I don’t read it that way. I read it as he can’t be elected to that office for another term, but nothing about him not being able to remain in office for the period it takes Congress to name a successor.
The wording of the 22nd only specifically addresses election of the president. It says nothing about an unusual situation where the sitting president might retain the office until a successor is selected. Congress could, at least in theory, pass a resolution recognizing the authority of the sitting president on an ongoing basis.
And that is why I pointed at the current congress. This is a congress that will never allow Obama to remain as president. I will not be surprised to see the media turn into a pretzel trying to sound fair about the new rules this congress will pull out of their asses to justify their prevention of an extension of the Obama presidency.
Well, I have no idea what you meant by “IIUC”, so I read it as “Obama can not remain in charge because of the 22nd amendment …” which AFAIK is not true, except that also AFAIK it’s never been actually tested.
IIUC = if I understand correctly.
The next Congress is the one at issue. Inauguration Day for the Prez is 20 January 2017, but swearing-in day (session start) for the upcoming Congress is 3 January 2017: with a gap of more than two weeks there, this Congress has little to say about the length/extension of Barack Obama’s tenure.
And, of course, plenty of reich-wing maroons will rail at length about how all this was Obama’s fault: if he had not been such a divisive leader, the Republicans would not have been whipped up into such a frothy mix
There will be no “throw the election” scenario because the same people who voted for Trump or Cruz or whoever will simply stay mad until the next election where they’ll do this again. Either Trump supporters have to give in and support Cruz, or Cruz supporters will give in and support Trump.
Oh, they’ll stay mad no matter what.
Good point, but the most realistic way for this scenario to take place (as the one we are discussing from LSLGuy), is if there was a contested general election, and that would mean that the Republicans managed to overcome the advantage the democrats had over Trump. Meaning that the “coattails” scenarios for the democrat candidate did not take place. Thanks to gerrymandering and fear mongering a close election would mean that the Republicans most likely will not lose the Senate nor the House.
So, yeah, if that happens I expect that future congress to pull new rules out of their asses like the current one is doing with the SCOTUS nomination to prevent the Democrats from remaining in the presidency.
I think you left off an 't, and it muddled your point:
The day the Republicans can**'t** even act together enough to nominate a presidential candidate is the same day they’re finished as a national party.
That does make a lot more sense.
No, this scenario has already been imagined (way back in 1968, when it looked for a time like George Wallace might throw the election into the House.) Here’s how it plays out.
The House membership is as fractured as the nation at large. The 12 members of the New Jersey delegation keep splitting their votes along party lines, meaning New Jersey can not cast the decisive 26th state vote to elect either Clinton or Trump.
Meanwhile the Senate meets to elect a Vice President. The Senate also votes along party lines, but the (choose your party) majority elects their party’s nominee.
Then, on January 20, there still being no one elected President, the newly chosen Vice President takes the oath, and then automatically becomes acting President.
Now the fun part begins. Is the Vice President the President, or just the acting President? What happens if the House finally gets around to electing someone, but the Vice President and Cabinet decide to invoke the 25th Amendment and declare the new President unfit to serve?
He used to be a Republican. Now he is a Libertarian.
During the two years before the election of Abraham Lincoln, a Republican who previously was a Whig, the GOP had a clear plurality in the House, and a borderline plurality in the Senate. This illustrates how you establish a new party – start locally, and not by electing a powerless figurehead the whole of Congress would unite against.
Major US parties lose approximately half the time no matter what they do. Losing one election makes the next one easier to win. Nominating an electorally weak candidate is self-correcting because GOP primary voters will learn from the likely upcoming November defeat and nominate someone more electable next time.
The best bet is for the anti-Trumper Republicans to reject the nonsense about any one particular election being more important than another. Accept that a weak general election candidate earned a delegate plurality, that a sense of fairness leads to giving the nomination to Trump, and that party leaders should have better luck next time.
This early, it is nothing. Reagan, who went on to win 44 states, was behind Carter by more than that at this point:
http://themonkeycage.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/trialheats1980.png
November voters know almost everything bad that can thrown against Hillary Clinton. How many know that Bernie was an elector candidate for a Trotskyite party? How many even know what a Trotskyite is? By November, they would know, and lots wouldn’t like it.
Fortunately, the American people won’t have to choice between someone who likes Putin and someone who honeymooned in the USSR.
No, the rules are not crystal clear. The Founding Fathers might have had great ideals, but they absolutely sucked as law-writers. Yes, we know that it’s one vote per state, but just how do those votes get cast? Is it for the party that has the majority of a state’s House seats? What if there’s an even number of seats for a state, and they’re evenly divided? What if some or all of a state’s Representatives are officially members of one party, but like the other party’s candidate better? Does it go by seniority? Then what if the senior member of a state’s delegation is in the minority for that state? And what if different answers to these questions would result in different presidents being elected-- Who decides which answers we use?
All your questions were answered in 1824, the only time an election was decided in the House.
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Each state’s congressional delegation votes among itself.
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The candidate who gets the most votes among the delegation gets the state’s vote. (In 1824, ten states’ delegations split their votes among the three eligible candidates.)
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Each state gets one vote. (In 1824, only 41% of congressmen voted for Adams, but he carried 54% of the states.)
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If no candidate receives the majority of a state’s vote, then the state can’t cast a vote. (In 1824, the closest it came was with the New York delegation casting 18 of 34 for Adams.)
True, the Founding Fathers weren’t great on nasty details, but the 12th Amendment actually works.
However, this is not a common contest.
I take into account the huge polarization in the current environment, so here I think that a lot of voters are making their minds early. And one has to take into account too that that same argument (this early, it is nothing) was made about Trump vs other Republicans early on when Trump polled ahead or everyone since August, but he almost never did go under other Republican candidates since.
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-national-gop-primary
Notice too that even in the Carter vs Reagan chart the trend pointed to Reagan going up and Carter going down (now THAT is a free fall) during January-February-March.
And that is why I do think the matching polls by the same pollsters that got the gist right about Trump early are also pointing about were we are headed in the general.
Unlike the Carter vs Reagan case the polls have been very stable for months with Hillary ahead of Trump by 3-5 points. But the interesting thing is that for the January-February-March period, the Trend is showing Trump going lower and Clinton going up, by 10 points in the aggregate now.
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-general-election-trump-vs-clinton
Of course, I have to say that the situation can change but I also do think that this time there will be a lot of crossfire coming from the elements of the right wing media that will not accept Trump as their leader; I know, it will be disorienting for many right wing news watchers and readers to see and read fair and balanced reports of the candidates. 
I seem to recall an axe in the head in Mexico.
Perish the thought!