Suppose I declared myself Emperor of America, said I had absolute power over every level of the government, disbanded Congress and the Supreme Court, and told Trump he was fired.
If everyone obeyed my orders then it would all be true. If everyone refused to do what I said, then my declaration would be meaningless. If the country split down the middle, we’d have a civil war.
The same would be true if Donald Trump declared himself dictator.
Yeah, and that would be good analogy if you had the ability to write executive orders, and a track record of saying and doing massively unconstitutional things, and the legislative (and media) arm of the GOP were like “Oh yeah that unconstitutional thing Little Nemo just suggested. Awesome! All about that! Way to stick to the libs Little Nemo”
He’d keep Congress to rubber stamp his dictates. Even the Emperor kept the Senate around for well over a decade.
Yeah, Trump is like Palpatine but not so good looking.
Really. Say Trump is suspending the Constitution because the Mueller and SDNY witch hunts are threatening to override the vote of the people in 2016 (and remember he got a plurality because the extra votes Clinton got were all illegal.) So he is going to suspend the Constitution to save it. If you don’t think at least a few Republicans will buy this and vote against impeachment, you are nuts.
I think he would get convicted. I hope he would get convicted. But it wouldn’t be unanimous. If his base is too stupid to turn against him given the stuff that has come out, some congresspeople would fear backlash if they voted for impeachment or conviction.
There are some insane politicians out there, but I don’t think they’re THAT insane. Most of them don’t seem to be that enamored of Trump that they’d put their necks on the line for him.
They’d probably find a way to have him declared incompetant or something of that nature. (Which he obviously is, but that’s another story)
Somehow I doubt that Mitch McConnell wants to go down in history as a rubber stamp. If he did, he’d have nuked the filibuster the first time Loser Donald begged him to.
The lion’s share of Congressional Republicans stand by Trump because they see him as a useful idiot who can be easily persuaded to promote their pet agendae and because they want his rabid fans to vote for them. Trump ruling by decree robs them of the first and makes the second irrelevant.
I suppose “suspending the Constitution” implies ipso facto suspending the states as well?
Trump wouldn’t actually declare that he’s suspending the constitution. He’d declare that wrong-headed constitutional interpretations over the past few decades have been moving the country to the far left, and away from the direction that real Americans wanted the country to go. He’d state that he was using the power of the presidency to overturn those interpretations and declare Roe vs Wade, restrictions on immigration enforcement, restrictions on presidential spending, and powers to investigate the president all void.
Of course, 36 hours later, he’d send out a middle-of-the-night tweet saying that Bolton’s plan to stop the ‘constution’ was the biggest, ‘bestest’ plan ever and the greatest act of his ‘presdency’. Following which, chaos and impeachment would ensue.
The only thing McConnell gives a rat’s ass about is getting extremist judges appointed up and down the judiciary. He’ll keep getting paid, his wife will still have a cushy cabinet job even if both would be under a dictator. The Russian and Chinese parliaments still get paid for standing and applauding like a bunch of trained seals, Mitch would have no problem doing the same.
Maybe deep in their hearts, Congressional Republicans know that Donald is a dangerous blithering idiot, but they are scared shitless of his base. As long as that 25-30% of the electorate will oust any party member who differs with Orangeanus, then they’re too scared to stand up to him.
No Republicans would vote against impeachment in those circumstances.
This is totally false, and complete bullshit. There is no analogy between the accusations made by hysterics to date, and suspending the Constitution. And the suggestion is ridiculous.
Regards,
Shodan
Trump’s power to write executive orders (and all his other power) derives from the Constitution. If he suspends the Constitution, he suspends his own power.
That wouldn’t matter to Trump if people were willing to accept his personal authority after he eliminated his constitutional authority. But I don’t think that’s the case (for Trump or me).
[pedantic nitpick] Agenda, “things to be done,” is the plural of the Latin gerund agendum and is used today in the sense “a plan or list of matters to be acted upon.” In that sense it is treated as a singular noun; its plural is usually agendas. (From Dictionary.com and also Sister Mary Joseph’s Latin IV class)[/PN]
This. If a dictatorial president were to ignore the parts of the constitution that limit the powers that he feels he is entitled to, it will not be “suspending the constitution” it will be ignoring the rulings of activist judges that hate america.
His favorite president is famous for having supposedly said, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”
“Suspending the Constitution” doesn’t make any sense, unless it is something that the people at the National Archives are doing to preserve the original document.
Ignoring unwanted interpretations of the constitution, OTOH, is a more realistic scenario. Though, it works even better if he were to simply pack SCOTUS with cronies that would rule in his favor, regardless of the actual constitutionality.
Based on what evidence do you say that? We have a president who stated quite unambiguously that he’s going to do unconstitutional things, and kept the support of the GOP. Yeah, I’d hope there would be enough opposition to stop him suspending the constitution, but based on the track record of the GOP opposing blatantly unconstitutional things its not a given.
You are saying every last GOP legislator would vote to impeach the president if he suspended the constitution. We don’t have to take your word for that, as we speak the president is attempting to override the 1st article of the constitution using a fake emergency declaration. How are those same legislators reacting to that? At last count the grand total of THREE of them are voting for the constitution against their president. So based on the evidence available to us there is ZERO evidence the GOP would oppose trump if he did something massively unconstitutional.
Well, an eloquent counterargument.
You may have noticed I agreed, the impeachment would be swift and sure if he tried the OP scenario. However I do not share your utter confidence that there would be unanimity. I can see a small handful of prizewinners like Matt Gaetz breaking with it just so they can run on “I stood up to the Deep State’s coup!”.
But neither of us will get the chance to test the prediction. What the OP posits is not going to happen.
He’ll just keep seeking ways to move the goalpost of what he can do, arguing on the basis that the Constitution and laws as they are right now allow it/do not forbid it, and seeing if support for the action does not break the hard floor of votes needed in the Senate to sustain vetos or convict in impeachment. Which BTW is how the political process works under the Constitution anyway, so those on my side of the aisle, please, take a bit of a breather with the panic as well.
IMHO Trump has yet to reach the measure of constitutional illegitimacy that Tiberius Gracchus did. The dividing line is whether he does something that attacks the authority of Congress. We’ll see if Trump does something that gets him impeached, and if so whether the impeachment itself was legitimate or if we’re in the final days of republican Rome.
President Obama, the Constitutional Scholar, took more than one unconstitutional action. Did you complain then? Did he keep the support of the Dems?
Of course, because it matched their preferred outcomes, Constitution be damned.
nah
Don’t suppose you’d care to elaborate. DACA? ACA?
Typical. Obama lights a match and you think it’s the same as Trump starting a forest fire.
Not even the justices on the Supreme Court agree on most issues. Nor do even the most respected law professors.