Re: [OT] Trump's third term

Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

On 2025-03-31 12:01 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

shawn <nanoflower@notforg.m.a.i.l.com> wrote:

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 22:49:20 -0400, Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com>:

On 2025-03-30 10:05 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

I see that Trump has mused about running for a third term. This CBC
article explains why that couldn't happen and suggests that this puts an
end to the discussion.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-third-term-president-constitutional-1.7497480

For some strange reason - ignorance, I expect - they complete ignore a
perfectly legal way to get Trump a third term: amend the 22nd amendment
to increase the number of terms or repeal that amendment altogether.

If I remember correctly, he'd need to get the approval of 3/4 of the
states and 2/3 of both chambers of Congress to agree and they'd only
have a set number of years to do it but if Trump really is as popular as
he thinks he is, that should be quite possible.

The set number of years was a characteristic of specific amendments
proposed in Congress but not others. It's not clear if that's
constitutional.

Fair enough. I was remembering the ERA which *almost* passed but fell
slightly short. As I recall, they gave it an extra few years but it
still fell short.

Good luck to Trump on his quest to become dictator.

Was FDR a dictator when he ran for his third and fourth terms?

No, because it was permissible for FDR to run for those terms.

By the low bar of it wasn't unconstitutional, then you don't believe
Viktor Orban is a dictator. Right?

. . .

My perception is that elections in Hungary are not yet believed to be
corrupt so that a sufficiently popular candidate *could* still defeat
him at the polls. If that is true, then I wouldn't call Orban a dictator.

He made subtle gradual changes in civil law to give himself political
advantage and completely changed the judiciary to eliminate neutral
judges, replacing them with his partisans. And yes, it's very difficult
to participate in an election as a member of the opposition.

He simply took a number of years to rewrite laws instead of just
declaring the constitution no longer in force and presenting a
replacement constitution.

The effect was the same. It simply took a lot longer to close society.

In Poland, they had a dictator for close to a decade but somehow got the
government out and they're trying to put laws back to the way they were.

I would have said the same about Erdogan until the last week or so but
he seems to have borrowed a page from the Dictator's Handbook by locking
up his chief credible rival.

He's had mass arrests of presumed political opponents on flimsy excuses.
The army is no longer a neutral force in society. The top officers are
all his partisans.

. . .