They're Madison as Hell and Don't Want to Take Him Anymore

​You may have read about the legal challenges from voters in North Carolina to ban Madison Cawthorn for running for re-election the Congress if it can be show he participated in the insurrection on January 6 – something he’s been upfront about how proud he is for his activities, though denying they were part of an insurrection.  No doubt he agrees with the RNC that it was all just Legitimate Political Discourse.

A potential action took a big step forward this week when the State Board of Elections filed a motion that it can, in fact, disqualify Cawthorn if evidence shows that he helped the insurrection. They argued that "states have long enforced age and residency requirements, without question and with very few if any legal challenges. The State has the same authority to police which candidates should or should not be disqualified per Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment."

That says people who have "given aid or comfort to the enemies" of the United States are ineligible for office. 

Among other things, in the weeks before January 6, Cawthorn told rallies that the people there should "call your congressman and feel free — you can lightly threaten them" and say things like :I’m coming after you. … Everybody’s coming after you." And has since warned of "more bloodshed" to come.

To be clear, the Board has not said it would bar Cawthorn, just that they're arguing they could.  And under North Carolina law, it would be up to Cawthorn to prove he did not give aid or comfort to insurrectionists trying to overthrow the government.

Not surprisingly, Cawthorn isn’t taking this well, which shouldn’t be terribly surprising for anyone, but especially a person who last tell told parents that they should raise their sons to be monsters.  Living down to that standard, he commented on Tuesday that if he was barred from the ballot there could be an uprising of violence.

For all the attention on whether Madison Cawthorn could be prohibited from being on the ballot in North Carolina, there are two other related issues that are potentially far more problematic.

The first is – if Cawthorn is barred from running, that would only be done because it was determined he was involved with the insurrection to overthrow the United States.  One would think that that would present overwhelmingly bigger legal problems for him (or anyone…) than merely not being allowed to run for Congress.  For many people, in fact, not being able to run for Congress would not even be a punishment at all, but instead a blessing.  On the other hand, being charged with insurrection against the United States government…nah, not as much a good thing.

And the second is – if Madison Cawthorn can be banned from being on the ballot in North Carolina because of his involvement in the insurrection…then wouldn’t it follow that the same would be true for…Trump, if he decided to run?  It’s hard to imagine why it wouldn’t be the case.  And if so, as bad as it would be for Republicans to lose purple state, what would stop other state board from doing the same?

To be clear, I don’t think North Carolina would bar Trump from running in the state, if he chose to.  And I double any other state would.  But it’s still not an unreasonable question to ponder.

And I also think it’s unlikely that Cawthorn would be banned from running, since the proof needed and court challenges would seem to be prohibitive.  Though I certainly don’t think it’s improbably and is substantively more possible than the case with Trump.

The larger point is that for Cawthorn and Republicans to be focusing only on whether he can be on the ballot, they might be missing the two much bigger, more concerning pictures.