Dems Who Called For Biden’s Removal Fail To Address How Voter Voices Will Now Be Heard
Americans voted for Biden via the primary system, however, and now 14 million people have in essence been disenfranchised.Americans voted for Biden via the primary system, however, and now 14 million people have in essence been disenfranchised.So Much For ‘Democracy’: Democrat Oligarchs Just Overthrew Their Own Voters
Democrats moved to subvert the will of their own voters to better their chances of retaining power.
Horowitz: Most important outcome of Dobbs decision? Making state legislatures great again
It’s the body of government closest to the people, yet it’s the most forgotten, overshadowed, and weakened body in recent years. However, with the Dobbs opinion returning the power to regulate abortions to state legislatures, we now have the opportunity to focus our attention on legislative elections, sessions, and policies and settle our acerbic cultural and legal differences in the most prudent and democratic process.
We are an irrevocably divided nation, and it will only get worse over time. We can’t agree on the definition of a marriage, a woman, a citizen, a criminal, a fundamental right, or the purpose of our existence, much less the purpose of our government. We can either continue forging ahead with a winner-take-all approach to politics and have the federal executive bureaucracy – the least accountable and transparent branch of government and most distant from the people – decide every important political question. Or we settle those debates in state legislatures – the branch closest to the people where most members are elected every two years.
Whether you abhor abortion as murder or think it’s the greatest sacrament of virtue, the reality is that red states are going to ban abortions (many already have) and the blue states are going to obsessively expand access to them. Unlike the seven justices who initially banned all regulation of abortion in 1973, all those legislators in each state will be subject to removal every two or four years. For the most part, the legislators will vote in a way that reflects the values of the majority in their areas. This is the self-sorting process we’ve always needed. This dynamic needs to expand to every other important issue of our time. It’s not a perfect process, but it’s much better than where we are today, and it will allow us to live side by side harmoniously in a de facto amicable separation, albeit with shared custody over certain issues that are national in scope.
In the coming months, conservatives will be trained by their favorite Fox News media figures to obsess about the potential of a RINO takeover of Congress and the coming presidential election, even though the latter won’t even be relevant, policy-wise, until 2025. But the reality is that Republicans control trifecta supermajorities in a number of states today and will only expand that dominance next year. Come January, they have the ability to make those states de facto sanctuaries for our rights and values – if only we focus our pressure on elected state Republicans and educate them concerning the enormity of their power. It’s time to use it.
In his national design for governance, Madison explained the state vs. federal arrangement in Federalist #45 as follows: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will for the most part be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”
Think about issues like COVID fascism and transgenderism. Internal order, liberties, and property, etc. – this can all be rectified at a state level. Anything outside war and foreign commerce is fair game. This is where conservatives failed to act during the lockdowns and COVID fascism. They should have activated the legislatures immediately and forced debate for the states to immediately reject the federal policies. It’s still not too late to change course.
In responding to the Biden administration’s immoral and illegal policies and edicts over the next two and a half years, conservatives should have a one-track mind and be singularly focused on how they can pressure their legislatures to interpose against the federal tyranny. Conservatives have long been distracted away from a state legislative focus, but perhaps the Democrats will teach them how it’s done. Believe me, the blue states will immediately take action and juice up funding for abortion while expanding its legal scope – perhaps even to after the birth of the baby.
Likewise, most GOP legislatures and attorneys general seem to have acted swiftly to immediately ban abortion at the first opportunity. But we now need to see this swiftness on other issues as well. For example, Biden’s Department of Education just promulgated a rule putting any school or university on the hook for sexual harassment if they don’t call men who think they are women by female pronouns. This is the sort of illegal federal regulation that states must immediately stop. Legislatures should instantly convene and block its implementation within their states.
The big problem we have in legislatures, though, is that so many of them are only in session for a few months a year. In states like Texas, they are only in session every other year. This means that, for example with COVID, when you have federal and state executive branches suspending the republic, we often have to wait months or years for legislatures to act. It was OK to have a part-time legislature when we had a part-time executive branch and the legislature was the only organ of government that legislated. However, now that the federal and state departments of health and education legislate 365 days a year without any checks or balances, the concept of a part-time legislature actually harms us.
As such, conservatives must begin pushing reforms to make it easier to call legislatures back into session, and it should not be tied to the whims of the governors. We don’t need state legislatures voting on bills all year, but we must reserve the prerogative to get them back into session at a moment’s notice to interpose against tyranny.
Horowitz: Breaking the uniparty: It’s time to run fresh independent candidates in general elections
There’s been a lot of discussion and debate over election fraud in Pennsylvania. But there is an undeniable form of election fraud nobody discusses, and that is the existence of the Republican Party, which runs conservative in the primaries but then governs like Democrats – just like a potential fraudulent voting machine that swaps out a Republican vote for a Democrat one. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Pennsylvania race for U.S. Senate, where on the issues of our time, Mehmet Oz is indistinguishable from Democrat John Fetterman. Moreover, he is unelectable anyway and will lose to Fetterman. Isn’t it time we break the uniparty oligarchy and start recruiting impressive independent candidates in general elections?
Late in the senatorial primary, conservatives around the country were inspired by Kathy Barnette’s shoe-string campaign against two elitist opponents who spent millions of dollars. She was one of the few candidates this cycle to actually inveigh against the premise of COVID fascism and the Pfizer bio-medical state. She looked like she might pull off an impressive win based on some of the final polls, but the establishment and Trump effectively dissuaded some voters from casting their ballots for her because they suggested she couldn’t win the general election.
It is an old tactic of the GOP establishment, and unfortunately, it works. They know that our voters are most concerned about the Democrats winning, so they convince them – without providing any evidence – that the only way to beat the Democrats is to elect Republicans who will essentially codify the Democrat agenda but with slightly less enthusiasm. Thus, in this case, we were stuck with Dr. Oz, a candidate who supports the grooming agenda, “bail reform,” the vaccine biomedical state, gun control, and the World Economic Forum and who suggested that “America needs to learn from Wuhan’s quarantine lessons."
Then, the minute Oz won the primary, he wasted no time scrubbing from his website all references to Trump, who stupidly helped him win the primary, along with Fox News. Most others at least wait a few months before migrating back to their true political leanings, but Oz is getting a head start on demonstrating how he would govern. Except he will never get that chance.
Any thinking conservative should understand by now that someone like this is actually counterproductive to advancing our agenda – much like the negative efficacy of the Pfizer shot – and yes, is worse than a Democrat because he will work to subvert our agenda from within to create consensus for the globalists. But either way, this is a moot point, because two recent polls show that it is actually the liberal Republican who can’t win the general election. Even in the worst year in memory for Democrats, Fetterman is leading Oz by nine in the USAToday/Suffolk University poll and by six in an AARP poll.
Now, all things equal, this deficit is not insurmountable for Oz. However, all the polls so far show him starting out extremely unpopular, particularly among independents. He has a -26 approval among critical independent voters, according to the AARP poll, and in general is starting the race with a -33-point approval among all likely voters. That is simply toxic. It is also astounding, given how bad a year it is for Democrats and how much voters want to send a message to Joe Biden. Republicans, for the first time, actually cast more ballots in the primary than Democrats did, despite Democrats having a 554,000-person registration edge.
Imagine if these voters had a fresh face, a complete outsider with an impressive background and even more impressive agenda that drew a bold contrast to both major candidates, who essentially agree on the issue of our time – bio-medical tyranny and the World Economic Forum agenda.
The bitter truth conservative voters (and disenchanted independents and Democrats) must confront is that so long as those who badly want to see change are terrified of rising Democrat wins if they don’t support duplicitous Republicans in the general election, we have no chance of ever changing the system or leverage to make Republicans more attuned to ordinary voters. Just watch Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn betray us in broad daylight. Can you blame them? They know that it’s impossible to win against incumbents in primaries – challengers fail more than 99% of the time – and they know we will always be on the plantation for them in the general election no matter how much they stab us in the back.
This point was perfectly expressed by one liberal Florida GOP official to the New Yorker in the now infamous expose on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. “There was always an element of the Republican Party that was batshit crazy,” said Mac Stipanovich, the chief of staff to former Florida Governor Bob Martinez. “They had lots of different names — they were John Birchers, they were ‘movement conservatives,’ they were the religious right. And we did what every other Republican candidate did: We exploited them. We got them to the polls. We talked about abortion. We promised — and we did nothing. They could grumble, but their choices were limited.”
This is why we only have one Ron DeSantis. Every other governor is horrible on every issue that matters. Ditto for nearly every GOP senator. They know we will always support them in the general elections, and primary challenges simply do not work. Thus, why should they antagonize the masters of the universe on behalf of the poor slobs? Until we make it clear that we are off the plantation, we will continue to suffer interminable and immutable decline with Republicans in charge.
I know I’m in the minority among conservatives in believing that it is actually worse to continue electing perfidious Republicans than Democrats and that we need to rethink our political strategy and focus altogether. It’s not to say I think we should just vote Democrat to make things more obviously worse or not vote at all. It’s that we should unite and work to recruit impressive candidates who understand the spirit of the age but have a slightly broader appeal than just a traditional conservative Republican and run that individual in the general election.
It’s nearly impossible to start a third party and consistently get on the ballot in each state, but in most states it’s fairly easy to get on the ballot as an independent. Independent candidates never win because they are usually throwaway campaigns; after all, the most viable contenders will run as Republicans or Democrats. But what if we changed that game? What if we found individuals somewhat well known, with a fresh message and agenda, no pre-existing labels as a partisan, but someone who is currently in the trenches on the issues that matter and would fight the oligarchs of both parties and appeal to the fastest-growing base of voters – the unaffiliated?
Just to throw out a random example to paint a caricature for you, think of someone like Dr. Robert Malone, one of the leading opponents of the mass vaccination and the mushrooming bio-medical state. He actually voted for Democrats in the past and was never a right-winger. But he more effectively articulates the concerns of our voters, plus so many Democrats and independents, than any Republican running for office. He is more known as a scientist than as a politician, much less a conservative Republican politician, but his impressive background would actually allow his candidacy to gain traction and raise money. There is no question in my mind that someone with this background, in this environment, could have a shot of winning a three-person race in the right state.
We only need one example of a successful independent bid to break the monopoly of the “uniparty” and actually bring change to the American people. One of two things would then occur. Either it would spawn a revolution of better-organized independent candidacies, or it would force the Republican Party to be more responsive to the people than the other half of the elite oligarchy they share with the Democrats.
This is different from simply “allowing the Democrats to win.” Yes, we won’t always succeed in winning or even recruiting such candidates, but can we at least try. Do we have to throw ourselves at the GOP oligarchs who hate us immediately in every general election, no matter how much they betray us? Can we at least make them sweat and work for our vote?
Again, I know those conservatives who watch Fox News all day will have a hard time seeing the light in cases where the RINO is a shoo-in to defeat the Democrat in a two-person race. But we should at least try a test run to break away from the duopoly in a race like the PA Senate contest, where the fake Republican is almost assured to lose anyway.
Now, obviously, Robert Malone doesn’t live in Pennsylvania, nor have I seen evidence that he is planning to venture into politics. But it is someone who fits that persona, particularly from the growing medical freedom movement, who would have to run if there’s any hope of us disarming the GOP’s blackmail of conservative voters while also having at least a chance of denying the Democrats an automatic win. I’m sure such a person exists in this large state who would not needlessly turn off non-traditional conservatives but at the same time would speak to the important issues of the day – medical freedom being the top priority. The deadline to file and gather signatures is August 1.
Horowitz: Idaho conservatives poised to remake legislature like never before
Idaho has long suffered a paradox, in that it is so dominated by Republicans that it is not so Republican at all. Because it is a de facto one-party state, many liberals who are well connected to the woke industries and lobbyists choose to run as Republicans and use their superior campaign cash to campaign as conservatives, the exact opposite of what they plan to do in office. This is why, despite a 58-12 majority in the House and a 28-7 majority in the Senate, conservatives rarely enjoy legislative wins that other red states are able to easily secure. Last night’s elections might have changed that in a big way.
Establishment Republican elites are crowing about their apparent victories in both the Pennsylvania Senate race and the Idaho gubernatorial race on Tuesday. Idaho Gov. Brad Little warded off a challenge from Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin. However, when you get past the statewide elections, which require tremendous money and organization to make competitive – money true conservatives don’t have – we find a different story.
A total of 20 incumbent Republicans – 11 running for the Senate and nine running for the House – were defeated or poised to lose as of Tuesday night. A big part of these results is thanks to the work of the Idaho Freedom PAC, which actively recruited candidates against incumbents.
It’s truly hard to overstate the significance of this development. Thirteen of the 28 Republican senators didn’t stand for re-election. Out of the 15 remaining, nine were defeated, and several RINO House members seeking a Senate seat lost to conservatives. There is almost no parallel to that in recent history. While some of the races involved other quirks or were due to redistricting, and a few others were conservatives who were defeated by more ideologically ambiguous candidates, for the most part, conservatives downed many liberal Republicans and made gains in open seats.
Among the highlights were conservative Rep. Codi Galloway beating Sen. Fred Martin, the five-term Senate Health and Welfare Committee chair from Boise. Sen. Jim Patrick, who served five terms in the Senate and three in the House, was defeated by a conservative as well. He was chairman of the Senate Commerce & Human Resources Committee. Also, Rep. Greg Chaney, the outgoing chair of Judiciary, Rules & Administration in the House, lost his bid for a Senate seat, and Sen. Carl Crabtree, vice chair of the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee, lost his seat.
Additionally, two conservatives who moved from California to seek freedom in the Gem State defeated prominent incumbents. Retired California firefighter Carl Bjerke took out Senate Health and Welfare Committee vice chair Sen. Peter Riggs. Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee co-chair Sen. Jeff Agenbroad was defeated by Brian Lenney, who moved his family from California to Nampa in 2010.
Even in a number of instances where the incumbent survived, the challengers came much closer than we usually see in statewide elections. Senate President Pro Tempore Chuck Winder only won his race by about 640 votes. Now he will face a brand-new caucus that can possibly vote him out of leadership. Conservatives would have enjoyed an even better night if not for the fact that leadership drew several of them into the same district and forced them to compete with each other. This dynamic made the House results more of a wash, but the House was already fairly conservative. So, the fact that the Senate has caught up to it will give the legislature a lot of clout over Gov. Brad Little.
What this success at the legislative level demonstrates is that for lower offices, where the bar to entry is much lower in terms of financial needs, conservatives are on a much more level playing field.
Even in the statewide elections, there are signs that in the future, conservatives can sweep the state. Former Congressman Raul Labrador defeated a 22-year incumbent for attorney general. Conservatives also came within a hair of winning the office of secretary of state and only lost because of vote-splitting. Even for governor, Brad Little only secured 53% of the total vote. Had there been a runoff option, the race might have picked up more momentum and could have become contested. With less vote-splitting and slightly stronger candidates, conservatives can truly take over the state next time.
In other states, mainly in the South, where there are runoffs, conservatives have a stronger chance to compete statewide. Next week, conservatives have an opportunity to draw Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey into a runoff. One recent poll showed Ivey only garnering 40% of the vote, with socially conservative businessman Tim James in second place for a potential runoff. Vote-splitting has plagued conservatives for decades, and the institution of runoffs in more states would allow them to compete against the establishment without fear of dividing the vote of thinking voters.
The Idaho media cheer for liberal Republicans because they don’t really have Democrat horses to ride, but even they recognize the significance of the Idaho Freedom PAC’s work in changing the state’s politics. A bigger focus on state legislatures will pay great dividends in the future, and other states can mimic the work of the Idaho Freedom PAC.
Indeed, the trend of RINO chairmen losing their seats played out in other states on Tuesday night. Three RINO Kentucky House chairs lost their seats in northern Kentucky. Eight-term incumbent Adam Koenig, chairman of the House Licensing and Occupations Committee, was defeated by Steven Doan, a liberty candidate supported by Congressman Thomas Massie and state Rep. Savannah Maddox, a rising conservative star who might run for governor next year. Rep. Ed Massey, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee from Hebron, and Rep. Sal Santoro, an eight-term incumbent and chairman of the Transportation Budget Committee, were also defeated.
In Pennsylvania, Rep. Stan Saylor of York County and Sen. Pat Browne of Lehigh County, both the House and Senate appropriations committee chairs respectively, were defeated by conservative challengers. Saylor had been in the House for 30 years. Republicans already have strong majorities in both houses, and if they can pick up the governorship with Doug Mastriano, a more conservative legislature can dramatically alter the political trajectory of the state.
So, what gives when it comes to 63% of the Pennsylvania Republicans voting for Mehmet Oz or Dave McCormick over the conservative favorite, Kathy Barnette? Very simple. They each raised close to $16 million and ran as solid conservatives, so the other challengers, including Kathy Barnette, were outgunned. On the other hand, Doug Mastriano, likely the most conservative in the gubernatorial field, won his primary in a landslide. In that case, there was no unified establishment candidate with endless sums of money to fool the voters.
Horowitz: Why is Governor Kristi Noem attacking the small group of conservative South Dakota legislators?
Why are red states not nearly as red as California is blue? Why is it so hard to pass bills against chemical castration, COVID fascism, illegal immigration, and medical tyranny in states with few Democrats in the legislatures? Well, unfortunately, in red states it’s not so much the voters who control the arc of legislation, but the special interests. And in smaller red states, the Chamber of Commerce and the medical cartel wield an outsized share of influence, often turning red states into de facto anti-abortion/pro-gun versions of blue states. Nowhere is this more evident than in South Dakota.
On paper, Democrats are an endangered species in the Mount Rushmore State. Not a single labeled Democrat holds a state office. Republicans control the state Senate 32-3 and the state House 62-8. Sounds like a conservative paradise, right? Well, as it relates to abortion and guns, like most other red states, the politics reflects the political orientation of the majority of the people. Other issues? Democrats as may as well hold a super-majority, particularly in the Senate. They just run as Republicans.
In that vein, it was shocking to read how Governor Kristi Noem has declared war, not on the RINOs who legislate like Democrats, but on the few House Republicans who actually want to make the state distinct from a blue state. Last week, the Argus Leader reported that Noem is taking a “hands on” role in training candidates to run for legislature, including those challenging the few conservative incumbents.
Not seen as vulnerable in her primary, Noem says she's still not taking her party's nomination for governor for granted. But she is managing to find time to involve herself in some battleground legislative contests. She's offered candidate school seminars to up-and-coming politicians, making endorsements and even going as far as publicly chastising Republican incumbents she doesn't see eye to eye with politically.
Last month, for instance, Noem joined District 4 House candidate Stephanie Sauder on a radio program where she openly accused Rep. Fred Deutsch, R-Florence, of being a poor legislator doing damage to South Dakota's way of life.
According to the Argus Leader, the governor is also working with Sen. Lee Schoenbeck, the president pro tempore, “to unseat far-right members of the party seeking re-election.”
Here is a list of targeted races based on a paper circulated by Schoenbeck referenced in the Argus Leader:
The highlighted members are the establishment picks not deemed “far right.”
But what does “far right” mean? People who oppose men in female sports, chemical castration of minors, corporations violating human rights and mandating dangerous shots, but support reduced taxes? The aforementioned issues have essentially been the dividing lines between the governor and some of the House conservatives over the past two years. These members were pushing for a half-percent reduction in the sales tax, but were stymied by the governor. Then they tried to eliminate the sales tax on food and institute a gas tax holiday, something done even in some blue states. Yet the governor evidently opposes it enough to primary them out of office.
Conservatives in the state and nationwide clashed with Governor Noem last year when she opposed the bill barring men in female sports.
“All of the people on her target list are true Christian conservatives, and those are the people she wants gone,” said Rep. Rhonda Milstead, the lead sponsor of HB 1217, the female sports bill, in an interview with TheBlaze.
Milstead also accuses the GOP establishment of targeting the most conservative members with new districting maps. “Our redistricting was awful because it put the people they want out in districts where they will have a hard time, or they placed solidly conservative people against each other in the same district,” charged the freshman, who represents the greater Sioux Falls area. Milstead claims the map was drawn with the intent of placing several other conservatives into her district.
Fred Deutsch of Watertown was placed into a new district because he was viewed as more repugnant to the GOP establishment than Joe Biden and the Democrats. His crime was the sponsoring of a bill banning chemical castration for minors, a bill that easily passed in numerous other red states. Yet this year, South Dakota failed to pass a single meaningful bill on any important issue, from transgenderism and illegal immigration to medical freedom and COVID fascism.
In an interview on KXLG in Watertown on April 21, Kristi Noem, who hails from that part of the state, lambasted Deutsch and others for being a drag on the state and sloppy legislators who don’t read bills and understand the consequences of good governance. “We need people who are thoughtful,” said Noem in a common refrain we hear from establishment Republicans.
Milstead disagrees. “Fred is an excellent researcher and probably does more research on the issues than the next 10 legislators. He always does his homework, even when I disagree with him, and Gov. Noem knows that.”
There is a common thread undergirding this intra-party battle in South Dakota that reverberates nationally in the Republican Party. It’s not a divide between conservatives and liberals or moderate Republicans and “far right” Republicans. It’s an unbridgeable gap between the priorities and the values of the average red state voter and the special interests that control the powerful entities in the state.
Although red-state Republican governors and legislative leaders will find some minor ways to distinguish themselves from Democrats, as it relates to the issues combatting the spirit of the age, they will always be incorrigibly on the side of the corporatists. Whether it’s transgendersim, mass refugee resettlement, illegal immigration, or COVID fascism, the powerful Republicans in office will always side with big business, which, unlike in past generations, is squarely on the side of cultural Marxism and against individual liberty. Even as it relates to the tax issue, which in the past united Republicans of ever ilk, the corporatist wing wants to focus on targeted tax provisions rather than broad-based cuts for obvious reasons.
Nowhere is this more evident than with the health care cartel. Sanford Health and Avera Health are the top employers in the state. It’s quite obvious why medical freedom will be taboo in the legislature. “The game is very simple,” notes Rep. Milstead. “The South Dakota Association of Healthcare Organizations political action committee contributes to numerous liberal candidates around the state who they feel will walk the line on their issues. Most candidates do not have a lot of money, and so they operate with a sense of fear over what these lobbyists and PACs can do to them.”
Rep. Steve Haugaard is running against Noem in the June 7 primary. On his campaign website, he makes it clear that it is not any one issue that is motivating his run, but the power structure behind the results we see on numerous issues. “The axis of Big Tech, Big Business, Big Education, and Hollywood have changed our culture dramatically just in the past decade,” writes the former House speaker, who now faces a David vs. Goliath contest. “Today, large multinational corporations are dictating how we should live, how our children are raised, and what values our children should be taught.”
The South Dakota Constitution begins with the phrase, “We, the people of South Dakota, grateful to Almighty God for our civil and religious liberties …” Today, we face the challenge of corporations that have essentially become an arm of government or often even stronger than government, with the ability to destroy civil and religious liberty while shielding elected government officials from having to do the dirty work. They often enable elected red-state Republicans to campaign on doing the opposite, knowing full well they will work hand in glove with the lobbyists of those entities to silence the voice of the people.
Horowitz: Reversal of Roe will make state courts great again
Leftists do not like legislative bodies and believe they should wield the least power precisely for the very reason Madison said: “In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.” Legislators are elected by the people, constantly stand for re-election (most state legislators are in cycle every two years), all the proceedings are publicized, there are several layers of public votes, and the process in every state (except Nebraska) is bicameral. This is why leftists instead love the courts and bureaucracies, because they can achieve their goals without the disinfecting power of public scrutiny and without the deterrent of public reprisal.
Anyone who supports democratic values should embrace the opportunity to steer contentious issues away from the courts and toward legislative bodies. Obviously, state legislatures are the best suited to deal with contentious issues – not only because they are the closest to the people but also because there are 50 states. We have a divided country and can easily sort out our divisions through a degree of political and even physical self-separating. The reality is that not a single Democrat-controlled state will vote to curtail abortions, because the Supreme Court did nothing but reverse the judicial interference in the issue to ensure that legislatures are free to deal with it.
In light of the fallout from the impending reversal of Roe, there is an uncanny and somewhat perverse political dichotomy unfolding between the two parties. Republicans seem to be defending the “independence” of the court and exalting it to this supreme status above the other branches. Democrats, on the other hand, are trying to delegitimize judicial power because of the perception that they will face a long-term conservative majority on the court. However, if both sides really placed democratic values over politics, they would agree to a grand bargain to devolve power on every contentious issue to the states. This would mean that all cases adjudicating novel rights that only leftists believe in would be dealt with in the respective states. But it would also mean that cases dealing with gun rights would be up to the states.
Don’t get me wrong, I fully believe that there is a difference between bogus rights and foundational rights spelled out in the federal Constitution, such as self-defense, and that should be binding on the states. Ideally, we have the right to petition a federal court for redress if our gun rights are infringed upon. But if that is going to allow courts to perpetuate judicial supremacy and use it as a cudgel over red states, I’m more than glad to devolve all these issues to the states.
Such an arrangement would unfortunately cement the status of blue states as incorrigible Marxist dictatorships, but they are already there anyway. The courts – including the so-called conservative Supreme Court – have barely laid a glove on the COVID fascist regime in blue states. And many courts have prevented red states from blocking these tyrannical laws, such as federal courts requiring red states and counties to have mask mandates.
Conservatives would be naive not to push for a grand bargain ending judicial supremacy. We would benefit so much more than we lose. At present, we rarely benefit from judicial oversight when blue states violate foundational rights, yet we get crushed in red states by the courts vitiating every commonsense policy by creating phantom rights. As of now, we have a “conservative” Supreme Court that has prevented red states from cleaning up homeless encampments, from defining marriage, from keeping the sexes separate in private bathrooms and dressing rooms, from keeping sports sperate, from enforcing immigration law, and from many aspects of fighting crime.
However, let us not forget that for those who still like judicial oversight over broadly political issues, it’s not like the state legislatures won’t have competition. Overshadowed in the politics of the U.S. Supreme Court is the fact that all 50 states have their own constitutions and state judiciaries, including courts of last resort. Let’s not forget, it wasn’t until 1875, in the twilight of the Reconstruction era, that Congress transferred authority over most constitutional questions from state courts to lower federal courts, and it wasn’t until 1914 that Congress granted the Supreme Court appellate jurisdiction over all cases heard by state supreme courts.
Thus, all these decisions we see from the federal courts creating phantom rights can still be done on the state level with regard to the state constitutions – for better or worse. If Democrats so fervently want to enshrine their morals and political aspirations into constitutions, they can do so in the states they control.
Except there is one difference. State judiciaries, for the most part, are elected either initially or through retention ballot. There are only seven states where the voters never get a crack at judicial selection: Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia. Most of them are solid blue states, and Rhode Island is the only state that mirrors the federal system, in which the judges are never subject to review by the voters and serve a lifetime tenure. In four of those states, the judges are subject to a specific term and must at least stand for re-nomination before the legislature, and New Hampshire and Massachusetts have an age tenure limit of 70.
Inevitably, given the polarization of our society, we disagree not only on policy but on the Constitution itself. This is why any case implicating a constitutional right will invariably be political. Thus, if we are going to place politics in the courts, it’s better to do it in the bodies that are elected and closer to the people.
Collectively, this will make state judicial elections great again and will make state legislatures more consequential and powerful. If we are going to have the courts decide every political and social issue, let’s at least have this debate at the local level. Yes, there will be times when the labyrinth of state laws and constitutionally protected rights might get confusing and even clash, but I’d rather a patchwork of law than uniformity of tyranny.
Horowitz: Red states should ban abortions even before official SCOTUS opinion
The weakest position in battle is to come out from behind defensive lines without cover but fail to advance toward the objective. Political combat is no different, and that is why the left leaked the rough draft of the Dobbs opinion reversing Roe. They hoped to pre-emptively expose the assault on Roe and elicit robust attacks before the red states get a chance to actualize its benefits. Red-state legislatures and governors need to do one better and pre-empt any blue state action by banning abortions immediately.
Roughly half the states, including most deep red states, are already out of session until 2023, and most will be done by the end of the month. The worst thing they can do is to allow this issue to fester – as if it’s still in contention – and allow the left and its machine of boycotting, censorship, and astroturfing to work its magic. Republican governors should immediately convene legislative sessions, ban abortions even before 15 weeks, and make the repeal of Roe a reality.
Such a move would have several benefits:
1) In politics, the more you debate an issue, the more it sows doubt, especially when you are trying to implement something new. When you just rip off the scab and implement it quickly, it demoralizes opponents and proves the veracity of the issue in the eyes of the voters by evincing an image of confidence and moral clarity. Just look at how the left successfully implemented COVID restrictions by seizing the moment without any debate. Had they left these issues to a protracted debate, they would never have been implemented in most states.
2) States issuing bans on abortion will make it that much harder for Roberts or external forces to pressure Barrett or Kavanaugh into watering down Alito’s draft majority opinion.
3) It will have the broader effect and ancillary benefit of delegitimizing judicial supremacy. It will show that when we are prepared to do something constitutional, moral, and just, we will do so regardless of the courts. The courts don’t have exclusive and final jurisdiction over constitutional interpretation, and Roe was legal fiction. Really, this should always be the attitude of the states, but now that there is at least an authentic draft of an opinion repudiating Roe, they should set the precedent of delegitimizing judicial supremacism, a principle they will need in the future on other issues. Red states will need to enforce immigration law and directly challenge the court’s ruling in Arizona v. United States (2012).
Senate establishment Republican types like Mitch McConnell who fervently believe in judicial supremacism are feigning outrage over the leak and focusing all their attention on that issue rather than on the banning of abortion itself. That is because they believe that we can only accomplish good policy with the courts and nothing else.
McConnell lambasted the leak as “an attack on the independence of the Supreme Court.” While the leak was certainly a reprehensible act, I disagree with this bromide of “the independent judiciary.” The judiciary is no more or less independent than the legislature and executive – both in the states and at the federal level. They are all independent of each other, each with their own powers. Every branch must use its powers in concert with the Constitution, not just the courts.
This is the core of what Lincoln did as president to thwart Dred Scott and even issue citizenship and passports to freed black slaves in direct opposition to the 1858 decision. During the sixth debate with Stephen Douglas during the 1858 race for Senate in Illinois, Lincoln asserted: “Judge Douglas understands the Constitution according to the Dred Scott decision, and he is bound to support it as he understands it. I understand it another way, and therefore I am bound to support it in the way in which I understand it.”
Lincoln observed that courts can adjudicate individual cases, but if they seek to use those rulings as a way of setting political policy across the nation, it should never be regarded as a “political rule” to be “binding on the members of Congress or the President to favor no measure that does not actually concur with the principles of that decision.”
During Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1864, Chief Justice Roger Taney, the author of Dred Scott, was forced to administer the oath of office to the man who reminded him of his own impotence to give will or force to his bad opinion. After taking the oath, Lincoln delivered his inauguration address, in which he promised to treat black people as humans, not as property built upon another human being’s “substantive due process rights” to own them. He rejected the notion that “the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions.”
What Lincoln meant is that court opinions in a case or controversy – real or politicized – are not self-executing on the other branches of government and automatically universally binding on all the people. So how does the court succeed in making a ruling in a case the de facto “law of the land?” As Eleventh Circuit Judge William Pryor once wrote, it’s all on the power of persuasion:
Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist No. 78 that judges exercise “neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment.” Hamilton’s point was that we must depend upon the persuasiveness of our written opinions to command the respect of our fellow citizens.
It flows from here that if a court delivers a horrendous opinion that is clearly divorced from the history and tradition of our laws and Constitution, then the other branches and the states will not be convinced. This is why, unlike McConnell, conservatives should not be quite as concerned with the prospect of Barrett or Kavanaugh being convinced to change their opinions. This is not an official vote like that of a legislature. Courts don’t pass laws like a legislature, nor do they “strike down” or veto laws like a presidential veto. They offer an opinion in a case and, occasionally, can offer an opinion on a constitutional question to resolve that case. Remember, in the early days of the republic, there was an even number of justices on the court, a clear indication that it wasn’t designed to conduct votes on the most fundamental constitutional and political questions and have those outcomes enshrined with finality.
Now that we already know how the majority of the justices feel – that Roe is a legal fiction – there is nothing stopping the states from following the true Constitution and acting upon the Constitution as written the way we understood it before this leaked opinion. Any change in opinion henceforth, to paraphrase Judge Pryor, will indeed not be very persuasive and will not command the respect of our fellow citizens.Today's top stories
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Unexpected warning: Glenn Beck's startling interview with Ken Paxton
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is well aware of the challenges facing America, and after an unexpected exchange, he’s left Glenn Beck with some concerning insights to chew on.
“He didn’t give me calming advice,” Glenn tells Stu Burguiere, relaying that Paxton told him, “If you don’t have a rule of law, if you have a court system or a country that says you cannot protect your own people, then you don’t have a constitutional republic any more.”
“And we’re back to the Declaration of Independence and requiring people to stand up for it,” Glenn says.
“I walked away from that interview feeling as though that was a historic comment.”
That comment being that Texans are being told they’ll have to stand up for the Declaration of Independence.
“That shows we are way down the road, way down the road in unsafe territories,” Glenn says.
While both Glenn and Stu don’t believe that Paxton was forewarning of civil war, they are concerned by his comments.
“I don’t think Ken Paxton is calling for something like that,” Stu tells Glenn.
“He mentioned just standing up and fighting. Look, we all stand up, stand up every day to argue on behalf of the Declaration of Independence in the Constitution.”
However, Stu says, it’s “just a couple of people really standing in the way now of losing our republic.”
“The Constitution is hanging by a thread, and we’re in a scissors factory. And the guy rushing to save it is Edward Scissorhands,” Glenn says.
“We’re not really in a stable place.”
To learn more, watch the clip below.
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