George Conway is a constitutional lawyer and a conservative Republican who is an outspoken critic of Donald Trump. His tweets are memorable, as are his appearances on MSNBC, where he is often a guest. He also writes for The Atlantic, where he published his commentary on the Supreme Court’s latest Trump decision. Conway was initially dubious about Colorado’s case for disqualifying Trump but, upon reflection, decided that the Constitution plainly required the Supreme Court to exclude him from the ballot. In his view, the case was not decided on its merits and the legal argument was “utterly flimsy.”

In this post, he analyzes the decision and points out its inconsistencies and fallacies. I am quoting only his conclusion. If you want to read it in full, open the link or subscribe to The Atlantic:

This case wasn’t about legal reasoning; it was about fear. Fear from all the justices, conservatives and liberals, about the impact on the Court of removing Trump from the ballot. And the second paragraph of Justice Barrett’s opinion bleeds fear onto the page. “This is not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency,” she writes. Was that directed at any of her colleagues? Justice Sotomayor’s opinion is hardly strident at all, as far as Supreme Court separate opinions go, even if it makes little more sense than the majority’s. “The Court has settled a politically charged issue in the volatile season of a Presidential election,” Barrett continues. “Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up. For present purposes, our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home.”

Each of these sentences is true. But why say this? Why not let the Court’s unanimity of judgment and reasoning speak for itself, including that of Sotomayor’s concurrence? Because Justice Barrett—and, I suspect, all the justices—were terrified by the case and what it actually required them to do: affirm Trump’s disqualification.

That may sound depressing, but I see reason to take heart. To be sure, it’s a shame, because this was one circumstance where it would have been nice for the Supreme Court justices to show the courage that some of their colleagues in the lower courts have shown when faced with Trump—judges like Lewis Kaplan, in the Carroll case; Tanya Chutkan, in the federal January 6 case; Justice Arthur Engoron in Trump’s New York civil fraud case; and Justice Juan Merchan, in the upcoming New York criminal case stemming from Trump allegedly cooking his books to pay off an adult-film star. Ultimately, though, litigation will not save us from Trump, and no one should believe that it will.  

But litigation will have done its part—even Trump v. Anderson, with its dearth of reasoning and not-quite-satisfactory result. Because there was one very important thing the Court didn’t do yesterday. It didn’t cast one word of doubt, and expressed not a hint of a disagreement with, the amply supported factual conclusion reached by the Colorado courts: Donald Trump engaged in an insurrection. Just as Trump today stands as an adjudicated sexual abuser, so too he remains an adjudicated insurrectionist. It is up to us, as voters, to make use of those findings come November.

Put another way: You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need.