It must get really tired for Sen. Joe Manchin to constantly have to play both sides. He’s from West Virginia, so he must pretend to be a blue dog who’d never sully the institution of the Senate with ridiculous partisanship. Yet, he also has to keep his credibility within the Democrat party, which I suppose is how you get idiocy like this.

Manchin: Removing Hawley, Cruz with 14th Amendment "should be a consideration" https://t.co/kWZE13b69p pic.twitter.com/IyJNGZVy2g

— The Hill (@thehill) January 16, 2021

“That should be a consideration,” Manchin responded when asked if the 14th Amendment should be triggered. “He understands that. Ted’s a very bright individual, and I get along fine with Ted, but what he did was totally outside of the realm of our responsibilities or our privileges.”

The third section of the 14th Amendment reads that no lawmaker holding office “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

This about how dumb this is, not just legally, but also when juxtaposed with how Democrats reacted to Donald Trump’s win. Multiple Democrats stood up after in the Congress in early 2017 and objected to the certification of electors. They had zero reason to do so. There was no evidence of fraud, nor were concerns about Russia anything more than a fevered conspiracy theory. Yet, they objected. No one suggested they be forcibly removed from Congress for sedition under the 14th Amendment. Why? Because that’s patently insane.

Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley objected on grounds clearly spelled out, whether you agree with them or not. They did not commit sedition by following the constitutional order and using the rights bestowed upon him to object to the certification of certain results. That’s the beginning and end of this case. Any actual attempt to expel them would simply be tyranny on full display by the very same people insisting that the voters’ will be adhered to in regards to Biden.

Objecting to the certification of the election results, in Cruz’s case just to ask for an audit, is nowhere close to an insurrection. If that’s the standard, a bunch of Democrats need to be behind bars right now. Manchin knows this, but the real game here is to simply tar and feather the entirety of the GOP over what a few QAnon morons did. Cruz was not calling for anyone to rush the Capitol, nor was Hawley. Essentially no one who voted for Trump did so with the idea that there’d be some armed rebellion or something. But painting everyone who has ever supported Trump as a bad person, seditious in this case, is the strategy. When you can’t beat your enemies in the arena of ideas, you attempt to do with marginalization and disqualification.

I’m guessing none of that will play well in West Virginia, though Manchin may be on his last go around anyway.

(Please follow me on Twitter…@bonchieredstate)