With less than a month to go before voting begins, Donald Trump‘s Republican rivals are once again rallying to his defense, this time after Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled to remove him from the state’s presidential primary ballot under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause.
Just as they had following Trump’s successive indictments as he racked up 91 criminal charges, the GOP front-runner’s opponents cast the landmark decision — the first time in history the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate and one the former president has vowed to appeal — as inappropriate, a “stunt” and an “attack on democracy.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis charged the court’s ruling was a plot to ensure Trump wins the nomination because Democrats view him as the weakest Republican candidate.
That’s fair. But it’s also true that the actual Republican petitioners in the case (five of the seven) are very long time Republicans who have been notable in party politics in the state.