The Colorado Supreme Court voted 4-3 last week to exclude disgraced ex-president Donald Trump from the state’s Republican primary ballot, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which was written and adopted after the Civil War and was intended to keep ex-Confederates from holding federal office.
U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., is among a number of those on the center-left who are uneasy about the state-court action.
“I do think the case that the Jack Smith has brought about what happened on Jan. 6, I was in the Capitol, I believe it was an insurrection. Clearly, then, President Trump encouraged the crowd, you know, but I also know that, you know, that charge against President Trump hasn’t gone to trial yet,” Warner told reporters on a conference call last week, ahead of the Christmas holiday.
“It feels like the Colorado Supreme Court realizes they were dealing with a very challenging issue, and it was a close decision, 4-3, and there was a strong dissent. My hope is that the Supreme Court will take this up, and I am, I am, you know, this is a challenging time for our democracy at the end of the day,” Warner said.
The U.S. Supreme Court is almost certainly going to involve itself in the state-court ruling, though how the Trump-packed high court will ultimately come down on the issue is a fair question.
The supposedly conservative court has consistently ruled in favor of giving states the final say on state matters, and elections are state, not federal, matters.
Now, you shouldn’t be surprised if this, again, supposedly conservative court that likes to let on that it supports states rights to forget its core ideology when it comes to Trump and the 2024 election.
Hypocrisy in conservative circles knows no bounds.
The story here isn’t that it should be assumed that supposedly conservative Supreme Court justices will overrule a state-court decision on a state issue, but that Warner is among a growing number of center-left Democrats who are ambivalent about the Colorado Supreme Court decision becoming a weapon that can be used in the future.
To Warner, it should be a matter of, let the voters decide.
“Should President Trump be the Republican nominee, I think the majority of Americans will reject him as they have, not only in 2020, but in elections, even prior, in 2018 and 2022, and to a degree I think, even in 2023 in Virginia. His kind of rhetoric, again, you saw that kind of hateful rhetoric, rhetoric that echoed frankly, Adolf Hitler, just in the last few days, and even Republican senators running from that. I think that’s not where the American people are at,” Warner said.
Share
Chris Graham
