The chair of the Texas Republican Party appeared to float secession after the Supreme Court shot down a lawsuit led by the Lone Star State seeking to overturn the results of the presidential election.
Texas GOP chair Allen West rebuked the high court in a statement, saying that “law-abiding states” should “form a Union” after the decision throwing out the lawsuit from Texas.
Seventeen other states and 126 House Republicans had backed Texas’s effort to overturn the election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — four key states that secured President-elect Joe Biden’s win.
The court’s ruling, which said that Texas lacked the legal right to litigate over how other states conduct their elections, represented a devastating blow to efforts by President Trump and his allies to challenge the election results.
“The Supreme Court, in tossing the Texas lawsuit that was joined by seventeen states and 106 U.S. congressman, has decreed that a state can take unconstitutional actions and violate its own election law resulting in damaging effects on other states that abide by the law, while the guilty state suffers no consequences,” West said after the ruling. “This decision establishes a precedent that says states can violate the U.S. constitution and not be held accountable.
“This decision will have far-reaching ramifications for the future of our constitutional republic,” he continued. “Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution.”
The remark drew swift condemnation from both parties.
“I believe @TexasGOP should immediately retract this, apologize, and fire Allen West and anyone else associated with this. My guy Abraham Lincoln and the Union soldiers already told you no,” GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), a frequent Trump critic, tweeted.
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Texas GOP chair floats secession for "law-abiding states" after Supreme Court defeat https://t.co/UUXS8k6T60 pic.twitter.com/EjtwJnhMul
— The Hill (@thehill) December 12, 2020
Glad to point that I was appalled by Allen West years ago, long before he started openly advocating the destruction of the Union. https://t.co/d6SYHPcF1h
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) December 12, 2020
This is despicable. And it's exactly the logical next step from the Texas attorney general's suit, which was itself an incompetent attempt at breaking the union. But the incompetence of the effort shouldn't distract us from its sheer cynicism and malice. https://t.co/wj1qbr0Bkx
— David French (@DavidAFrench) December 12, 2020
Thing is what this Texas suit and others were trying to do was hardly constitutional. All of these cases sought to discard thousands of legitimately cast mail-in/absentee ballots, usurp the rights of states to set election policy and to essentially trash the entire electoral system to get a dictator wannabe re-elected.
But hey– if these states want to secede, have at it. I think more than a few people are looking to boycott these states anyway. I already canceled my Florida trips because of COVID, but now I have no desire to go back to Florida anyway because of its joinder in the Texas suit. Starving these states of revenue from tourism and/or commerce might induce their residents to vote out those who sought to destroy the electoral system and incite sedition.
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