GOP Mississippi official calls for state to ‘succeed’ from US after Biden win

As much of the country welcomes President-elect Joe Biden some Mississippi lawmakers are voicing their concerns for the country’s future.

Mississippi Rep. Price Wallace is not in favor of the outcome of 2020 presidential election and headed to Twitter to say he thinks Mississippi should form its own country independent of the United States.

“We need to succeed [sic] from the union and form our own country,” Wallace posted in a now-deleted tweet on Nov. 7 caught by Law & Crime. The publication notes the lawmaker wrote “succeed” when he meant, “secede,” which means to formally leave an organization or federation.

The source adds Wallace’s comments were made after former Republican state lawmaker Robert Foster posted a message to his Twitter account in regards to the 2020 election. Foster is a known Trump supporter.

General Election Ballots Still Being Counted in Pennsylvania — A man speaks with supporters of President Donald Trump demonstrating outside of where votes are still being counted six days after the general election on November 9, 2020 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The state was called for former Vice President Biden on Saturday, propelling him past the requisite 270 electoral votes to winning the presidency. With 98% of the ballots reporting, President-elect Biden leads President Trump by 45,595 votes. (Photo by Mark Makela/Getty Images)

“Not sure who all needs to hear this but we are not a Democracy. We are a Constitutional Republic,” Foster wrote on Saturday. “The majority does not rule, the law derived from a Constitution has the final say. Democrats and their Fake News Cheerleaders are about to get a hard lesson in civics.”

Not sure who all needs to hear this but we are not a Democracy. We are a Constitutional Republic. The majority does not rule, the law derived from a Constitution has the final say. Democrats and their Fake News Cheerleaders are about to get a hard lesson in civics.
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— Robert Foster (@RobertFoster4MS) November 7, 2020

According to an opinion published in The Atlantic, there is some truth to his statement but it does not tell the full picture.

“It is quaint that so many Republicans, embracing a president who routinely tramples constitutional norms, have suddenly found their voice in pointing out that, formally, the country is a republic. There is some truth to this insistence. But it is mostly disingenuous,” wrote George Thomas, professor of American political institutions at Claremont McKenna College. “The Constitution was meant to foster a complex form of majority rule, not enable minority rule.”

According to Legal Dictionary, a constitutional republic “is a form of government in which the head of the state, as well as other officials, are elected by the country’s citizens to represent them. Those representatives must then follow the rules of that country’s constitution in governing their people. Like the U.S. government, a constitutional republic may consist of three branches – executive, judicial, and legislative – which divide the power of the government so that no one branch becomes too powerful.”

Foster’s post continued, “After all legal votes are counted and confirmed by their state legislatures Republicans will accept the results even if it’s not in our favor. The same way we did with Obama twice. Sadly, Democrats won’t accept the rule of law if it doesn’t end in their favor.”

It is unclear why Foster included the line about Democrats failing to accept unfavorable outcomes. In 2016, Hilary Clinton conceded the day after she lost the election to President Trump. Though it has been days since the election results, Trump has yet to concede.

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