America’s Founding Fathers considered “taxation without representation” the definition of tyranny; today’s Democratic Party considers it a policy goal. Democrats have replaced the American republic with an ill-defined concept of “Our Democracy,” in which Democrats hold power, even if they have to fundamentally transform America’s electorate to maintain their hold on power.
When Republicans win, liberals do not talk about overturning elections; they simply thwart the will of the people as effectively as possible in the name of protecting “our democracy.” Here are the steps Democrats take to assure the American people do not get their way when they elect Republicans.
1. Stripping Republicans of their committee assignments.
Congressional Democrats seem to believe that if you can’t prevent an opponent from being elected, you can keep him from doing his job. In the last year, Democrats have resorted to an unprecedented campaign to stymie Republicans by stripping them of their committee assignments in an effort to keep the most vital part of the legislative process to themselves.
Although the media usually report on legislation once it comes up for a vote, the work of congressional committees has been described as “essential” and “the most important work of Congress.” Committees launch investigations, grill witnesses under oath, and craft legislation before it reaches the full House. Members without committee assignments “basically have nothing to do,” cracked Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD).
For most of U.S. history, congressmen would only lose committee membership for criminal behavior, such as when agents found $90,000 in bribe money in Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA)’s freezer in 2006. Then-Speaker John Boehner lowered the bar by stripping conservatives of some of their committee assignments for voting against him as Speaker, and Kevin McCarthy later stripped Rep. Steve King (R-IA) of all assignments for a series of controversial remarks.
House Democrats have decided to supercharge the process. They began by targeting newly elected Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) last February, one month after she took office, over controversial conspiratorial comments she made before her election. Typically, Congress allows voters to vet candidates — and trusts their verdict — but not this time. Although only 11 Republicans voted to remove Greene from her two committee assignments, stripping a member’s committee assignments requires only a majority vote which the chamber’s Democratic majority gladly provided. “Serving on a committee isn’t a right. It’s a privilege,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA). Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) said her motion was offered for “reducing the future harm that [Greene] can cause” and acting as a “restraint on her influence.”
A handful of Republicans pointed out the revolutionary nature of the punishment. “What the majority is really proposing to do today is establish a new standard for punishing members for conduct before they ever became a member,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK). “This change opens up troubling questions.” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) added, “This is nothing more than an abuse of power by a party drunk with power.”
Like any drunk, congressional Democrats decided they wanted more. After teaming up with 5% of elected Republican congressmen to strip Greene of her assignments, Democrats won only two Republican votes while successfully stripping Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) of his after he made a string of controversial speeches and starred in a bizarre anime video. Since then, Democrats have proposed the same treatment for Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), and more may follow. Coincidentally, this would further shift their committees’ composition in the Democrats’ favor.
President Woodrow Wilson once quipped, “Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition, whilst Congress in its committee rooms is Congress at work.” Democrats clearly do not want Republican congressmen to work for the people who elected them.
2. Expelling elected representatives from Congress
Like addicts, Democrats need stronger stimuli to get the same thrill. Not content with having stripped Greene of her committee assignments, one month later a California Democrat introduced a resolution to expel her from Congress. That was too small for Squad member Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), who called for the potential expulsion of every sitting Republican from the House of Representatives.
What grounds would Bush expel Republicans from the current Congress? Protesting elections the same way Democrats have in years past and, most chillingly, because of the way they voted on two congressional bills.
Bush’s bill states that during the 2020 election, “over 140 Members of Congress” took “unprecedented steps to defy the will of the American people who overwhelmingly voted for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris by voting against the certification of the votes of the Electoral College.” Bush falsely asserts that this move is “unprecedented,” as Republicans’ decision not to certify the electoral vote followed the precedent set by Democratic lawmakers in 2000, 2004, and 2016. Bush also attempts to insert — wait for it! — racism into this action. Her bill states bizarrely that “refusing to concede the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election … suggests racial animus,” and insists that “efforts by Republican Members of Congress to denounce the votes of millions of Americans is a continuation of Jim-Crow era measures.”
Finally, Bush’s legislation intimates that all sitting Republicans in the House should be expelled, because they did not vote for Democratic legislation to nationalize elections. “House Republicans have refused to vote in support of voter protections aimed at supporting disenfranchised Black, Brown, and Indigenous voters, including H.R. 1, the For the People Act and H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.” Bush is right that both bills failed on party lines. True, not a single Republican voted for HR 1 — but neither did Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson. Strangely, Bush did not recommend his expulsion nor accuse Thompson, who is black, of “racial animus” for following the will of his constituents.
Justice Joseph Story warned that the expulsion power “might be exerted for mere purposes of faction or party, to remove a patriot, or to aid a corrupt measure.” That time has come. In Bush’s world, voting against Democratic bills is enough to expel every member of the opposing party from Congress as insurrectionists.
While Bush is on the far-Left, the sentiment flows throughout the Democratic Party. Even moderate Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) has said Congress should consider removing Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) over their objections to certifying the 2020 election.
Adding those two senators to all House Republicans targeted by Bush’s bill would overturn 214 separate elections. To put that number in perspective, only 20 people have been expelled from Congress in U.S. history — 18 of whom were removed for disloyalty to the government (17 related to the Civil War and one in 1797 for a senator who intended to enrich himself by inducing “Indians and frontiersmen to attack Spanish Florida and Louisiana, in order to transfer those territories to Great Britain”). The next expulsion came 118 years later, in 1980, when Congress expelled Rep. Michael Myers (D-PA) after his conviction on bribery charges from the ABSCAM investigation. The last congressman to be expelled from Congress, Rep. James Traficant (D-OH) in 2002, had been convicted of numerous felonies. Threatening to expel every elected official of the opposing party because they did not vote the way one member would have preferred is, to this writer’s knowledge, unprecedented in a democratic republic.
Naturally, Bush is unlikely to prevail. The Constitution requires two-thirds of a chamber to vote before it can “expel a member.” But the specter itself is chilling — albeit not as chilling as the party’s election experts would prefer. Democrats have proposed another means to prevent voters from electing their favorite candidates in the first place.
3. Invoke the Fourteenth Amendment to prevent candidates from running for office
There is a reason Democrats have attempted to label every action that counters their agenda as part of an “insurrection”: The Constitution disqualifies anyone who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States, or aided such efforts, from serving in Congress. Stretching the definition of insurrection, Democrats hope to prevent their opponents from seeking office in 2022. Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias tweeted last December, “My prediction for 2022: Before the midterm election, we will have a serious discussion about whether individual Republican House Members are disqualified by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment from serving in Congress.” The lawyer wrote, “We may even see litigation.”
My prediction for 2022: Before the midterm election, we will have a serious discussion about whether individual Republican House Members are disqualified by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment from serving in Congress.
We may even see litigation. pic.twitter.com/pF7P2fw0kn
— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) December 21, 2021
“It seems quite likely that one or more Republican members of Congress will be subject to this disqualification, and it is important that we start to identify them now,” Elias elaborated in an article a month later. “Preferably, the Department of Justice would lead this effort,” using “the lower civil standard of proof.” If the DOJ does not act, “Congress and private litigants will need to step in” and prevent the American people from voting for the candidates of their choice “[i]f we are to remain a democracy.” Similarly, Noah Bookbinder, the president of the left-wing “ethics” organization CREW, wrote that Americans must prevent “white-collar insurrectionists” who allegedly “inspired the violent insurrectionists” on January 6 from running for office in 2022. “If we fail to do so, we risk losing forever our system of government of, by and for the people.”
This overturns the concept of elections themselves: The voters simply never get a chance to elect the candidate they want. The Democrats here aim at the prophylactic prevention of democracy.
Legal scholars argue over how to trigger the Fourteenth Amendment prohibition. Some argue Congress could bar someone from running from office by a simple majority vote — the kind congressional Democrats have already used twice to strip House Republicans of their committee assignments — or that Congress should pass a law enabling judges to determine a candidate’s ability to seek office, giving judges a veto over voters’ preferences. Imagine an unelected judge ruling that voters could not select their preferred candidate in the name of preserving democracy.
Whatever the mechanism, Democrats are once again on board. Last January 10, Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote a letter telling her colleagues, “Your views on the 25th Amendment, 14th Amendment Section 3 and impeachment are valued.”
These three measures are far from comprehensive. If a candidate manages to wiggle through this gauntlet of anti-democratic resistance, Democrats try to thwart the president’s effectiveness. Members of the highly unionized federal bureaucracy, who are nearly impossible to fire, routinely drag their feet during Republican administrations. Increasingly, they accuse Republican officeholders of immoral or illegal actions, like Rebekah Jones’ baseless claimsthat Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) manipulated the state’s COVID-19 death toll. These accusations give elected Democratic officials an excuse to launch investigations, appoint a special counsel, or file articles of impeachment — which is also treated as part of the Democratic Party’s electoral strategy. In May 2019, Rep. Al Green (D-TX) admittedon MSNBC that he believed Democrats must impeach Donald Trump, because “I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach this president, he will get re-elected.”
No party that so brazenly abuses the democratic process can be trusted to protect voters from politicians seeking to overturn elections.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.