Nuclear.
I agree with Ken White’s response to this pander by Dem Rep. Bill Pascrell: “Look, I get it, but the answer to performative pseudo-legal system-undermining nonsense is not ‘more of the same.’” If you’re defending the norm that America’s elected representatives shouldn’t try to tear the country apart, proposing a penalty that would also tear the country apart seems… counterproductive. The text of the 14th Amendment expressly forbids Members of Congress from engaging in rebellion against the United States. Trying to overturn a democratic election and install a dictator seems like a pretty clear example of that. pic.twitter.com/VMnDfd0sFx Bill Pascrell, Jr. (@BillPascrell) December 11,2020 The members of Congress who endorsed Texas’s suit are morally unfit to hold office in the United States but moral disqualification and legal disqualification are two different things. Filing a lawsuit, however contemptible, isn’t “insurrection.” Although I do think Pascrell would have been on stronger footing if he had focused specifically on GOP reps from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia who signed on to Texas’s complaint. If those representatives have no faith in the integrity of the ballots in their home states because Biden won, there’s no reason why Congress should have faith in the integrity of each of those representatives’ victories. Voters vote for president and for the House on the same ballot, after all. If these people believe that the electoral process in their home states was unconstitutional, they have no grounds to object if the House decides that their own victories can’t properly be recognized. So why seat them? There are now 19 GOP members of Congress who are advocating for overturning the election results *of the states they themselves represent.* List below, new signatories in bold:https://t.co/8CmK88ovYA pic.twitter.com/3swDnpawVn — Jacob Rubashkin (@JacobRubashkin) December 11,2020 Refusing to seat all 126 Republicans supporting the suit goes too far but I sympathize with Pascrell’s frustration that not one of them will pay any political or professional price for having supported a legal effort that would end the United States as we know it if successful. “A majority of one of the two major parties would rather lose democracy than lose the presidential election,” wrote polisci prof Seth Masket last night of the Texas suit, correctly. “If elections are only legitimate when one party wins them, the [American] experiment is basically over.” And that’s really the point. Whether Texas wins or loses its suit isn’t the issue; people file pernicious lawsuits in America all the time, although a challenge asking the Supreme Court to spoil the ballots of tens of millions of voters is in a league of its own. The issue is that more than half of the Republican members of the House support that outcome. That means the American experiment is over, win or lose. The mask is off. And even so, it won’t cost any of them a thing in terms of votes, media appearances, lobbying jobs, nothing.
