It's Time To Play To Win --- By Their Rules

The Democrats are playing dirty, but we can't let them win. We must play to win — just like them.

By indicting Trump again, the Democrats have upped their game. This coming indictment is not like the Bragg arrest or the classified document charges. Those are trivial by comparison.

It looks like the new Smith indictment will be devised to trigger the Fourteenth Amendment's prohibition against holding federal office after participating in an insurgency against the United States.

The Fourteenth Amendment, passed as the Civil War drew to a close, prohibits anyone from holding federal office if they had "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same (the U.S. government), or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."

Prosecutor Jack Smith may be attempting to portray Trump's objections to the election of 2020 and his demand for recounts and audits before electors were appointed as just such an "insurrection or rebellion," disqualifying him from becoming president again.

Smith may hope that, if Trump is convicted by a Washington DC All-Democrat jury, that secretaries of state and governors in blue states refuse to put him on the ballot.

We, who still value free elections, can hope that the courts — particularly the U.S. Supreme Court –thwarts such a move. But do we dare wait until then?

Especially as Democratic efforts to remove Clarence Thomas from the Court gain steam?

Just this week, the Michigan Attorney General, Democrat Dana Nessel, charged sixteen Republicans with forgery and other felonies for seeking to be designated as pro-Trump electors in 2020.

The Democrats now realize that they cannot stop Donald Trump from becoming the Republican candidate for president again. And they worry that Biden is not strong enough to defeat him in November 2024.

So, they are determined to throw away the democratic procedures to which we have become accustomed and to pervert the justice system to bring him down.

Their efforts to stack the deck against Trump are akin to a political coup d'état.

It is not enough that we fight them at the ballot box. They may not let it get that far.

President Trump, the House Republican majority and Senate Republican minority do not realize the power they have, and they better start using it to save our democracy.

Controlling the power of the purse, the House can refuse to pass any appropriation bills until the Justice Department drops its political prosecutions and its blatant interference with the 2024 election.

Even if the Senate objects, the House has the power to bring the government to a halt by itself.

And a handful of Republicans in the Senate can use their filibuster and committee privileges to bring Biden's initiatives and nominees to a standstill.

Closing federal agencies until this unlawful affront to democracy and threat to our liberty is thwarted, is a small price to pay to keep our free elections in place and to use them to designate the next president.

The House Republicans should make one simple demand: Stop the prosecution of any presidential candidate until the election has been held.

It is illegal to indict, convict, or remove a president except by impeachment.

Just as it is illegal for a prosecutor to reach into the Oval Office to pluck out a president and put him in jail, so it should be illegal to indict and remove from the voters' consideration, a candidate for the high office, especially the frontrunner for his nomination.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Dick Morris, who served as adviser to former Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and former President Clinton, is the author of 16 books, including his latest, Screwed and Here Come the Black Helicopters.