Today is Friday, April 29, 2022. On Wednesday, the country’s fears have been realized in an astonishing op-ed written by a conservative’s conservative, a Republican former federal judge by the name of Judge J. Michael Luttig, a staunch conservative appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit by Republican President George H.W. Bush, that lays out the GOP’s and former demagogue Dumpf’s plan to steal the 2024 presidential election, even if they ostensibly lose to a Democrat. Luttig claims the scheme all comes down to Dumpf’s assertions of fraud and the events of January 6.

In chilling language, Luttig explains 2020 was a failed “dry run” for what the repugnican party and Dumpf plan to do in 2024: overturn the election if Donnie or his pick for president does not win. This scenario has been forecasted before in a January/February Atlantic article in which Barton Gellman wrote a pice entitled “January 6 was practice.”

This time the op-ed was written by a staunchly conservative jurist who is maintaining the same position about the anti-American GOP that will stop at nothing to prop up their Golden Idol as emperor of the United States. You laugh, you giggle, you say “This can’t happen here.” I say it can!

In his disturbing analysis, Luttig asserts that “the Republicans’ mystifying claim to this day [January 6] that Trump did, or would have, received more votes than Joe Biden in 2020 were it not for actual voting fraud, is but the shiny object that Republicans have tauntingly and disingenuously dangled before the American public for almost a year and a half now to distract attention from their far more ambitious objective.”

That objective, Luttig maintains, is to execute successfully in 2024 the very same plan they failed in executing in 2020 and to overturn the 2024 election if Dumpf or his anointed successor loses again in the next quadrennial contest. He declares, “The last presidential election was a dry run for the next.”

The cornerstone of this nefarious GOP plan “was to have the Supreme Court embrace the little-known ‘independent state legislature’ doctrine, which, in turn, would pave the way for exploitation of the Electoral College process and the Electoral Count Act, and finally for Vice President Mike Pence to reject enough swing state electoral votes to overturn the election using Pence’s ceremonial power under the 12th Amendment and award the presidency to Donald Trump.”

The independent state legislature doctrine contends that, under the Elections [Luttig’s emphasis] and the Electors Clauses of the Constitution, “state legislatures possess plenary and exclusive power over the conduct of federal presidential elections and the selection of state presidential electors.” To embrace this doctrine would require a majority on the Supreme Court to rule on it and with the selection of the last Dumpf appointee Amy Coney Barrett, who was shamelessly confirmed in the eleventh hour after the death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and this could possibly happen if this goes all the way to the high court during the 2024 election.

Another strategy the repulsive repugnicans tried to implement during the 2020 election was to elect state-certified alternative slates of electors from swing states where Biden won the popular vote who would cast their electoral votes for the Orange Blob instead. “Congress would then count the votes of these alternative electoral slates on January 6, rather than the votes of the certified electoral slates for Biden, and Trump would be declared the reelected president.”

This crafty plan failed at this stage when repugnicans “were unable to secure a single legitimate, alternative slate of electors from any state because the various state officials refused to officially certify these Trump-urged slates.” Their final option was to scare up illegitimate alternative electoral slates in various swing states to be transmitted to Congress. Here the plan would now hinge on Vanilla Mike to count only the votes of the illegitimate electors from the swing states, and not the votes of the legitimate, certified electors that were cast for Biden and declare Donald Dump as President of the United States – God forbid!

The entire scheme collapsed when Pence refused to go along with the evil plan, correctly concluding under the 12th Amendment that he had no power to reject the votes that had been cast by the duly certified electors or to delay the count to give Republicans even more time to whip up alternative electoral slates.

What is propelling the repugnicans on their way to the White House in 2024 now is their push of getting Dumpf-endorsed candidates to state legislative offices in key swing states, installing into office their favored state election officials who deny that Biden won the 2020 election, such as secretaries of state, electing sympathetic state court judges onto the state benches and grooming their preferred potential electors for ultimate selection by the party, all so they will be positioned to generate and transmit alternative electoral slates to Congress, if need be.”

Another phase of their plan is electing Dumpf supporters to the Senate and House, so they can overturn the election in Congress, as a last resort.

Luttig does suggest ways to prevent this terrible scheme from succeeding and they include the Supreme Court rejecting the independent state legislative doctrine, Congress amending the Electoral Count Act to constrain Congress’ own power to reject state electoral votes and decide the presidency, and enacting federal legislation that expressly limits the vice president’s power on the date that Congress comes together to certify the election.

Luttig concludes his dire warning to Democrats and to the American public by stating that Republicans are poised to “steal” from Democrats the presidential election in 2024 that they falsely claim the Democrats stole from them [my italics] in 2020. This last line is truly concerning: “Unlike the Democrats’ theft claimed by Republicans, the Republicans’ theft would be in open defiance of the popular vote and thus the will of the American people: poetic, though tragic, irony for America’s democracy.”

Luttig also warns, “Forewarned is to be forearmed.” Are Democrats listening to Luttig out there? Will they finally come together to beat back this dangerous threat from the other political party which is definitely a fascistic one, if there ever was one? There is no time to lose! Other columnists are saying that the MAGA fringe of the repugnican party is not going away anytime soon. It’s a cancer that needs to be excised within time before it metastasizes throughout the country. Maybe the January 6 public hearings announced for early June might lead to some of that symbolic excising. The depravity of the Orange Blob and his many depraved allies will be revealed once and for all.

I’m exhausted from recounting this major story. Anyway, it’s getting late here.

Have a good weekend.

Stay safe and be well.