How suing Mike Pence is the final gasp of the ‘election fraud’ crowd

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“We proceed to carry out hope that there’s a federal decide who understands that the fraud that stole this election will imply the top of our republic, and this go well with would insure that the Vice-President will solely settle for electors legitimately and legally elected,” Gohmert mentioned in a press release on Monday. “There should be a possibility for a day in courtroom when fraud was this prevalent.”
It is most likely value noting right here that there has but to be any proof of the widespread fraud that Gohmert, Trump and the President’s most ardent backers proceed to allege. In actual fact, as The New York Instances famous over the weekend, the Trump forces have misplaced all however one of many 60 (!) lawsuits they’ve introduced making an attempt to show voter fraud. There have been zero documented cases of widespread malfeasance — be it lifeless individuals voting or non-citizens casting votes.

There’s simply no “there” there. Like, none.

Unbowed by that absence, Gohmert has plowed onward. And whereas the authorized case is a joke — and that’s placing it properly — it is value inspecting what would occur if Gohmert’s fantasy really got here true, and the way distinctly un-conservative it will all be.

So, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Gohmert is profitable. And slightly than simply enjoying the ceremonial function of president of the Senate on January 6, Pence was empowered to decide on which electors are “authorized,” which, I suppose, would exclude the electors from states the place President-elect Joe Biden received however Trump has falsely instructed there was fraud, like Arizona and Georgia and Pennsylvania.

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By doing so, Pence would single-handedly set up Trump as president for the following 4 years. And would set a precedent that the vp would retain the ability to decide on the president going ahead — it doesn’t matter what the precise in style vote or Electoral School regarded like.

Uh, yeah.

Not solely would that be massively undemocratic — disenfranchising the 81-million plus individuals who voted for Biden in 2020 — but additionally deeply anti-conservative.

Republicans are the celebration of shrinking the ability of the federal authorities and empowering state and native authorities, you may bear in mind. Which signifies that suing the vp with a view to permit him to single-handedly overturn the outcomes of a presidential election ought to be completely anathema to individuals who name themselves conservatives or Republicans. As a result of it will create a federal authorities that’s omnipotent, in a position to journey over the whims (and votes) of the states.

This, after all, is not the primary time so-called conservatives have deserted ideas in useless makes an attempt to reverse the election outcomes. Earlier this month, 18 Republican-controlled states — led by Texas Lawyer Normal Ken Paxton — sued to invalidate the election leads to Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Had the Supreme Court docket agreed — it, um, did not — it will have made it OK for one state to dictate how the vote ought to be carried out in one other state, a blatant disregarding of conservatives’ long-hallowed perception within the rights of every state to control itself.

This wholesale abandonment of basic pillars of conservatism in pursuit of creating Trump president for 4 extra years, then, is not new. Nevertheless it is a exceptional testomony to how far some (many?) Republicans have strayed away from the essential ideas of their celebration with a view to worship on the altar of Trump.

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