Posted on 11/28/2016 7:40:38 PM PST by SeekAndFind
There are grand flaws and minor flaws in the plan among some anti-Trumpers to block him in the electoral college. A grand flaw: How do you justify letting 538 essentially random people overturn a vote of 130 million? That’s like substituting the results of a poll for the results on election day. If your electoral college is composed of trusted “wise men,” that’s one thing — although they’d have to be awfully wise, a la Madison, Hamilton, and Adams, to convince a modern nation to give them veto power over a national election. If your electoral college is composed of political cronies and anonymous citizens who ran to be electors, all expecting that they’d be rubber-stamps for whoever won their state on November 8th, that’s something else. Even if you liked the idea of giving a small body the power to overturn an election result in unusual circumstances, why wouldn’t you trust that power to Congress instead?
Then there are the minor flaws, like … why would anyone think you could find the votes to block Trump in the electoral college when electors who are uncomfortable voting for him can simply resign instead? Any elector who defies his state’s popular vote is risking a tremendous backlash, and the more consequential his defection is, the more ominous the backlash would be. If anti-Trumpers really did find 37 people to withhold their pledged votes from Trump, they’d face public abuse, death threats, and on and on. The obvious “out” for a conscientious elector who opposes Trump is to drop out. On that note, Texas Republican Art Sisneros found himself in a bind: He could either abide by Texas’s law requiring electors to vote for whoever won the state’s popular vote, he could break the law and vote for someone else (it’s an open question whether a law binding electors is constitutional), or he could quit. He chose door number three — although not because he feared a backlash. He resigned, he said in a blog post, because he couldn’t square his pledge to vote for the winner of Texas’s election with his moral compulsion to vote only for candidates who are “Biblically qualified.”
I do not see how Donald Trump is biblically qualified to serve in the office of the Presidency. Of the hundreds of angry messages that I have received, not one has made a convincing case from scripture otherwise. If Trump is not qualified and my role, both morally and historically, as an elected official is to vote my conscience, then I can not and will not vote for Donald Trump for President. I believe voting for Trump would bring dishonor to God. The reality is Trump will be our President, no matter what my decision is. Many are furious that I am willing to have this discussion publicly. Personally, I wish more civil officers would be honest about their convictions. Assuming a Trump Presidency is their ultimate goal, they will get that. The problem is, that isn’t what they want. They want a democracy. They will threaten to kill anyone who challenges their power to vote for Skittles for dinner. That is evidence alone to prove that our republic is lost. The shell may remain, but in the hearts of the people and functionality of the system our republic is gone. I also believe that a pledge is a man’s word that he will follow through on something he committed to. God’s Word is clear we should all “let our ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and our ‘no,’s ‘no.”[20] I believe to resign is to honor the intent of the pledge as it relates to the people of my district. Since I can’t in good conscience vote for Donald Trump, and yet have sinfully made a pledge that I would, the best option I see at this time is to resign my position as an Elector. This will allow the remaining body of Electors to fill my vacancy when they convene on Dec 19 with someone that can vote for Trump. The people will get their vote. They will get their Skittles for dinner. I will sleep well at night knowing I neither gave in to their demands nor caved to my convictions. I will also mourn the loss of our republic.
Read this to see what he means by “Biblically qualified.” That’s one vote the anti-Trumpers might have gotten, now gone as Sisneros drops out. Other electors opposed to Trump might not quit for reasons as exalted as his, but why wouldn’t they follow his lead if they have a conscientious objection to backing the president-elect?
Tangentially, with lame efforts now afoot in the electoral college and in Jill Stein’s recount of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s victory, why would Trump himself call into question the integrity of the election? His message right now should be to hail the glorious splendor of a free and fair vote. Instead he’s screwing around on Twitter with this, inadvertently undermining the process that just made him president:
In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016
There is reason to believe that noncitizens are voting in federal elections, in enough numbers to tip state elections that are exceptionally close. “Millions” of noncitizens voting is hard to believe, though, and the source for the claim hasn’t produced evidence to back it up. So why would Trump lunge for it when, apart from Paul Krugman and a few Green Party diehards who can’t quite accept that Trump won fair and square, no one is seriously questioning that the vote was fair? Democrat Jonathan Chait, while acknowledging that Trump won the election “legally and legitimately,” floats this theory:
The people have spoken, and they said, by a margin currently exceeding two million votes, that they prefer Hillary Clinton to Trump. The Electoral College says otherwise. Of course, in a country where democracy is instilled in the national ethos, it is natural that any governing party will portray itself as representative of the majority. But creating the myth of popular ascent has special importance to a populist candidate like Trump. His claim to represent a “silent majority,” and to stand for the people against the elites, is fundamental to his appeal. It is the reason he has dismissed protesters as paid agents of a sinister, hidden elite opposition. And it is the reason why his supporters have circulated fake maps attempting to depict blue America as a tiny, coastal fringe.
What the people want and what the system provides are two different questions. Trump’s vote-fraud conspiracy theory is a disinformation exercise to conceal the unattractive reality that the Republican Party is gearing up to exercise minority rule.
I lean towards WaPo’s somewhat simpler explanation that this is an ego thing, pure and simple, rather than a strategic ploy to justify “minority rule.” Trump cried foul after he lost Iowa to Ted Cruz too even though he was a heavy favorite to win the next primary in New Hampshire, probably for no better reason than that it chapped his ass to have spent so much time campaigning there and then been rejected. He knows the left is going to spend the next four years reminding him that he’s less popular than Hillary Clinton even though he’s the duly elected president of the United States, and that chaps him too. So he lunged for the “illegals voting” theory. He would have been better off sticking with the argument he’s made several times over the past few weeks to explain his popular-vote loss, that his strategy was geared towards winning the electoral college and would have been entirely different if the popular vote decided the presidency, in which case he may well have won that too. As it is, consider this a sneak preview of how he’ll react in 2020 if he’s defeated for reelection. How good would it be for the country’s stability, do you think, to have the defeated president insisting that he didn’t really lose because eight million illegals or whatever cast ballots in swing states? How would a DOJ that answers to President Trump handle a claim like that? We’re only at the very beginning of these headaches.
You are in for a big surprise. The only law fulfilled was the required blood sacrifices. We are truly blessed we are not required to offer blood sacrifices. However, those Ten Commandments are still in effect. Christ quoted Moses many times, and it was Moses as well as Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration.
I pray for a PAC attack to take on Cruz, in TEXAS. In the midst of Tedlit’s nasty melt down, there was talk of equalizing Cruz’s war chest by Trump supporting PACs forming to a give him challenger loaded with money to rip him a new one.
Michael McCaul (R-TX) and chairman of Homeland Security, is a favorite, but Trump was looking at McCaul for a position in his administration. Rick Perry would be tough for Cruz cash to put away.
Cruz is ineligible. He is not a natural born citizen.
One is only NATUARLLY a US citizen when one cannot possibly be anything else.
He was born in Canada to a foreign national father, doubly ineligible.
Not if someone decides to primary him, but yes, you are correct, should that not happen.
TRUE about Rick Perry. Was he a good governor of the Lone Star State?
“Tangentially, with lame efforts now afoot in the electoral college and in Jill Stein’s recount of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s victory, why would Trump himself call into question the integrity of the election? His message right now should be to hail the glorious splendor of a free and fair vote. Instead he’s screwing around on Twitter with this, inadvertently undermining the process that just made him president:”
Because illegals matter. Because we need to, as Justice Joseph Story put it:
“cut[] off all chances for ambitious foreigners, who might otherwise be intriguing for the office; and interpose[] a barrier against those corrupt interferences of foreign governments in executive elections.”
That is something Cruz, Rubio and Jeb! didn’t quite understand.
He either doesn’t know what natural born citizen means and could decide that a child born to a Palestinian father and an American mother in Saudi Arabia is a natural born citizen eligible to be President or he knows and ignored that part of the Constitution because of his own ambition.
He’s been talking about this for some time. The dems didn’t need to get involved, and there was another Texan who might not vote for him in the EC was/is Chris Suprun.
Three terrible errors but fabulous on business in his day. Not bad over 16 years, considering all the action going on in TEXAS.
Cruz has got to go and NEVER be heard from again and the Cruzombies need to get over him; once and for all!
That’s one in a row.
He votes the way he has to and if they don’t do the job they went for they should be fined a big sum and have a replacement vote the way he was supposed to.
We were fed up with 100 Senators, 9 Justices and 435 Congress people messing with the voter’s wishes. So now comes along 537 potential crybaby electors with a Napoleon complex? Jail them.
Well, actually, “Biblically Qualified” is addressed in Article VI of the Constitution, but not as this guy thinks.
“no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
Panty-waste punk.
What a load of crap.
** do not see how Donald Trump is biblically qualified to serve in the office of the Presidency. **
This guy isn’t well informed.
Trump is the Christian — Hillary is the “whatever”, but she’s not practicing Christianity because she is for abortion and the killing of innocents.
He resigned so it’s not his responsibility anymore. The RNC will pick someone else to perform this duty.
Using God to not complete a promise he made to do a job is pure gutless, with no conviction. A coward. He took the job, and promised the people he would do what he was supposed to do. Then he backed out like the scared little animal he is. He never should been there. He committed himself, so he should be taken to court for fraud. And using God this way is a blasphemy. So much for your religious reasoning.
red
What an ass.
Hope he gets voted out of office.
I don’t think he understands what qualifications are required to be president.....biblically qualified ain’t part of it
What does Texas law say. If an elector resigns before the college is he replaced by an alternate, the party or does his vote just get forfeited?
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