Introduction
Somehow, someway, the results of the Maricopa election audit will become public soon. The news is likely to make a splash, provided someone doesn’t re-invade Afghanistan to keep the news from making a splash, and so I thought we ought to prepare ourselves for that splash. Among other things, I would suggest that we continue to make a point of not taking the bait.
The audit will either show that Joe Biden really did win Arizona, fair and square, and apart from the yelling and taunting to put up with, there really would be no dilemma about what to do. We could simply say, “Well, now we know,” and go back to enduring the stupidity that the American people imposed on us, fair and square. As Mencken once put it, democracy is the view that the people know what they want, and deserve to get it, good and hard.
The other option, the one I suspect will be before us, is that we will discover that Trump actually did win Arizona. And then the dilemma appears. What do we do? There is no constitutional provision for this kind of situation, and there will be plenty of opportunities for furious conservatives to take the bait. Because there is no prescribed constitutional outlet for dealing with such chicanery, the temptation will be to go the direct action route again, as on January 6.
But in such an eventuality, I believe that there actually would be a measured and constitutional way forward, a process I would like to outline below. Better to think it through now, say I, than to try to think it through after the cinder block has been thrown at your head.
Taking the High Road
America is a tinder box right now, and one of the foundational conservative principles is that arson rarely improves the decor. The revolutionary has faith in the fire, and believes that a new order can arise out of ashes. The reformer always wants work with what he has in hand, and make it better if he can.
But under the current provocations to take the bait, reformers are being tempted to become revolutionaries. And this would be as good a time as any to repeat, once again, that we ought not to take the bait.
That said, however, what should we do instead of taking the bait? It is all very well to tell everybody not to take the bait, but what should they take instead of the bait? They should take the high road.
And what might that be?
Please remember that this is a contingency plan in case, and is not a prediction. Trump lost Arizona by about 10K votes, which was a razor thin margin. What should we do if the audit reveals that Biden actually lost Arizona, and by a lot more than 10K votes? Anger, indignation, fury, spite, malice, vituperation, and scorn can safely be predicted, but it won’t fix anything, and if translated into direct (revolutionary) action, it will likely make everything worse.
So Here’s a Plan
Say this happens. Arizona certified the election for Biden, and what the forensic audit comes back with is that they ought not to have done so. That said, they still did certify it, and there is no constitutional way to unring the bell.
Here is something that could be done that would not be revolutionary.
Arizona going into the Trump column would serve as the indictment on some of the other states that were also dodgy—Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The governors of all the states could call on these particular states to do what Arizona did, and conduct a thorough audit.
Citizens who are concerned about the stolen election should pour themselves into the mid-term elections, with the declared target of flipping both the House and the Senate.
All Republican candidates for House seats would be asked if they would commit themselves, on the basis of the Arizona audit (and possibly others), to vote to impeach both Biden and Harris. Senatorial candidates would be asked if they would support the removal of Biden and Harris if the evidence demanded it.
If only Arizona has found that significant fraud took place, then Biden and Harris would be impeached because of that particular high crime. The national election was not determined to have been stolen, but the Arizona election was, and that would be sufficient. Attempting to steal the presidency is right up there with actually doing so. And even if they claimed it was done by some low level flunky without their knowledge, they still profited from the fraud, and fought tooth and nail to keep the fraud from being uncovered. And so they could be impeached for that—even if the electoral map did not switch over to red.
But if other states opened investigations, and audited their elections, and Georgia found the same thing, and Wisconsin found the same thing, and Pennsylvania had a mysterious warehouse fire that burned up all the ballots, a fire that was precipitated by a drone strike, then Biden and Harris could be impeached for having actually stolen the election, and not just attempting to.
Nobody would be able to impeach anybody unless the Republicans took the House. And if they did take the House, then Nancy Pelosi would no longer be the third in line. That spot would be held by the person the Republicans selected to be their Speaker of the House.
Candidates for House seats would also be asked on the campaign trail if they would support making Donald Trump the Speaker of the House. The Constitution does not require that the Speaker of the House be a sitting congressman. It would be understood that Trump would be offered the position simply so that he would be third in line for the presidency, and not so that he could serve as Speaker of the House. If Trump declined that position, he would be asked to name the person that he would like to have be appointed to that position.
Once this position was offered, whether it was accepted or not, no further need for restitution would exist. The American people would have done everything they reasonably could to make a fraudulent election right, and they would have done so within constitutional boundaries.
Get Real, Wilson
I am not saying this as a die-hard Trump supporter. To review, I did not vote for him in 2016, was persuaded by his record of judicial appointments to vote for him in 2020, and was genuinely dismayed by some of the things he did after the election—using Mike Pence as something of a human shield. He expected Pence to do the sort of radical things as vice-president that Trump was unwilling to do as president, and then he vilified Pence for it. That was disgraceful, and I don’t mind saying so. But be that as it may, if Trump won the presidency, or if the Biden campaign is found guilty of major electoral fraud, then Trump should be offered the presidency again. And this would be a legal, orderly, constitutional way to do it.
But despite the fact that this would not be a revolutionary thing to do—everything about it would be copacetic and quite in order—it would be treated by our establishment like it was the worst threat to constitutional order that ever blighted one of Thomas Jefferson’s nightmares.
It would not be a rerun of January 6. It would not be playing into the hands of a corrupt establishment. It would not be taking the bait. And it would be kind of fun to do, if only to be able to watch YouTube clips of MSNBC commentators spitting scorpions over it. But that would not be the main motive. We were not put into this world for pleasure alone.