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Colorado GOP Threatens to Go Rogue If Trump Decision Stands
(www.thedailybeast.com)
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this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
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I think the point is that a caucus is overseen by the party, not the state. I still don’t know the legality of doing it at this late stage after the primary has been agreed to and will be set on Jan 5, but that’s their thinking.
This is my favorite part though:
A whole week or two to put together a caucus.
You're not understanding. They're complaining about the primary so their solution is essentially to hold their own primary outside of state control, but he wouldn't be able to run in the general election even if he wins their primary so it doesn't matter. As things currently stand there's only two possibilities, Trump loses the primary to someone else in which case things continue as normal, or Trump wins the primary in which case the GOP wouldn't be able to run a presidential candidate in Colorado. Biden (assuming he's the DNC candidate for the general election) would run unopposed in Colorado.
Probably not earth shattering since he would likely win there even if Trump could run there, but if Trump isn't on the ballot a certain percentage of GOP voters won't bother going to the polls which will hurt the GOP in senate and congress races as well as on state votes.
Oh man your last point is important. I'm so low on confidence in the system that I'm nervous to rely on the government a tuallly excluding him from the ballot, but if he really is banned it'd be so awesome to watch gop officials freaking the fuck out as their turn out numbers drop like a meteor
Especially because lauren boebert is in a very competitive down ballot primary race that trump not getting out the voters for will hurt. Her opponents are more centrist, standard Coloradan republicans
I haven’t seen a law stating that the secretary can keep a candidate legally nominated by the party off of the ballot. There may be such a law, but I haven’t seen it mentioned. The only law I’ve seen is the one allowing them to design the primary ballot based on their own determination of eligibility. I’d be happy to read anything you have about the same type of law applying to the general.
That’s assuming that such a nomination would be legal. I’m pretty sure most places have laws that say “you must be eligible for the office in order to stand as a candidate for it.” Colorado Republicans could nominate Justin Bieber, but that wouldn’t make him eligible to be President.
The ruling is that the sec state cannot allow onto the ballot a candidate who is legally disqualified.
Not quite. The law is that the secretary cannot allow someone onto the primary ballot who is, in their opinion, disqualified. The ruling is that CO has the right to use that law to keep Trump off of the primary ballot.
I don’t know whether that law also applies to the general election ballot, but the fact that the republicans think that they can pull it out of the state’s hands and do a run around with a caucus makes me think it’s about the primaries. I don’t think they can legally switch to a caucus mid race for other reasons, but if they do they think it’s a path.
That's the dispute right now. The argument is that the Constitution commands something, and all government officers and courts are sworn to follow it. It's the same as the exclusionary rule. In the Constitution the 4th Amendment says "no unreasonable search and seizure." Doesn't say anything about the legal remedy or what to do when it happens.
The Supreme Court held that the command implies the remedy, and the command must be followed by all officers and courts.
The argument here is whether it's like that, or whether the right is only vitiated if Congress passes a statutory framework to provide a remedy. It's a dumb take and such a rule would effectively makes the Constitution meaningless.
Doesn't matter if it's the primary or general. The secretary of State creates and distributes the ballots, she cannot put Trump's name on it any more than a prosecutor could offer illegally obtained evidence. It is the prosecutor's duty to follow the command of the Fourth Amendment, same as it is the secretary's duty to follow the commands of the Constitution; she could not list someone on the ballot under 35 years of age, she cannot list an insurrectionist.
The argument would be that he's ineligible due to the 14th amendment and therefore they're just enforcing the constitution which would supercede state law anyway. That would of course be a very interesting legal question as the crux of it is is a state allowed to enforce a provision of the constitution that the federal government isn't (which is itself a state of affairs that raises all kinds of questions).
Yes exactly. That’s the argument that has already been discarded in this case. Were Trump to be found guilty of insurrection, he would be legally ineligible under the constitution. What team Trump is hoping to do is to win on the insurrection case or to delay trial until after he wins the presidency, after which he has any number of ways to escape prosecution.
However, if he is found guilty before the general ballots are set (or after, I suppose - I really don’t know that part) he would be ineligible but that would be based on a federal court ruling and not on the judgement of the secretary, I believe.
Technically the 14th amendment doesn't require him to be found guilty at trial, although it would be a much stronger argument if he was. That argument also hasn't been discarded, it's still being argued in court right now. This was just an attempt to use an alternative approach to accomplish the same thing.
Ultimately with the way things are going it's looking increasingly likely Trump won't make it to the general election. He's either going to fail to secure the primary, going to lose an insurrection case and become ineligible under the 14th amendment, or lose one of his many other criminal cases and wind up in jail. It's always possible he could campaign from a jail cell, but his already shaky chances of winning in that case go down drastically.
His strategy right now is around delaying tactics because he's frantically trying to prevent any of his court cases from wrapping up before the general election in the hope that he wins and can effectively become immune from criminal prosecution. The biggest danger to him right now though is actually his own party. On the one hand they know what kind of monster he is and would rather he just disappeared. On the other hand they're absolutely terrified of his fanatic cult members and know that Trump could easily turn them on anyone who too obviously moves against him. If they can find a way to bury Trump that can't be tied back to them they'll absolutely jump at that chance, all while decrying how terrible the situation is, and how unfortunate it is this happened to Trump.