To be absolutely clear, the lawsuit filed by Texas isn’t about arbitrating some election dispute. It doesn’t ask for a clarification on a rule, guidance on the allocation of electors, or recanvassing of some vote. Instead it seeks direct permission from the Supreme Court to disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans in specific states, and reverse the outcome overall, without providing evidence of a single mistallied vote.
There’s little doubt that from the moment it was filed, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had no expectation of winning. None of the 17 other state attorney generals who signed onto the suit believe it will win. None of the Republican representatives who scrawled their names on the farce expect it to win. None of them actually believe the Supreme Court of the United States will stand up and say, “You know, we’re also sick of this democracy thing. From now on, single party authoritarian rule!”
Republicans are now so enamored of this seditious act that another score have rushed to have their names appended onto the list in the House. They genuinely believe they can take this action without consequence. For the sake of the nation, they had better be wrong.
Maybe the most ridiculous thing about this ridiculous moment, is that among the 126 Republican House members who have signed on to a document that they know to be not just false in its content, but malicious in its intent, are 19 from states that are the subject of the suit.
So Representatives like Doug Collins and Barry Loudermilk in Georgia are arguing that their own elections were fraudulent. Except, of course, they’re not making that argument. They’re not making any argument. They’re just hoping to gain “street cred” from adding their signatures to a list of people who support Trump rather than America.
Meanwhile, Texas has now actually filed its brief in this case. This means that the Supreme Court might hand down a ruling at any moment. It’s expected that a ruling will come no later than Monday.
That ruling might come sooner if the court decides to take the simplest route and simply refuse to take up the case. But as SCOTUSblog notes in their first ever editorial, this case deserves more than that. It deserves to be “decimated.”
In a time that is so very deeply polarized, I cannot think of a person, group or institution other than the Supreme Court that could do better for the country right now. Supporters of the president who have been gaslighted into believing that there has been a multi-state conspiracy to steal the election recognize that the court is not a liberal institution. If the court will tell the truth, the country will listen.
That even the court can make Trump supporters listen is debatable. That this suit deserves to be loudly and thoroughly crushed, is not.