Just days ago, The Former Guy (Trump) said that all rules that prevent him from regaining the Presidency that he decisively lost in 2020 should be terminated, including the Constitution. The Constitution does not have a Sore Losers clause. The Republicans in the House intend to read the Constitution out loud on their first day as a majority. Do they not understand that the only way to honor the Constitution is not to read it but to act on its requirements? The titular leader of their party says the Constitution should be “terminated.” Do they agree or disagree?
As Dan Rather said in a wonderful post this morning, the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution to protect the Republic from men like Trump, flimflam men who would stoop to any lie or trick to gain power. Rather and his co-author Elliott Kirschner said: “Many in the press and pundit world worry that words like “fascism” and “autocracy” are too extreme to apply to American politics. Perhaps that was once the case, but there is also a danger in tiptoeing past the truth. Because what is being said here, with all the subtlety of a Harley revving through a yoga retreat, is that this man, who six years ago pledged an oath to defend the Constitution, now seeks to destroy it. This is the definition of autocracy. It is the seed of fascism.”
Who will hold Trump accountable? Polls show that he leads the Republican pack. The Founding Fathers would have arrested him for treason.
Heather Cox Richardson writes:
On Friday, November 25, 2022, just over a week ago, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced, “On the very first day of the new Republican-led Congress, we will “read every single word of the Constitution aloud from the floor of the House—something that hasn’t been done in years.”
Yesterday, on Saturday, December 3, 2022, former president Donald Trump, the presumptive leader of the Republican Party, mischaracterized a Twitter thread to claim that Joe Biden’s presidential campaign had successfully pressured Twitter to suppress the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop—the thread actually said something else entirely—and called for overthrowing the Constitution. Trump wrote:
“So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential election results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great “Founders” did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”
In case anyone didn’t get the point, Trump followed that post up with another: “UNPRECEDENTED FRAUD REQUIRES UNPRECEDENTED CURE!”
On Sunday, December 4, all but one Republican lawmaker who expects to stay in office for the next two years stayed resolutely silent about Trump’s open attack on the U.S. Constitution, this nation’s founding document, the basis for our government.
That one lawmaker was Representative Michael Turner (R-OH), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, who this morning on CBS’s “Face the Nation” condemned Trump’s attack on the Constitution. But Turner would not say he would not support Trump if he were the party’s nominee in 2024.
Even at that, Turner’s was a lone voice. When George Stephanopoulos, host of “This Week” on ABC News, asked Representative David Joyce (R-OH) if he would support Trump in 2024 after the former president had called for “suspending the Constitution” (to be clear, Trump had called for “terminating” it), Joyce tried to avoid the question but finally said, “I’ll support whoever the Republican nominee is.” Joyce is the chair of the Republican Governance Group, whose members claim they are the party’s centrists.
Not all Republicans reacted to Trump’s truly astonishing statement with such easy acceptance. Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), who was removed from party leadership for holding Trump responsible for the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and who has lost her seat in Congress to a Trump supporter, responded to Trump’s statement by saying: “Donald Trump believes we should terminate ‘all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution’ to overturn the 2020 election. That was his view on 1/6 and remains his view today. No honest person can now deny that Trump is an enemy of the Constitution.”
Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who, like Cheney, took a seat on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6thAttack on the U.S. Capitol and will also be leaving Congress, tweeted: “With the former President calling to throw aside the constitution, not a single conservative can legitimately support him, and not a single supporter can be called a conservative. This is insane. Trump hates the constitution.” Kinzinger tagged McCarthy, third-ranking House Republican Elise Stefanik (R-NY), and Jim Jordan (R-OH), who is expected to take over the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over issues involving the Constitution.
None of them commented.
Conservative Bill Kristol made his questioning broader: “The Federalist Society claims to defend the Constitution,” he tweeted. “Donald Trump, the ex-president with whom the Society worked so closely, has just attacked the Constitution in an incendiary way. Do the Federalist Society or its members have a word to say in defense of our Constitution?”
Crickets.
McCarthy’s statement a week ago that the whole Constitution hadn’t been read on the floor of Congress “in years” was technically true, but it was misleading. It sounded as if McCarthy was promising to do something novel to demonstrate the Republicans’ loyalty to the Constitution.
In fact, Republicans demanded a reading of the Constitution in the House for the first time in its history in 2011 to try to demonstrate that the government had gone beyond the Framers’ intent, although they also cut out all the parts the Framers wrote that have been amended since the document was written. (That meant they cut out the infamous three-fifths clause counting enslaved African Americans as three fifths of a white person for purposes of representation, leading to accusations that they were cherry-picking the Framers’ words.)
Since then, the House has read the Constitution at least twice more, in 2015 and 2017, to promote the idea that Republicans, and Republicans alone, are standing on the U.S. Constitution, while Democrats are abusing it.
The leader of the Republican Party has called for “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” and party leaders are silent.
Representatives had not taken the time to read the entirety of the U.S. Constitution on the floor of the House before 2011 because they were presumed to know it. What they did have to say aloud was something far more important for each individual to have on record: their oath of office.
It reads: “I…do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”
—
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Santa Clause
The Santa Clause brings cheer
When politicians lose
A sack that’s full of beer
And lots of other booze
The Santa Clause is great
For Trump and other losers
And Santa might be late
But beggars can’t be choosers
One thing is certain: reading the Trump version of the Constitution in Congress would take no time at all
In order to form a more perfect onion, I do ordain and establish myself as President for life.
And if that is unpresidented, so be it.
When I was afforded the opportunity to study the Constitution at Boston University through the “We the People: The People and the Constitution” program, the founders fought on every word. Originally, the document was to read, “We the States.” Then, fought hard to make sure it read, “We the People,” to protect the people, a government by the people and for the people. Years ago I read an article where Jared Kushner said something like, “…Constitution, huh. When we get into power we are writing our own Constitution…” These people are deranged.
The organization that ran this program also guided the creation of National Standards on Civic Education in the early 90s. A great program that had incredibly poor leadership which is why it died.
The Supreme Court has interpreted “We the People ” to mean “We the corporations” and, since the early Court f John Marshall, they can interpret it — and the laws — any way they wish, so the actual words don’t even matter.
Under the current Extreme Court, the actual Constitution is all but meaningless so anything you and I and anyone else learned about it is effectively irrelevant.
Because they are the Deciders and when they decide, they make the reality for the rest of us and we are left to merely study that reality (as a famous right winger aptly put it).
As I wake up to read, “Supreme Court to argue election denial in the the case of Moore v. Harper” you are spot on. My point was what I learned (and I love to learn) even though THEY who are supposed to protect us, don’t play by the rules. What now? Should I just stay in Plato’s cave? Take care always enjoy what you have to say. Peace out to you and yours.
The last I heard, corporations are people too. Actually, more than people.
This is a timely post considering that the Florida GOP is trying to restrict people’s right to protest in Tallahassee. Last time I read The Constitution freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of speech were guaranteed under The Constitution.
Under DeSantis, you have the right to peacefully assemble in a jail cell.
This is different from all of his antics, getting ralliers to chant and salivate at his presence, his life-long MO of finding loopholes (from the army to tax evasion to …).
He knew he lost. He tried every workaround possible. This is different.
He was shocked that the base and country didn’t hail when he announced he was running, that his kingmaker role didn’t work. That there are rumblings and they kept him out of Georgia. That’s the part he can’t handle.
This is about state, not status.
The silent so-called leaders don’t care about their constituents or governing; but…
How will the silent be able to look their children and grandchildren in the eye when asked what they did to prevent this man from unleashing his base? And, they’ll cower and say “I did nothing”
Trump’s recent statement about suspending the Constitution deserves strong condemnation from everyone. It’s not at all conservative; in fact, it’s classic Leninism – whatever it takes, by any means necessary. See the linked essay below for how principled conservatives regard what Trump said.
But few of this blog’s readers are principled about matters like this. It’s a safe bet that almost all of them support Biden using executive orders to forgive student loan debt – even after Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats said no President has the power to unilaterally do what clearly belongs to Congress to do under the principle of separation of powers. Congress can forgive such debt via legislation, but no President can do it by himself.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/12/when-trump-promises-to-be-a-tyrant-take-him-at-his-word/
Mike Owens– “Matters like this?” There is no similarity between Biden’s student loan forgiveness executive action and Trump’s dismissal of the rules of the Constitution. Much less to Leninism. [That quote is particularly outrageous, appearing as it does in his letter to the Politburo recommending immediate seizure of church properties by quick & brutal means, as the ‘proletariat’ was too busy starving to protest.]
Whether Biden’s executive action will be deemed a breach of separation of powers depends on how a number of provisions of the 1965 Higher Education Act are interpreted, as well as CFR on compromise of debt and the 2003 Heroes Act. And no doubt more; that’s just one legal analysis I came across. Bottom line: not a slam dunk, which is why it’s in the courts.
This is another false equivalency. Biden’s actions are being tested in court. If you are judged to be correct, he will abide by the court’s decision. Trump is suggesting that the constitutional guarantees are not sufficient to lead to freedom of the people. He wants to throw it out. How are these two behaviors comparable?
The silence of elected Republicans after Traitor Trump’s demand to feed the US Constitution into a paper shredder and replace President Biden with him speaks loudly that the 2nd violent, bloody Civil War that started on January 6, 2021, is not over and may not end for years.
The GOP of today has become a fascist organization. They don’t want people to vote, protest or have much of a say about anything. They want control and unlimited power.
Perhaps they are right to disrespect the Constitution. Of course their issue is; as written there is some semblance of Democratic Governance. Preventing them from total minority rule and Autocracy . However as written it has allowed a minority of the population to have undue influence in all three Branches of Government. This has existed pretty much since the signing in one way or another or to some degree or another. Though the minority has sharpened their skills in recent times . The bigger problem, that minority would have undue influence in rewriting a new Constitution or preventing change to the existing Document .