Column: Colorado decision striking Trump from ballot is a boost, not a setback, for his campaign
Donald Trump received an early Christmas present courtesy of the Colorado Supreme Court.
In a move without precedent, the justices ruled 4-3 on Tuesday that Trump was ineligible for the state’s 2024 presidential ballot, owing to his role in the attempted Jan. 6 overthrow of the federal government.
(And let’s not shrink from a rightful description of the deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol: It was a failed coup.)
Colorado’s high court stayed its decision until Jan. 4, or until the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to take up the matter — a move that seems all but assured and leaves the country, and the 2024 presidential contest, in an odd state of suspension.
The most important effect may be in the short term. Anything that freezes the status quo, which sees Trump well ahead in the Republican nominating fight, works to his benefit.
There are now less than four weeks before Iowa Republicans cast the first votes of 2024 on Jan. 15. With time ticking, Trump rivals can ill-afford a prolonged legal skirmish that consumes what little attention is paid the contest over the coming holiday break.
If Wednesday’s news coverage offers a taste, most discussion will focus not on the exertions of Trump’s opponents or the Nazi sloganeering of the ex-president but on the country’s journey through highly fraught and heretofore uncharted legal terrain.
The broad Republican response was predictable: A headlong rush to once more rally behind the party’s serially indicted front-runner.
“Removing Trump from the ballot in Colorado under this theory is spurious, likely unconstitutional & a sadly predictable but outrageous form of lawfare,” Texas GOP Rep. Chip Roy wrote on the social media platform X. “SCOTUS should end this.”
Before issuing his fulminating statement, Roy was last seen campaigning in Iowa on behalf of Trump’s fading competitor, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The Colorado Supreme Court removes the former president from the state’s primary ballot, saying he is ineligible to be president due to his role in the Jan. 6 attack.
Naturally, Democrats and Trump foes reveled in the Colorado court’s decision. Any humiliation or formal rebuke is a welcome sanction for the aspiring tinpot dictator.
But in the longer term the ruling may well be moot.
The deadline for Colorado to finalize its presidential primary ballot is Jan. 5, which makes it quite likely — given the state Supreme Court‘s deferral of its decision — that Trump’s name will appear on March 5. Colorado will be one of more than a dozen states voting that day to select the GOP nominee.
Of course, there is the possibility the Supreme Court will uphold Trump’s disqualification and enough states will then follow suit to nullify his ominous bid to reclaim the White House.
But considering the court’s ideological makeup and partisan inclinations, that seems as likely as Clarence Thomas turning down an exotic vacation from one of his rich benefactors.
With the fast-and-loose Trump, matters have long run on parallel but separate tracks, one legal and the other political.
He may be in legal limbo. But a perceived assault on the insurrectionist ex-president — by Democratic-appointed Colorado justices, no less — will only make him more sympathetic to the GOP base; his support in polls soared last April after the first of four indictments.
That sympathy, in turn, will make it more difficult for Trump’s rivals to attack the front-runner — not that they’ve been all that eager up to now.
Vivek Ramaswamy, the preternaturally pugnacious Republican hopeful, was quick with a statement calling the Colorado Supreme Court decision “un-American, unconstitutional, and unprecedented.”
Even though his candidacy is headed nowhere, Ramaswamy laid down a not-insignificant marker.
“I pledge to withdraw from the Colorado GOP primary unless Trump is also allowed to be on the state’s ballot, and I demand that [rivals] Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Nikki Haley do the same immediately,” he said. “Or else they are tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver which will have disastrous consequences for our country.”
Hyperventilating aside, none of those candidates seem likely to follow Ramaswamy’s lead. But each was obliged to stand up for Trump — again — lest they faced the wrath of their party’s base for not doing so.
Soon enough, they fell in line.
“The Left invokes ‘democracy’ to justify its use of power, even if it means abusing judicial power to remove a candidate from the ballot based on spurious legal grounds. SCOTUS should reverse,” DeSantis said.
“I will tell you that I don’t think Donald Trump needs to be president.... But I will beat him fair and square. We don’t need to have judges making these decisions, we need voters to make these decisions,” said former South Carolina Gov. Haley.
Even Christie, alone in his willingness to unabashedly expose Trump for the danger he is, condemned the court decision.
“I do not believe Donald Trump should be prevented from being president of the United States by any court,” the former New Jersey governor said. “I think he should be prevented from being the president of the United States by the voters of this country.”
Christie is right.
The court disqualified the ex-president from the ballot under the 14th Amendment, which bars officials who engage in insurrection from holding federal office.
Many Democrats keep hoping for an easy out.
They’re counting on rulings such as the one in Colorado, or legal efforts underway in California and other states, to banish Trump from the ballot and end the threat of his return to the White House.
But there’s no easy shortcut to short-circuit Trump’s comeback, notwithstanding the exultation over Tuesday’s court decision.
Assuming Trump is the GOP nominee, Democrats will have to beat him at the ballot box, as they should. A courtroom is no place to decide a presidential election — which is exactly what the Supreme Court did in 2000.
The stain persists to this day.
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