By Deacon Mike Manno
(The Wanderer) – There is a lot of hubbub this week about
the possibility of a Trump-DeSantis ticket this fall. Of course the speculation
of who Mr. Trump will chose as his running-mate will dominate this year’s
political guessing game, as the VP choice always does. But this year it is even
more intriguing.
And considering that several other VP candidates are also
from Florida, it might be an interesting exercise to see how this might play
out. First let’s look at the Constitutional problems such a ticket would
produce. As we all know, the election will be determined by which candidate can
gain a majority of the electoral vote.
The Electoral College is made up of representatives from
each state in numbers equivalent to that state’s total membership in Congress,
that is House members and two Senators. Thus to obtain a majority a candidate
for president – and the same goes for vice president – needs 270 electoral votes
for election.
The Constitution places very little restrictions on the
electors except for this: “The electors shall meet in their respective states,
and vote by ballot for two persons, of
whom one at least shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves.”
Consider a close election in which the electoral majority
for president is decided by 29 votes. If Trump is the winner, what happens to
DeSantis? Florida’s 30 electors may not cast their vice presidential votes for
him. So who is elected vice president?
According to the constitution, in the event that no one
receives the 270 votes, the senate will choose the vice president from among
the two top electoral vote winners. Now if the Democrats hold the senate the
candidate selected will most probably be Kamala Harris, resulting in a
Trump-Harris Administration. You’d have to go back to the early days of the
republic, Adams-Jefferson, to find a similar situation.
Would the GOP run that risk? In 2000 George W. Bush, and
his vice presidential choice Dick Cheney, were both from Texas. They solved the
problem by having Mr. Cheney move back to his home state of Wyoming. Could that
happen for a Trump-DeSantis ticket? As governor DeSantis can’t take up
residence out of state, but would Mr. Trump do so?
Of course the Democrats in New York might just solve Mr.
Trump’s dilemma for him by providing him a residence at Rikers Island.
By the way, just so you know, the situation is much
different if no presidential candidate reaches 270 votes. In that case the House
must choose from the top three candidates, with each state getting one vote,
thus it takes 26 states to win.
***
We’re all aware of the current commotions (riots?) on our
college campuses by the modern-day Nazi Youth. Several months ago before all the
Jew-shaming started, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression (FIRE)
released, in conjunction with the College Pulse, a report of how free speech
was tolerated or not on the nation’s campuses.
The report covered 254 colleges and surveys from 55,102
individuals from those campuses, from which the report made it’s College Free
Speech Rankings for 2024. Here are a sample of the findings, starting at the
bottom.
“Harvard University obtained the lowest score possible,
0.00, and is the only school with an ‘Abysmal’ speech climate range[O1] .
The University of Pennsylvania, the University of South Carolina, Georgetown
University, and Fordham University also ranked in the bottom five,” it
reported.
Additionally, “Students from schools in the bottom five
were more biased toward allowing controversial liberal speakers on campus over
conservative ones and were more accepting of students using disruptive and
violent forms of protest to stop a campus speech. … Deplatforming attempts that occurred at
schools ranked in the bottom five had an alarming 81% success rate.”
The four schools listed as “Good” on free speech were
Michigan Technological University, Auburn University, the University of New
Hampshire, and Oregon State University. Rounding out the top five was Florida
State University with a rating of “Above Average.”
Here’s how some of the leading institutions who are in the
forefront of the latest campus uprisings were ranked: George Washington
University, 185; Columbia University, 213; and Yale University, 234. The sorry
state of higher education today.
***
Several notes of interest on my radio program:
A few weeks ago we had on Ed Flynn, you might remember from
his and his wife’s book, Thunder of
Justice. He is the author of a new book exploring the messages of the
alleged Marian apparition at Garabandal, Spain. The alleged apparitions
occurred to four young girls, 11 and 12 years old, from 1961 to 1965. The
messages reportedly from the Blessed Mother contained warnings about a future
miracle, a chastisement, and a divine reset.
The messages have created quite a stir and Flynn was on the
program to talk about the new book, Garabandal,
The Warning and The Great Miracle. If you follow the link at the
bottom you can hear the interview by selecting Episode 408.
Then last week we had on the program Fr. Tad Pacholcyk,
senior ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethical Center in Philadelphia. He
was on to discuss the ethical considerations and moral teachings on in vitro
fertilization and related matters. This, of course, is a subject that has been
thrust to the forefront of political and religious conversations since the
Alabama Supreme Court ruled in February that frozen embryos were human
children. Again, you can find the link at the bottom of the column; go to
Episode 410.
What happened to Episode 409? Well that one was one of the
most interesting we had this year. One of our guests was our own Dexter Duggan
who spent 20+ minutes with me in a wide ranging discussion from St. Francis de
Sales to bias in journalism and abortion law in Arizona. Good interview, but I
did make one mistake: when I gave the studio the program notes, I misspelled
Dexter’s name by leaving out a G.
Dexter: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!
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