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A retired conservative federal judge on Saturday praised the outcome of the 2022 midterm elections, calling the results “a resounding victory for American democracy.”
In a statement, J. Michael Luttig said he did not interpret the results through a partisan lens, but based on which candidates would adhere to the US Constitution.
“I don’t think of midterm elections in partisan political terms of whether Democrats or Republicans ‘won’ or ‘lost.’ I think of this midterm election only in the ‘constitutional’ terms of whether the American Republic won or lost,” he tweeted.
“For America’s democracy, this midterm election was the most important election in our Nation’s history. And the election was unquestionably a resounding victory for American democracy,” he went on to say. “On November 8th, the American people did what I observed in a series of Constitution Day speeches this fall that they had the power to do: strip these politicians who betrayed them of the power they had been entrusted with . politicians”.
“Then relinquish their power to political leaders who understand better than their predecessors today that they serve the American people and are bound by the Constitution to represent the interests of the People and the Nation in the seats of government — federal and state. ” he added.
Luttig, who sat on the bench as a federal appellate judge from 1991 to 2006 and was considered for the Supreme Court by former President George W. Bush, said that while his remarks may seem “strange,” the significance of the midterm elections they raised the stakes of the country’s core identity.
“Just as the People clothe and entrust their power to their political leaders, so they can divest those political leaders of that entrusted power – divest the demagogues and charlatans of their leaders who betrayed them,” he wrote. “They can do that as soon as the next election, and that’s exactly what they should do.”
The midterm elections saw several candidates who contested the results of the 2020 presidential election lose their bids for office, including Arizona GOP Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem and Michigan GOP candidate Christina Karamo.
Both candidates were endorsed by former President Donald Trump, who continued to rail against his loss to President Joe Biden. Many other election naysayers also lost their respective races, according to the Economist.
Luttig, on January 5, 2021, posted a thread on Twitter where he advised then-Vice President Mike Pence to “faithfully count the Electoral College votes as they are cast.”
For weeks after the November 2020 general election, Pence was repeatedly pressured by Trump to overturn Biden’s 306-232 electoral victory. But the then No. 2 refused to entertain Trump’s pleas.
In April, Luttig called Republican efforts to flip the 2020 presidential election a “dry run” for the upcoming 2024 contest.
And in June, the former judge appeared before a House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, uprising, where he said Pence’s disregard for the will of the voters would have plunged the country “into what amounts to a revolution within a paralysis. constitutional crisis”.
