We Americans are about to crash into that little red school house brick wall, learning our three Rs.: reading, ‘rithmetic and Righting. Here’s why: Democratic controlled states number 15; Republican controlled states number 28, and divided states number 13. Translated into electoral college votes, that guarantees Democrats just 188 votes out of a 538 total.
Why is that important? Because Jan. 6, we experienced a coup that showed all the finesse and subtlety of a wad of chewing gum stuck under a school house chair, but the next coup is gonna be a silent, stealthy one, and here’s how that’s going to happen. You may have read (and ignored) that over 400 anti-voting rights bills have already been passed in state legislatures.
To better understand the implications, some serious background is needed. According to Heather Digby Parton writing for Salon, as early as 2020, #45 pressured AG Jeffrey Rosen to declare that the “election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and Republican Congressmen.” Despite both Barr and Rosen telling him there was no fraud, #45 wanted the DOJ to back him in his Big Lie. On that very same day, a faceless GOP lawyer named Clark who had worked in the Bush administration and had been head of the DOJ civil division since Sept. 2020, circulated a letter addressed to Gov. Brian Kemp, notorious of Georgia, (as well as six other states) dishonestly claiming that the DOJ had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election.” The letter went further: it recommended that the Georgia legislature “convene in special session so that its legislators are in a position to take additional testimony, receive new evidence, and deliberate on the matter.” He further suggested that the legislature could refuse to accept the outcome of the election and select electors for #45 instead.
Rosen and his deputy took notes and turned them over to Congress. Rosen rejected Clark’s maneuvers to overturn the election. At which point Clark went directly to #45 who threatened to replace Rosen with Clark! Only the counter threat that the entire top leadership of the DOJ would resign if #45 tried such a gambit prevented #45 from replacing Rosen.
The NYT’s Jane Mayer writes “in Bush v. Gore, Chief Justice Rehnquist along with Scalia and Thomas, hinted at a radical reading of the Constitution that, two decades later, undergirds many of the court changes on behalf of [#45]….The Justices argued that state legislatures have the plenary power to run elections and can even pass laws giving themselves the right to appoint electors. Today the so-called Independent Legislature Doctrine has informed [#45] and the Right’s attempts to use Republican-dominated state legislatures to overrule the poplar will.” They gave intellectual respectability to an otherwise insane, anti-democratic argument.”
Concludes Parton: “Jeffrey Clark was no rogue. He was doing
a dry run for a coup long in the making.”
Writing for the Editorial Board, John Stoehr amplifies Parton’s message. Stoehr points out that Republicans already have a plan for stealing the next election. Reviewing the background of Clark’s letter to Gov. Kemp claiming the legislature could simply call itself into session to make a determination contrary to the will of the people, he states that in the coup-to-come, the letter will become the “roadmap for overthrowing the will of the voters. From what I understand,” he continues, “they have all made arrangements for the state legislators to step in when state election authorities are not producing desirable results.”
“Seeing the danger posed by a Republican Party that acts more like a separatist movement than a good faith bargaining partner,” he concludes, “citizens themselves might not be as alarmed as they should be about a separatist movement that is, as we speak, threatening to rend the world’s oldest federation of free states.”
Not to forget that after #45 attempted unsuccessfully to sway Rosen, he told Brad Raffensperget, Georgia’s Secy of state, to “find” votes to change the election outcome.
Robert Reich in RawStory writes: #45’s call to Rosen in which he pleads ‘Just say the election was corrupt, and leave the rest to me’ should trigger section 3 of the 14th amendment, which bars anyone from holding office ‘who engaged in insurrection’ against the United States….#45’s proto-fascism poses the largest internal threat to American democracy since the civil war."
Brett Wilkins writing in Common Dreams offers some respite: “The Right to Vote Act, introduced by Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) and Sens. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) and Padilla (D-Calif.) would establish for the first time a statutory right to vote in federal elections, shielding Americans from laws making it harder to cast ballots. But will it also prohibit state legislatures from making their own voting laws to skew the results.
COMPOSE a letter to your Congresspersons summarizing this newsletter to bring this issue to their attention. This writer intends doing the same. Bring it to the attention of POTUS as well: https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
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