Mary Lou Masters
Republican presidential candidates rushed to former President Donald Trump’s defense after the Colorado Supreme Court disqualified him from being on the ballot Tuesday evening.
In a 4 – 3 ruling, the Colorado Supreme Court decided Trump should be disqualified under the 14th Amendment’s prohibition on candidates who engaged in an insurrection, making him ineligible from appearing on the state’s ballot. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and conservative businessman Vivek Ramaswamy all criticized the state Supreme Court’s ruling.
“The Left invokes ‘democracy to justify its use of power, even if it means abusing judicial power to remove a candidate from the ballot based on spurious legal grounds,” DeSantis wrote on Twitter. “SCOTUS should reverse.”
Haley also criticized the court’s decision, telling reporters that “the last thing we want is judges telling us who can and can’t be on the ballot,” according to NBC News.
“I will beat him fair and square. We don’t need to have judges making these decisions,” Haley said. “We need voters to make these decisions.”
While Christie cautioned that he has not yet fully read through the decision, the governor argued that the decision is “probably premature” and voters shouldn’t have their rights taken away of voting for the former president.
“I do not believe Donald Trump should be prevented from being president of the United States by any court. I think he should be prevented from being president of the United States by the voters of this country,” Christie said during a town hall. “And I don’t think it’s good for this country if he’s precluded from the ballot by a court.”
Ramaswamy slammed the decision, and pledged to withdraw himself from the Colorado primary ballot while encouraging other candidates to do the same.
“This is what an *actual* attack on democracy looks like: in an un-American, unconstitutional, and *unprecedented* decision, a cabal of Democrat judges are barring Trump from the ballot in Colorado,” Ramaswamy wrote in a tweet. “Having tried every trick in the book to eliminate President Trump from running in this election, the bipartisan Establishment is now deploying a new tactic to bar him from ever holding office again: the 14th Amendment.”
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, on the other hand, did not condemn the decision.
“The Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling barring Donald Trump from the presidential ballot is what I raised as a concern in the first presidential debate in Milwaukee,” Hutchinson wrote in a Tweet. “The factual finding that he supported insurrection will haunt his candidacy.”
However, the ruling is currently stayed through Jan. 4 pending a Supreme Court appeal from Trump’s team. The state has until Jan. 5 to resolve the issue, which is when Colorado is required to set its slate of Republican primary candidates for the Super Tuesday ballot on March 5.
The RealClearPolitics average for a 2024 national Republican primary, based on polls conducted between Nov. 29 and Dec. 17, indicates Trump is leading the field by 51.2 points, followed by DeSantis with 11.8%, Haley with 11.6%, Ramaswamy with 4.4%, Christie with 2.7% and Hutchinson with 0.8%.
Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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