Saving democracy can’t wait

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) -- It would have been nice if we could have had a nice pleasant Christmas without the interruption of politics. But, alas, it was not to be.

I live in Iowa, the site of the first political event of the year, the Republican presidential caucuses which is scheduled for mid-January. For months we have been bombarded with all things political: mailers and phone calls; television, radio, and internet ads; local news outlets reporting on every candidate events; and questioning by polling firms.

It was enough to make you want to cry. But at least the candidates had planned a break in the action to let us all take a breath, collect our thoughts, and celebrate Christmas.

I was settling into that comfort zone, visiting with an old school chum on the West Coast when a bombshell went off and drew me back into the political fray: the Colorado Supreme Court, in whatever wisdom it had, ruled Donald Trump ineligible to serve as president and struck him from the state’s ballot.

And then to prove that it had the best interest of democracy in mind with its ruling, it added this directive to the Colorado secretary of state, to which she will be happy to comply: “Therefore, the secretary may not list President Trump’s name on the 2024 presidential primary ballot, nor may she count any write-in votes cast for him.”  

That’s nice and neat. And, as the Progressive Left reported, this was necessary to preserve democracy.

Let’s go back eight years. The Democratic Party and the progressive leftist who infiltrated the government concocted a narrative that Donald Trump was colluding with Russia to cheat Hillary Clinton out of the White House. After Mr. Trump’s victory the drums beat ever more loudly that he had stolen the election with the help of the Russians.

Phony affidavits and intelligence reports were used to open a special counsel investigation of the election in which anyone associated with Mr. Trump, including his children, were accused of taking part in the collusion, yet after millions of dollars were spent on the investigation nothing came from the claim.

Well, I misspoke. Something did come from it: it clouded Mr. Trump as a deceitful, Communist-backed politician bent on the destruction of our civil liberties and democratic principles. In fact that so harmed the Trump Administration that even though subsequent investigations have shown the whole thing to be a hoax, Trump Derangement Syndrome is still prevalent among the progressives, their media allies, and the general public.

In other words, it had been a poison on the body politic.

Then four years ago we watched as the election turned Mr. Trump out of office, which of course, was good for democracy.

But those who had eyes to see saw that there was something wrong with that election. Local officials in blue states were changing the rules which governed prior elections. Signatures on absentee ballots need not match those on record with the election board; absentee ballots were being returned in bulk with only one candidate marked; poll watchers who are employed to make sure the voting is done correctly were, in some places, kept over 30 feet from the workers due, of course, to COVID.

Ballots mysteriously showed up in the middle of the night, all with only one candidate receiving votes. And the list could go on to fill a book.

But all was well and democracy was preserved.

Then at least three local officials who had run on platforms that they would “get Trump” started looking for something with which to charge the former president. They found them in various areas, election interference, illegal campaign activities, and bank fraud. Interestingly, each of these local prosecutors timed their indictments so that the time-frame for trials would consume much of 2024, which was probably just a coincidence that it happened to be a presidential election year.

So while his home was being raided and efforts were made to take his business from him – all in the name of saving democracy – there were those that didn’t think that enough was being done to Mr. Trump.

They then came up with the crackpot idea that the best way to save democracy from the Tyrant Trump was to keep him off the election ballot. So, in the name of saving democracy and preserving our rights under the constitution, which everyone knows Trump will eviscerate, progressives have filed over a dozen legal challenges across the nation to keep him off the ballot.

The basis of their complaints was found in the 14^th Amendment to the constitution, a post-Civil War measure that deprived members of the former Confederacy from holding federal office. In fact it didn’t exactly do that and one former Confederate soldier ended up as secretary of the interior.  Just points out that back then they were interested in healing the divisions of war, much the opposite ideology of the Progressive Left, but I digress.

The idea is that since Donald Trump must have had something to do with the January 6^th insurrection at the capitol, he violated the provisions of the 14^th Amendment and is therefore ineligible to serve in high office ever again, by which time he will have lost his business and should be in jail. It must be done to preserve democracy.

Thus the Colorado Supreme Court, in its exalted wisdom, decided that Mr. Trump was guilty of an insurrection against the United States and ineligible to continue to live … er … become president again.

All in the name of preserving democracy.  

Of course to preserve democracy it doesn’t matter that our villain has not been charged or convicted of such an action. No, he’s guilty so we need not mess with that other stuff.

It also doesn’t matter that the January 6^th insurrection was really an unarmed riot with far too many questions never explored by a non-existent investigation, or why the only fatality during the riot was an unarmed woman shot by a police officer, again, without investigation. But, after all, we’re trying to preserve democracy here, so let’s not split any hairs.

Well it looks as if we want to preserve democracy and the constitution we need to make quick work of ridding society of that awful Mr. Trump. And the sooner the better.

Democracy saving can’t wait for due process, which, by the way, is contained in the 14^th Amendment.   

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every weekend on Faith On Trial or podcast at https://iowacatholicradio.com/faith-on-trial/)