Third Term Checklist!

It has officially begun! The road to a third term. They said it couldn’t be done! They said there were laws to prevent it! We’ll see. Hints are already being dropped...

If you should find yourself President and decide that you are so irreplaceably valuable that the biggest crime would be you not getting a third term (or a fourth, or, who really needs elections anyway?!), here’s a handy checklist to help you on your way:

1.        Put Congress out of business.

2.        Push the narrative that your first or second term does not really count against the limit because the nasty other party got in your way. (Get additional mileage out of the word, “stolen.”)

3.        Cow all law firms.

4.        Cow all universities.

5.        Cow organizers of protest.

6.        Erode freedom of the press.

7.        Change election rules to make them “fairer.”

8.        Unfold the Saddam Hussein/Stalin “scare them loyal” scenario.

9.        Put loyalty before competence in all government positions.

10.   Add 5 loyalist supreme court judges.

And there you have it folks. Ten easy steps to your third term!  If you’re counting at home, items 1 through 9 are all currently underway. 

Legally, a third term is not as difficult as you might imagine. Article 12 of the constitution says that no one can be Vice President if they are not qualified to become President. Article 22 of the constitution says that no-one shall be elected to more than 2 terms as President. You’d imagine that that would sew it up as far as a third term is concerned. 

Think again.

That term “elected” is about to become a battleground that will make Iwo Jima look like a kid’s picnic.

It will be argued that if Donald Trump runs for Vice President on the Vance-Trump ticket, then, he will be qualified to become President, because if anything happens to Vance, Trump will not, technically, have been “elected” into the Presidential post - he will have assumed it. Plus, he can comfortably run the country from the office of Vice President anyway. It is a play right out of the Medvedev-Putin playbook and it kept Putin in power long enough for him to completely take over all the reins of government and put an end to that pesky nascent democracy that was threatening to engulf Russia.

This show playing here next. Once the Supreme Court has been brought under control, the final hurdle will have been jumped.

In this new world, where anything a US President does cannot be illegal, the idea of being President for life is very compelling. —Particularly for someone with legal problems. And before anyone on the left get too haughty about this, how many terms do you think FDR would have thought enough if he had remained alive? (He was on his fourth term when he died, and is generally remembered fondly, nonetheless.)

(BTW, I found it very interesting, before Trump announced his VP pick for the 2020 run, when Vance confidently predicted it would be him. I believe it was because he had come up with this plan and promised to make it happen.)