Why GOP rivals are forced to defend Trump over 14th Amendment disqualification

After Colorado’s top court ruled that former President Donald Trump was ineligible to appear on the state’s ballot in 2024 due to the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause, his Republican primary opponents immediately rallied around him and denounced the decision.

Attempts to disqualify Trump from the ballot have been unsuccessful in other states, and Colorado marks the first to rule in favor of left-wing legal groups looking to deny him ballot access over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. However, the United States Supreme Court is expected to have the final say, as the ruling is stayed until Jan. 4 for appellate review and could remain on hold if Trump’s legal team requests the Supreme Court to review the decision, which his campaign has vowed to do.

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If the past is any indicator, such action by the Colorado Supreme Court could serve to boost support for Trump. Following each of his target letters and indictments in the early summer and fall, Trump was rewarded with an uptick in his support among Republican voters. Most of his GOP opponents have already been careful in their attempts to criticize Trump, and have been compelled to defend him in each of his legal matters, which have been demonstrably unpopular with Republicans.

Vivek Ramaswamy has long been the most complimentary primary foe to Trump and was quick to denounce the Colorado Supreme Court’s move Tuesday.

“I pledge to *withdraw* from the Colorado GOP primary unless Trump is also allowed to be on the state’s ballot, and I demand that Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Nikki Haley to do the same immediately – or else they are tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver which will have disastrous consequences for our country,” Ramaswamy wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, slamming the decision as “un-American, unconstitutional, and *unprecedented*” and an “attack on democracy.”

While Trump’s other opponents did not accept Ramaswamy’s challenge to withdraw, they did join in denouncing the decision.

“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,” Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) said on X. “SCOTUS should reverse.”

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told reporters in Iowa “I don’t think Donald Trump needs to be president,” after the news broke.

“I think I need to be president,” Haley said. “I think that’s good for the country. But I will beat him fair and square. We don’t need to have judges making these decisions, we need voters to make these decisions.

“I want to see this in the hands of the voters,” she continued. “We’re going to win this the right way, we’re going to do what we need to do, but the last thing we want is judges telling us who can and can’t be on the ballot.”

Trump’s biggest critic in the race, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie also expressed his disagreement with the decision.

“Donald Trump should not be prevented from being President by any court,” he said on X. “He should be prevented from being President of the United States by the voters of this country.”

In Trump’s own responses to the Colorado ruling, he called it “A SAD DAY IN AMERICA!!!”

Republican strategist Doug Heye claimed the collective swift response to Trump’s Colorado disqualification was “for the same reason they’ve reinforced his messaging each time he has been indicted: they want to avoid his wrath in the hope that Trump collapses.”

“But hope is not a strategy,” Heye said. “Neither is strengthening your political opponent.”

Ipsos Senior Vice President of U.S. Public Affairs Chris Jackson explained, “The modern Republican party operates out of a position of hostility and opposition to a nebulous ‘elite’. Donald Trump has thrived at positioning his very real legal challenges as ‘yet another’ effort from these ‘elites’ to undermine him.

“We have no reason to believe that the ruling from the Colorado state Supreme Court barring him from running in that state in 2024 because of the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution will be perceived any differently, especially with his Republican opponents messaging in lock-step with Trump,” Jackson said.

In the latest New York Times/Siena College poll of the Republican primary, 83% of Republicans answered that the charges against Donald Trump “are mostly politically motivated.” Among independents, 44% said the same.

In terms of how extensive support for Trump is, even when facing conviction, 70% of those who support him in the primary said he should still be the nominee if he is elected by the primary voters and also convicted of a crime. Two-thirds of Republicans said the same, in addition to more than half of independents.

After defending Trump against the Colorado ruling, DeSantis accused the court of purposely trying to elevate the former president, as his previous legal troubles have been demonstrated to do.

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“It’s unfair,” DeSantis said. “They’re abusing power. They’re doing this for a reason.”

The Florida governor claimed that the move was designed to “solidify support in the primary” for Trump while simultaneously putting him in a poor position for the general election, thereby setting Biden up with the “ability to skate through” his reelection bid.