It's the Constitution Stupid!

Now that this election is over, and as I reflect on the eventful months that have transpired since President-elect Trump first announced he was seeking the highest office in the land, one pervasive argument from his opponents comes to mind, and that is that he is “…fundamentally unqualified to be [the] President.”

Now, I ask you, who makes that assessment?  Who decides what the qualifications are?

Are you qualified to be President because you have been in the Congress, either as a Senator or as a Representative?

Are you qualified because you have spent decades in Washington D.C.?

Are you qualified because you have been a governor of a state?  A famous mayor?  A former House Speaker?

 

No wait!  Maybe you’re most qualified if you have a family member who has already been the President.

Or, maybe your qualifications have nothing to do with you directly.  Maybe you’re not qualified because you are vilified by the press, mocked by late night comedians, ridiculed by daytime talking heads, insulted by foreign leaders, audited by the IRS, ostracized by Silicon Valley, and burned in effigy by coddled students.

None of the above?  How about you’re not qualified because the talk radio audience likes you, or that you are popular throughout flyover country, or wherever guns are sold.  Maybe you’re unqualified because your supporters keep getting banned from social media sites.  That’s got to be it, right?

It’s all so confusing to me, so I went to the source of the presidency, the United States Constitution, to see if it could shed a light on what the qualifications are, and lo and behold, they are right there written in ink and entrenched in the soul of our American experience under Article II, Section 1:

No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.

Hmmm, sounds pretty clear to me in a straight forward kind of way, but what else does the Constitution have to say on the matter?  It has, after all, been amended several times since the above words were penned.  Let’s see what Amendment XXII, Section 1 adds to the matter of qualifications:

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.  But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President, when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

A bit more winded than what we see written in Article II, and more related to what happens after one is elected President.

So, in conclusion, what does this say about whether Donald J. Trump is qualified to be President?  Well let’s see, I am pretty sure he is over thirty-five years old though I haven’t seen his birth certificate to prove that.  And he is likely a citizen, but again, I haven’t seen his birth certificate to prove this either, but since we took his predecessor’s word for it I’ll give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt here.

I know this much though!  Nowhere in the Constitution did I find qualifications such as how long someone has been a politician or if they have even been one at all, or need to be.  Nothing there about being a former military leader either (and we’ve had a few of those as presidents), and certainly nowhere did I see it written that you deserve to be President because you are of a certain race or sex, or that you paid your dues!

So it seems to this “deplorable” white guy with no college degree, who had a black man as his best man at his wedding, grew up with friends who were of Chinese, Armenian, Russian and Persian descent, saluted female officers during his military career with the same admiration and respect he did the male ones [sometimes even more so] that I did weigh Donald Trump’s qualifications very carefully and am satisfied that voting for him was the right thing to do.

Romney's Requiem for the Established Order

It has been a long time since I last posted anything.  Eh, it happens.  But, today, something happened that spurred me to resume my blog.  Something was said that was in one respect unprecedented in my lifetime.  A former party nominee came out against the clear front runner in this year's primary season.  What Governor Romney did today was shameful and reprehensible (and to some degree McCain, too); not even the democrats would do this to one of their own.  But, then, that's just it, in the eyes of Romney and McCain they do not see Donald Trump as one of their own. 

Thank God for that! 

The established order of the Republican Party gnashed its teeth and bared its claws today; revealing who they truly are and why it is so important that we destroy them this election cycle.  We have given them the House, but they ignore us.  We then gave them the Senate and the control of the Congress, and they still ignore us.  Now two prior party nominees have chosen to ignore us.  According to Romney if we support Trump we're just a bunch of "...suckers."  

And they say Trump lobs insults! 

Until recently I did not have a dog in this fight.  The person I wanted to see run chose not to, but then the attacks started coming against Trump:  from every angle.  The press (mainstream and otherwise), the several other Republican candidates, our own President and Vice President.  In fact the only two who haven't attacked Trump personally yet, are Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. 

Who'd have thought!  

In light of these attacks on Trump I had to ask myself, "What is it about Trump that scares them?" 

Yes, what scares the established order? 

It has to be the fact that in recent years the Republican presidential candidates and many of our Senators, Representatives and governors sound and behave more like Democrats to the point that we don’t recognize our own party anymore.  The established Republican Party basically have given President Obama a free ride because they were deathly afraid of being labeled racist.  If the established order of the Republican Party had not given us McCain and then Romney, Obama may well have never been President or, at the very least, a one-termer. 

That’s it in a nutshell folks.  They sacrificed their principles, their duty and their honor for the sake of image.  What good did it do them?  If Romney and McCain, et al, think that they are the Congressional Black Caucus’ new friend good luck with that! 

Okay, so now Mitt Romney is on the record for agreeing with the mass hysteria on the left that Donald Trump is a racist, bigoted, anti-Muslim, fraudster and con-man.  This means that he has just joined the leftists; that Mitt Romney in one speech has taken the party of Lincoln and Reagan and dragged it into the left wing of America. 

Lock, stock and barrel! 

Mitt Romney gave a requiem mass for the Republican establishment today.  Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at the convention will be its eulogy. 

Finally, and of utmost importance, if Mitt Romney and John McCain do not immediately leave the Republican Party then I have to urge Donald Trump to do so.  Trump must go on an independent run.  He will leave all others behind if he does.  He will garner more popular votes in the general election than the democrat will, and whoever the Republican establishment gets stuck with be he Cruz, Rubio or Kasich, will see the least amount of votes ever cast for a Presidential candidate.  The establishment candidate won’t garner anywhere near the 19% Ross Perot did with his Reform Party back in 1992.  In fact, I believe, that the establishment party candidate, in a three person race, would actually pull votes away from the Democrat.

Won’t that be a laugh? 

While I believe Trump will win a two person race, he will definitely come out on top of a three person one.  I hope it doesn’t come to this, but our honor as true members of the Republican Party is at stake as is the honor of Donald Trump. 

Since Mitt Romney and John McCain cannot and will not do the right thing then Donald Trump has to or America may never be great again.