I don’t disagree with you, but I would make the argument that laws only matter when they’re enforced. If the law says “You can’t do X” and a bunch of goons do X, what happens?
Someone backs down, or violence, probably.
So if the 14th amendment says he can’t run, that only matters if it’s enforced. Do you think it’s going to be enforced?
It’s easy to forget that US political parties are not actually the government. They’re just people who get together for common purpose, like a book club or a softball team. Those parties can run whomever they want in their primaries, and the states have no role until it gets to putting people on the real election ballot. At that point, if someone puts in their name and they’re too young, not a citizen, not a human (looking at you Idyllwild), or otherwise ineligible, it becomes the job of the state not to put them on the ballot, regardless of whether they’re sponsored by a party or not.
Who do you think is going to do this expelling? Do you imagine that there is some meta-governmental body, at the highest level, that can be relied upon to block anybody who isn’t following the rules, other than a court? Nobody 24 runs, because they know they would be ruled ineligible. Ultimately, government works because of functioning institutions. The Supreme Court is not, currently, a functioning institution.
But nevermind that. The point is that, if you wanted to suggest that a ruling wouldn’t, or shouldn’t, be necessary, you could have said so, but you did not. You said that, if no legal authority had ruled him ineligible, that must mean the Constitution has zero legal authority. The Constitution doesn’t make rulings. Your comment was entirely unrelated to the comment you were responding to, because you ignored the word “ruled”, whether you think a ruling is necessary or not.
Of course, we want him to be ineligible. Yet, there’s zero legal authority that has ruled him ineligible.
Keep dreaming that it’ll happen. We’re truly in the “Twilight Zone” of retardedville.
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I don’t disagree with you, but I would make the argument that laws only matter when they’re enforced. If the law says “You can’t do X” and a bunch of goons do X, what happens?
Someone backs down, or violence, probably.
So if the 14th amendment says he can’t run, that only matters if it’s enforced. Do you think it’s going to be enforced?
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It’s easy to forget that US political parties are not actually the government. They’re just people who get together for common purpose, like a book club or a softball team. Those parties can run whomever they want in their primaries, and the states have no role until it gets to putting people on the real election ballot. At that point, if someone puts in their name and they’re too young, not a citizen, not a human (looking at you Idyllwild), or otherwise ineligible, it becomes the job of the state not to put them on the ballot, regardless of whether they’re sponsored by a party or not.
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You seem to have missed the key word, “ruled”, but nice rundown.
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Who do you think is going to do this expelling? Do you imagine that there is some meta-governmental body, at the highest level, that can be relied upon to block anybody who isn’t following the rules, other than a court? Nobody 24 runs, because they know they would be ruled ineligible. Ultimately, government works because of functioning institutions. The Supreme Court is not, currently, a functioning institution.
But nevermind that. The point is that, if you wanted to suggest that a ruling wouldn’t, or shouldn’t, be necessary, you could have said so, but you did not. You said that, if no legal authority had ruled him ineligible, that must mean the Constitution has zero legal authority. The Constitution doesn’t make rulings. Your comment was entirely unrelated to the comment you were responding to, because you ignored the word “ruled”, whether you think a ruling is necessary or not.
Don’t worry about it too much. All a libertarian ballot is going to do is take votes away from the Republican candidate.