As the Nov. 3 mid-term election date nears, a Republican campaign message asserts they represent common sense while Democrats are crazy. This noisy entertainment may be intended to divert attention away from news of substance.
A good example is the thoughtful analysis and scenario described by Judge J. Michael Luttig in The New Republic on Sept. 10. Judge Luttig describes, well in advance of its execution, a plan to replace the House Clerk with a Trump loyalist who “... will refuse to list on the statutory roll of representatives-elect to the 120th Congress any Democrat-elect whom [House Speaker Mike] Johnson and the Republicans direct him or her not to list.” The judge describes in law school detail the process and authorities that put the ultimate question before the U.S. Supreme Court. He makes this observation, and then moves on before arriving at his optimistic conclusion:
“Those of us who oppose his illegality will look to the courts, but the federal courts will be institutionally incapable of checking his final unlawful rampage.”
Except, he has hopes for the U.S. Supreme Court:
“But surely by now this court must understand what it has wrought for the U.S. and the Constitution, and is aghast as we all are, even if it is not penitent. Surely, surely, it will understand the signal moment in American constitutional history that would be presented, and this time understand its supreme obligation to the nation.”
And he has this for the GOP:
“Two hundred and fifty years into the greatest experiment in self-government in the history of the world, the Republican Party would finally meet the fate to which it has been destined since Jan. 6, 2021, and cement its place in history as the most corrupt political party ever to emerge in the United States of America for its second attempt in six years to defy the will of the American people on Election Day.
“If we Americans are to save our democracy from the 47th president and his MAGA Republican Party, we must disenthrall ourselves from our political bondage to Donald Trump and MAGA, as Abraham Lincoln urged the nation in 1863 to disenthrall itself from its bondage to the ruinous political dogmas of its time,” he continues.
“‘We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country,’ the 16th president admonished. The Republican Party in particular must finally loose the chains of its political and moral enslavement to Donald Trump and separate itself from the MAGA political party cult.
“The writing is already on the wall, Republicans.”
Judge Luttig does not mention the Supreme Court in noting what is on the wall, but he does provide fair warning of what lies ahead for them, and for all of us, if they choose to abandon democracy.
We trust his conservative judicial history will be persuasive, and correct.
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Keith Mobley, Dufur, is a retired lawyer who was a Republican candidate for the Oregon House of Representatives in 1980. He lost and then served as the Antelope city attorney against the Rajneeshees until late 1982, when he was hired as assistant to the president of Oregon State University. He grew up on a wheat and cattle ranch near Shaniko.
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