We’re In A Severe Constitutional Crisis


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As someone smarter than me said on Twitter, “Post-factual is pre-fascist.” So, the next few days will be crucial in deciding the fate of the United States. The reason why I say that is Republicans are beginning to pull some pretty spectacular scenarios out of their asses in an absolute last-gasp effort to keep Trump in office.

The latest scenario is the creation of the bullshit commission that Ted “Born In Canada” Cruz has suggested would delay the certification 10 days so Republicans can have a lot more time for mischief. Even thought the Electoral Count Act exists to prevent a replay of the 1876 situation, that Cruz is even suggesting such a thing indicates we’re now in a significant Constitutional Crisis.

The biggest reason is it seems pretty obvious that while Ted Cruz and other seditious members of Congress are playing politics, Trump is pretty much thinking only in terms of self-preservation. The disconnect between these two mindsets has otherwise normal people playing into the hands of a madman. Trump just wants to stay in power, no matter what (for various reasons) and, as such, he has thought no further than simply “I don’t want to leave office.”

A lot of people on the Republican side involved in this clusterfuck who should know better are playing along because they don’t want Mad King Trump to demand they be primaried in 2022 or 2024. So, they, too, aren’t really thinking beyond the short-term goal of sucking up to Trump and not making him mad. They really haven’t given any thought to what happens if they pull this stunt off? They don’t think they will and so they see no downside in going as far as possible with Trump’s bullshit.

So it’s up to people like me to think about what happens if they “catch the car.” Well, as I keep saying, it would be a “political 9/11.” But even then, the whole thing would be problematic for House Trump for a number of reasons. This is Trump we’re talking about and he is a massive self-own artist. He’s already self-owned in a massive way by not doing his autocrat “homework” of stealing the election outright in a way that would otherwise give him necessary façade of legality that would allow him to consolidate power in his second term.

He’s not an autocrat, he’s just a deranged idiot who was nothing more than an avatar for the rot and rage in the American political system. That’s it. He has zero leadership skills, so he wasn’t even able to do the bare minimum necessary to “not lose” the 2020 election when the time came.

So, here we are.

Now we have a number of different potentially pretty bad scenarios ahead of us. Trump could essentially stage a coup via the “Pence Card” gambit that would, in effect, be supported by about 38% of the electorate. All things being equal, that’s probably enough for him to stay in power. But I keep thinking about how American civil society would process such an event. Sort of a, “how do you explain it to the kids” kind of thing.

People on Twitter talk a good talk about what they might do if a Pence Card Gambit coup took place, but I have my doubts. It could be that there’s significant grumbling, but since Trump would have at least a thin veneer of legality that he would get away with it.

That would break the back of American democracy once and for all and House Trump would formally be founded. But for the moment, there’s no end game. That’s why we’re in a crisis. Any number of different things might happen in the end.

Author: Shelton Bumgarner

I am the Editor & Publisher of The Trumplandia Report

Leave a Reply