The election has been in the spotlight for the past two weeks, from the Supreme Court’s waiver of its responsibility to address stern election issues, to former President Donald Trump’s speech on CPAC, to the House passing H.R. 1 on a party-line vote. Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett have disappointed the nation, but Republicans must unite to prevent 2020’s illegal issues from being permanently legalized, which will happen if H.R. 1 passes the Senate.
H.R. 1 poses an existential threat to America’s form of government because it would create one-party rule with the Democratic Party permanently dominated by socialists and communists. (And let’s hope Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) keeps his word and keeps the filibuster, because if H.R. 1 passes, the moderate wing of the Democratic Party will be forever exterminated and his grandchildren will live in a land of radical leftist control.)
So Republicans cannot afford to be in a circular firing squad shooting at each other because there is no majority of constitutional conservatives on the Supreme Court willing to turn to the sound of gunfire to decide the most controversial issues. I don’t know if the GOP civil war has been called off, as Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) has said, but it should be postponed until we defeat the deadly threat that is on the brink of destroying the GOP. Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell need to get along for the next 20 months, along with all of their supporters.
Trump’s CPAC speech addressed strongly the issue of election integrity and how the Supreme Court failed not only Trump’s 75 million voters, but every American, because elections are imperative to the constitutional form of government that governs everyone in this country for all generations. However, by a single vote, the justices declined to hear any cases raising stern constitutional issues related to the 2020 elections in several key states, and Kavanaugh and Barrett disappointed all who supported their elevation to the Supreme Court because each could have provided the necessary votes to review subsidies.
Then, behind schedule last Wednesday night, the House passed H.R. 1 by a 220-210 majority. Every Republican voted against it, and every Democrat except one voted for it. This is because both sides understand that this is an attempted federal takeover of the election on cynical terms that will enable Democrats to rig the electoral process forever and erase everything that went wrong in 2020 – and don’t let the Democrats and the media lie to you, massive and widespread irregularities occurred – and perpetuated these travesties throughout the country.
I’ve been in national politics since the Reagan era in the 1980s, I ran elections for eight years as Secretary of State of Ohio – where we were at Ground Zero in the 2004 presidential election – I was the national campaign chairman, and I voted on my own for many years. I have never seen election laws not being followed on such a wide scale as in 2020, with irregularities resulting in lawsuits. It looked more like elections I had seen while serving as an official election observer in troubled countries abroad.
Trump rightly hammered home H.R. 1 in his CPAC speech, which would address all of the loopholes in existing law exposed in 2020 lawsuits and turn those problems into legal requirements. Trump was right that the Supreme Court failed us by not hearing any appeals of lawsuits in states where judges and election administrators rewrote state election laws because the Constitution says state legislatures decide how to appoint presidential electors, not judges and election administrators. This means that because every state legislature long ago – mostly in the 19th century – passed laws stipulating that the members of the state’s Electoral College every four years are electors supporting the winner of the statewide popular vote, the statewide election must be conducted in accordance with these rules. regulations as the legislator wrote them.
However, in at least six states, elections deviated from what the legislature mandated in state law. So people filed a lawsuit and then asked the Supreme Court to deal with it. The justices’ courage to do so in 2000 is proof that Republicans won the White House in Bush v. Gore.
But the Supreme Court dashed Republicans and conservatives’ hopes for justification and preparation for election reform, voting 6-3 not to hear any of four cases raising legal issues related to the 2020 election. The vote was only 6-3 as Kavanaugh and Barrett voted to dismiss these appeals.
Frustrated constitutional conservatives ask: what should be done to ensure that the Supreme Court includes original people who are not afraid of the left and will do their job? Democrats always attract liberals to the Court. Why can’t Republicans win over conservatives who don’t bow to media pressure?
Ronald Reagan was unrivaled among Supreme Court nominees, as were bold conservatives like Antonin Scalia and William Rehnquist, but also moderates like Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy.
Even more whiplash occurred in the case of George H. W. Bush (Bush 41), who gave America both the Court’s most consistently principled constitutionalist, Clarence Thomas, and someone who turned out to be a full-blown liberal, David Souter.
Although George W. Bush (Bush 43) did not elect any Souters, he gave us one true conservative fighter in Samuel Alito, but also an elite establishment Republican in John Roberts, who conceded on Obamacare, amnesty for illegal immigrants, the census, abortion and other problems.
Then we had the Trump presidency. Scalia died unexpectedly during the 2016 campaign. Trump presented his public list of Supreme Court options, which was expanded several times. He had a team in the White House, more people in the Justice Department, and consulted with outside advisers from the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation.
Trump got great information from outside advisers. But anyone from the outside can only do so much. The loudest voices are those who speak to the president in the room every day.
This process gave us Neil Gorsuch. He is brilliant and a fighter. Even if his libertarian philosophy drives conservatives crazy on some significant issues, he has certainly decisively changed the Constitution’s provision that presidential electors are chosen by a system established by state legislatures, which means enforcing state election laws as the legislature wrote them .
Then in 2018 we got Kavanaugh. We struggled with the ugliest confirmation any of us could remember. We have a conservative of sorts, and in religious liberty cases brought by organizations I work with, he has voted for a conservative view of the Constitution. He will no doubt do the same on many other issues as well.
But why won’t Kavanaugh fight back? Whether he listens to Roberts or the mainstream media, Kavanaugh must accept that the Constitution gives him a lifetime appointment so that he can ignore politicians and public opinion and focus solely on the law. You cannot uphold the Constitution if you do not vote on issues where the Constitution is at risk.
In October, Kavanaugh voted to hear one of these election cases. In February, he changed his mind on the same matter. Kavanaugh cannot allow the Swamp and the Far Left to intimidate him (if he did) or allow Roberts to focus on protecting the Court instead of the Constitution.
And then we have Barrett. The 2020 election cases were Barrett’s first major test, which ended in failure. Scalia would be disappointed in his former judicial clerk. These appeals should have been heard for all the reasons Thomas explained in his dissent. These types of controversies are at the heart of an independent judiciary, and until the Supreme Court resolves these issues, these issues will resurface, could change the outcome of future close elections, and further undermine Americans’ trust in democracy.
As for the ongoing battle, if the Supreme Court shed airy on problems with state law since November, it would assist inform the public and prevent these problems from becoming entrenched in H.R. 1 federal law.
However, Barret is completely recent. While her decision not to take on 2020 election issues is damaging if the GOP survives anyway by defeating H.R. 1, she nonetheless has time to redeem herself by making this a one-time event in a period of courageous service that could go on for decades .
The next Republican president needs judges who are both constitutional conservatives and willing to fight, especially when the case involves politicians and the public going on a political feeding frenzy. The Tribunal needs judges who will never shrink from controversy and who will never run away from an attack on the Constitution. History shows that many conservative constitutional issues are issues where only fearless justice can stand.
But this is all a discussion for 2024. Republicans won’t last that long if we allow ourselves to be consumed by internal war now. Left-wing Democrats see a two-year window to gain lasting power in America. This common threat requires everyone to fire in one direction, not in a circular firing squad.
We need every moderate Republican and establishment Republican to stand with every grassroots MAGA activist and every constitutional conservative to defeat H.R. 1 so that the election procedures that went off track in our recent past don’t also become our future. It’s all hands on deck because, in the immortal words of Benjamin Franklin, “We all must stick together, or we all hang apart.”
Ken Blackwell is a Senior Fellow on Human Rights and Constitutional Governance at the Family Research Council.
