State Party Boss Threatens Nullification
in Fantasy Warning on Voter Rights Bill

Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside
March 6, 2021

Texas GOP Chairman Allen West went ballistic on congressional Democrats on Saturday with a vow to use powers that he does not have to stop legislation that's designed to strengthen voting rights for Americans while reforming campaign finance laws and eliminating gerrymandering in redistricting.

A Garland resident who represented Florida in the U.S. House for one term 10 years ago, West portrayed the measure in a dystopian light that conjured visions of the classic George Orwell novel 1984. West excoriated the bill that's known as For the People Act as a dangerous power grab by liberal control freaks gone mad.

"This radical bill will undermine the integrity of our elections and massively expand the federal government’s power," West warned in an email to supporters.

"It will allow ballot harvesting in all 50 states, lower the voting age to 16, and force millions of people to register to vote – even if they don’t want to!," the state party chief declared.

"This bill is a threat to the foundation of our Constitutional Republic and the core of our representative democracy," West added before dropping the rhetorical gauntlet. "If they try to force this on us, we WILL invoke the Tenth Amendment and constitutional nullification."

The proposal that's officially referred to as H.R. 1 cleared the U.S. House this week on a party line vote. While Democrats control the U.S. Senate with Vice-President Kamala Harris as the tiebreaking vote, the measure in question faces a potentially insurmountable obstacle in the U.S. Senate where 60 votes would be required for passage.

West has been a rich source of breathless hyperbole in seven months as the Republican Party's top leader in Texas. The vast majority of his five-alarm claims have been false or dramatically exaggerated and spoken with the authority of a former Army officer who's preparing to lead his troops into epic battles.

But West's claims have often been false or dramatically exaggerated. West as an example failed to mention in the call to arms that the House defeated the provision that would have sliced two years off the legal voting age. The threat to undermine H.R. 1 is an empty bluff considering that West does not have the power to back up the fighting words.

Nullification is a theory that southern states have used without success in attempts to protect slavery before the Civil War and segregation laws in the 1950s. But nullification hasn't been any more successful in the courts than Donald Trump's baseless election challenge.

West's support for nullification could be the kiss of death at the Texas Capitol as a consequence of the way that he's berated GOP leaders at the state Capitol including Governor Greg Abbott and House Speaker Dade Phelan with verbal trashings that have ruined the party's ability to influence legislation.

West has railed against Abbott for restrictions that he's issued for the sake of protecting the public health during the coronavirus pandemic. West has depicted Phelan as a traitor for continuing the tradition of bipartisan leadership in the west wing of the statehouse by appointing Democrats to some standing committee chairmanships.

West has held his acid tongue, however, on Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick's refusal to give the GOP a monopoly of Senate chairs as the presiding officer across the rotunda. Patrick would be guilty of betrayal as well based on West's description of the first-term speaker.

"HR 1 is just further evidence of the deranged totalitarian goals of the Democrats to subjugate Americans by controlling our elections and we will not stand for it," West contended.

 

 

 

 

Copyright 2003-2021 Capitol Inside