– President Trump Must Work On Counter-Strategy Before It’s Too Late
By Paul Ingrassia, GATEWAY 28 March 2024
The Uniparty is quietly scheming (again) to rig the system and prevent President Trump from ever becoming President. This scheme involves a two-part strategy: using a combination of strategically planned retirements of Republican House members, coupled with the passage of carefully tailored legislation to remove President Trump from the ballot on bogus Insurrection grounds that would likely pass muster with moderate justices on the Supreme Court, like John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, who prefer to avoid deciding on “controversial” legal questions and risk being seen in a bad light by their liberal peers.
The fact that over a dozen House Republicans have recently announced their early retirement, or their intention to not seek re-election, should raise alarm bells for everyone, because these decisions are not by happenstance. They are coordinated and serve the specific purpose to keep President Trump off the ballot. As their attempts at lawfare appear to be falling apart one-by-one, from the debacle in Georgia involving Fani Willis’s rendezvous with the special prosecutor Nathan Wade, to the kangaroo show trials in NYC, with petty judges and prosecutors such as Letitia James, Arthur Engoron, and Juan Merchan, being exposed for the radical, far-left operators they are – President Trump’s political enemies are getting increasingly desperate, and as a result of that desperation, are strategizing to now switch control of the House of Representatives before election day. If they manage to pull off that feat, which is becoming increasingly likely with a diminishing House Republican majority, the product of intra-party squabbling and general incompetence of Republican leadership, and Democrats retake control, President Trump’s enemies will be able to more easily pass legislation that would disqualify him from the ballot. This is because if the House flips to Democrat hands and Speaker Hakeem Jeffries takes the reins, he will be able to coordinate with Chuck Schumer in the Senate more easily, who already controls a majority in the upper chamber. At least up until the November election, there will be no divided government: Democrats will have majorities in both congressional chambers, plus the White House. Thus, the House, Senate, and White House can collude to pass legislation that would exclude President Trump from the ballot because, according to their absurd construction, Section 3 and Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment allows them to do so.
This is why the early-announced retirements of House members like Mike Gallagher (WI) and Ken Buck (CO), and the forced ouster of former Congressman George Santos (NY), have received (rightful) criticism from the MAGA movement, including some of the most stridently pro-Trump congresspersons, like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. The Mike Gallagher case is particularly illustrative of RINO subversion – and MTG was no-holds-barred in her criticism of the move. Gallagher, rather than step down immediately, announced that he would delay his retirement until April 19th. Under Wisconsin law, special elections to fill seat vacancies can only occur up until the second Tuesday in April – after which point, the law requires the seat remain vacant through the November election. Thus, if Gallagher postpones his retirement until the 19th, after the second Tuesday in April, there will be no special election: Republicans will simply have to accept losing another House seat. Democrats will be one seat closer to reclaiming majority control. Gallagher’s refusal to step down before the second Tuesday in April makes no sense whatsoever: it can only be explained as an act of deliberate sabotage. MTG took notice. On March 23rd, she posted that Gallagher “should be expelled if he refuses to leave immediately,” recognizing how his delay could ultimately cost Republicans the House majority.
It is no coincidence that the same forces so deeply critical of George Santos’ ouster late last year are the ones most vocal about the news of these early retirements. They observe the writing on the wall: the desire is to keep President Trump off the ballot – and out of office. Providing further support for this theory is the fact that of the 14 or so members that have announced early retirements, at least six of them have received significant funds from notorious anti-Trump megadonor, Paul Singer: Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Patrick McHenry, Drew Ferguson, Kay Granger, Blaine Luetkemeyer, and Greg Pence. Singer, as smartly reported by investigative journalist Troy Smith, and veteran political operative, Roger Stone, also donated a whopping $5,000,000 to Nikki Haley’s failed presidential bid – which marked another attempt by the deep state to derail President Trump in his tracks.
Singer’s support for anti-Trump, RINO candidates has a well-documented and extensive history. The billionaire has been unsuccessfully trying to thwart the President ever since he descended the Trump Tower escalator: in 2016, Singer poured over $2.5 million into Marco Rubio’s failed presidential campaign. Singer also supported research into the universally discredited, bogus Steele Dossier after Trump was elected to the presidency, and has been actively trying to stop the 45th President in his tracks ever since.
What Singer and his RINO allies – and other anti-Trump interest groups in the DC Swamp – are attempting to accomplish is quite blatant: push enough Republicans into early retirement so as to give Democrats control of the House before the November election. The timing is critical: the reason Democrats need to retake control before November is to ensure enough Supreme Court justices will rubber stamp any legislation that might prevent President Trump from getting on the ballot on Fourteenth Amendment grounds.
But, you might be thinking, did not the Supreme Court already rule, in a unanimous (per curiam in Court-speak) judgment, that Colorado’s Secretary of State could not do exactly that in the recent decision, Trump v. Anderson? Not exactly.
One must pick apart the decision with a fine-tooth comb, but the attentive reader will find the language of the Court rather worrisome. This is particularly true for the three liberal justices: Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson, who wrote a separate concurrence – agreeing with the Court’s majority “only in the judgment.” Adding further worry is the separate concurrence of Justice Barrett, who also wrote her own 1-page judgment, agreeing with the majority for “Parts I and II-B” of the opinion, while also stating her belief that the five justices who fully signed onto the majority went too far.
In simple terms, the Court was only unanimous on the threshold issue – that Colorado’s Secretary of State could not have the power to unilaterally remove President Trump from the ballot. But agreement ends there. Should the House switch hands, and a Democrat-controlled Congress passes enforcement legislation, pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to remove President Trump from the ballot, it is very likely that at least 3 justices will uphold that legislation. And, based on the language of her decision, Justice Amy Coney Barrett would be a tossup – meaning she can potentially side with her liberal colleagues. If she winds up siding with the Court’s three liberals, it will only require one other justice – like John Roberts or Brett Kavanaugh, who have been known to be soft on politically hot-button issues, to jump ship. The fact that none of the judges were willing to rule on whether President Trump actually engaged in Insurrection on January 6th, 2021, is also troubling – because it suggests that the Court would rather remain “above politics,” rather than risking embroiling itself in a hugely important political controversy, providing clarity in the law, even if it meant alienating radical Leftists, who frequently resort to fear mongering, bullying, and even violent threats to get what they want out of squishy justices.
While it is true that the Court paid some consideration to the prospect of the House switching hands before the election and passing legislation to exclude President Trump from the ballot, it did not go far enough. Sure, the Court took off the table the idea that Congress could pass legislation between Election Day and Inauguration Day, when the result of the 2024 election is presumably already known, to prevent the duly elected president from taking office. This language clearly has President Trump in mind and is effectively stating that if Democrats have control of Congress – and if President Trump is re-elected – they cannot attempt to ram through last-minute legislation to prevent him from taking office on alleged Fourteenth Amendment grounds, in a last-ditch attempt to block him out of the presidency.
Although that appears sensible on its face, already four justices – the three liberals and Justice Barrett – clearly signaled that they would not, at least at this point, be comfortable taking that option off the table. In short, four justices have suggested that they might uphold a last-minute legislative effort by a Democrat-controlled Congress to oust President Trump even after he had already been re-elected. If that is true, then certainly the four would support enforcement legislation to remove President Trump from the ballot while he was still Candidate Trump. They would likely do this despite the safety measures included in the majority’s opinion to prevent congressional legislation from going too far – such as the language from the opinion that stipulates for “‘congruence and proportionality’ between preventing or remedying [the alleged misconduct] ‘and the means adopted to that end.’”
How President Trump Might Stop RINO Attempts To Knock Him Off The Ballot Before It’s Too Late
So, what now?
Well, the first – and likely most important step – in planning a counter-strategy, is to be aware of the problem. This piece goes a long way towards spelling out a potential issue; by highlighting Republican chicaneries in the House – and calling it out in its tracks, such as what MTG did with Gallagher, that could well go a long way towards subduing something that has the potential to blossom into a 5-alarm fire.
If President Trump, for example, calls out Mike Gallagher’s antics in their path – that might force him to step down early, and not wait until beyond the deadline to give Democrats another seat. Putting a national spotlight on the issue, by way of President Trump and his campaign, might also prevent other would-be House RINO turncoat members from pulling off a similar trick – and might also put pressure on House Speaker Mike Johnson to reprimand, or potentially even expel, members that do not fall in lockstep. (And if Mike Johnson proves incapable of stopping this plot in its tracks, then another motion to vacate – of the kind MTG proposed just recently – might be just what the doctor ordered.)
As a matter of policy, if, God forbid, House Republican antics continue, and they wind up losing control over the lower chamber to the Democrats, President Trump can and should coordinate with 41 Senators, the number needed to prevent cloture of a filibuster, to ensure blockage of any would-be Insurrection legislation that gets passed. This can be done, but it will involve strategic planning with sympathetic Republican ears in the Senate – currently, Democrats hold onto a slim 51-49 seat majority in the Senate and are poised to lose control of the upper chamber in this November’s election cycle due to a highly favorable Republican map.
Accordingly, if President Trump and his team can coordinate with enough Republicans to block cloture – they can prevent any Insurrection legislation from being passed. Current rules require 60 votes to end a filibuster, so Republicans can afford to lose eight of their members, and still prevent any such legislation from going to Joe Biden’s desk. And while it is true that if ever such legislation were passed, the Supreme Court would almost certainly automatically review it for its constitutionality, given how high-pressure the situation will be – and other factors that are outside anyone’s control, such as the circumstances in which such legislation is passed – it is best to prevent such a dire scenario from occurring ahead of time, in its tracks, rather than leave it up to the Supreme Court, a wildcard, to decide when it might already be too late.
Too many Rinos on the SC!?