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It’s probably fair to say that J. Michael Luttig is not a household name, but in conservative legal circles, the retired federal judge has few rivals. As Politico noted last year, the jurist has spent much of his adult life operating “at the top of the conservative legal world.”
With this in mind, when he makes provocative political assessments about the state of the Republican Party, they’re worth paying attention to. CNN reported on Luttig making the case on the air that the Republican Party effectively no longer exists.
“American democracy simply cannot function without two equally healthy and equally strong political parties. So today, in my view, there is no Republican Party to counter the Democratic Party in the country,” Luttig, who advised Pence on how to handle the January 6, 2021, election certification vote, told CNN’s Poppy Harlow on “CNN This Morning.” “And for that reason, American democracy is in grave peril.”
The jurist added, “A political party is a collection and assemblage of individuals who share a set of beliefs and principles and policy views about the United States of America. Today, there is no such shared set of beliefs and values and principles or even policy views as within the Republican Party for America.”
Up until fairly recently, Luttig would’ve been a highly unlikely source for such rhetoric. Revisiting our earlier coverage, Luttig served as an attorney in the Reagan White House, a clerk for Antonin Scalia, and one of the nation’s most prominent conservative judges — overseeing clerks with familiar Republican names such as Ted Cruz and John Eastman.
Not surprisingly, during some recent Republican administrations, Luttig was considered for the U.S. Supreme Court. When then-Vice President Mike Pence and his team weighed their legal options after the 2020 election, they sought the former judge’s advice. He told them to follow the law. (They did.)
There are a variety of ways to describe the conservative luminary, but “liberal critic of the GOP” isn’t one of them.
And yet, as Republican politics becomes more radical, and the Trumpified party’s commitment to democracy and the rule of law evaporates, Luttig isn’t just concerned, he’s speaking out in forceful ways that warrant attention.
Indeed, it was last summer when the retired judge testified before the Jan. 6 committee, not only lamenting what’s become of GOP politics, but also to deliver a warning to the bipartisan select panel: Trump and his confederates not only targeted our democracy after losing in 2020, they’re prepared to do so again.
“[T]o this very day,” the retired jurist testified, “the former president, his allies and supporters pledge that in the presidential election of 2024, if the former president or his anointed successor as the Republican Party presidential candidate were to lose that election, that they would attempt to overturn that 2024 election in the same way that they attempted to overturn the 2020 election, but succeed in 2024, where they failed in 2020.”
He added that “they are executing that blueprint in open and plain view of the American public.”
A year later, Luttig continues to expand on this critique, making the case that our democracy is facing serious challenges, not just because of Team Trump’s opposition to election results, but because Trump’s unhealthy party lacks core principles.
One can only hope Luttig’s ostensible Republican allies were listening.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.