Missouri bar should move to take away his license. Georgia voters should send Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock to the U.S. Senate to deprive Hawley of the gavel on any committee and his party of the majority.
[A] party that celebrates such characters is unworthy of holding power; the people who have rushed to incinerate our democracy deserve not merely to be thrown out of office, but to be shunned by patriotic Americans.
Take that Republican traitors! The New York Times reports, “Justice Dept. Asks Judge to Toss Election Lawsuit Against Pence”, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/us/politics/justice-department-mike-pence-louie-gohmert.html
The Justice Department asked a federal judge on Thursday to reject a lawsuit seeking to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of the election, pitting the department against President Trump’s allies in Congress who have refused to accept President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.
The department, acting on behalf of Mr. Pence, said that Republican lawmakers, led by Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas, could not invalidate the more than century-old law that governs the Electoral College process to expand an otherwise ceremonial role into one that has the power to reject electoral votes that were cast for Mr. Biden.
In a last-ditch bid to subvert the outcome of the election, Mr. Gohmert, along with other Republicans in Congress and electors in Arizona, filed a lawsuit against Mr. Pence on Sunday in an effort to force him to take on this expanded role.
[T]he Justice Department also made clear in its filing that it welcomed any comments from the federal judge in the case, Jeremy D. Kernodle of the Eastern District of Texas, that would clarify that Mr. Pence’s role in the election was purely procedural.
[I]f a judge were to make clear that Mr. Pence does not have the authority to reject votes or decide the results, it could alleviate pressure on him.
Should Judge Kernodle confirm that Mr. Pence has no influence over the Electoral College votes, Mr. Gohmert’s lawsuit could have the opposite of its intended effect.
The Justice Department’s move [on behalf of the Vice President] to squash an 11th-hour attempt to undo Mr. Biden’s victory could put it more at odds with Mr. Trump.