Portside

In a 4-3 decision, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled, on Tuesday, December 19, that former President Donald Trump is disqualified from the state ballot under Section 3 of the United States Constitution's 14th Amendment.

According to Section 3, an "officer" who has engaged in "insurrection" is ineligible to hold political office. And the Colorado Supreme Court has reversed a lower court ruling in which District Judge Sarah B. Wallace agreed that Trump engaged in "insurrection" after the 2020 presidential election but wrote that as president, he wasn't an "officer" under the 14th Amendment.

Conservative attorney George Conway applauded the ruling during a Wednesday, October 20 appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and slammed the three dissenter's arguments as "logically weak."

The Never Trumper argued, "Even if you don't have a lot of rhetoric in a dissent, you often have just this logic that just slices and dices the majority opinion to bits. And there was none of that…. In fact, the opinion doesn't really talk about the real issues in the case. They don't say, they don't dispute that Donald Trump engaged in an insurrection. And they don't dispute that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars people who engage in insurrection from running for president or anything else."

Conway added, "What they talked about mostly was state law. And state law doesn't matter anymore because the Supreme Court of the United States cannot overturn findings of state law made by the state's highest court. Not only that — even the things that the dissents were saying about state law seemed kind of trivial and weak. I mean, they were saying things like: Oh, this too complicated for our electoral litigation system, which is ludicrous."

Conway was part of a panel that included two other well-known Never Trump conservatives — The Atlantic's David Frum and "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough, a former GOP congressman — as well as fellow host Mika Brzezinski, MSNBC's Mike Barnicle and the New York Times' Mara Gay.

During the segment, Frum discussed an article he wrote for The Atlantic after the Colorado Supreme Court's decision was handed down. In the piece, Frum argued that the ruling offers Republicans an offramp from Trump — that is, if they're willing to take it.

Frum, a former George W. Bush speechwriter, told the "Morning Joe" panel, "If the (U.S.) Supreme Court says, 'They're right in Colorado — Trump is an insurrectionist,' the candidates they are boosting are not Democrats. The candidates they are boosting are fellow Republicans — if only the Republicans could accept the lifeline the courts could throw them."

At this point, Frum said, the 2024 presidential election is not "Trump versus Biden" but is still "Trump versus Haley, Trump versus DeSantis."

Alex Henderson is a veteran journalist who covers political, social, business, legal and financial topics as well as arts and entertainment.

This article was made possible by the readers and supporters of AlterNet. http://act.alternet.org/go/255?t=1001&akid=14344.1132400.D9uwd