Nothing says 'democracy' like restricting who gets on the ballot. 

And nothing is more democratic than banning the leading candidate because the European Union technocrats disagree with him. Nothing says "protecting democracy" better than a bunch of bureaucrats carefully vetting candidates to ensure that they will give those bureaucrats all the power to make the most important decisions. Because bureaucrats, not stupid voters, know best. 

DEMOCRACY? Romania, under pressure from the EU, has disqualified Calin Georgescu’s candidacy for president as he is critical of both NATO and the EU. The previous election he was leading was annulled to prevent him from winning. Now he's being kept off the ballet despite leading… pic.twitter.com/giHA7pFklz

— @amuse (@amuse) March 9, 2025

IF that is the case, the European Union just got a lot more democratic. So democratic, in fact, that they may just decide to dispense with national elections in just the way that the European Union Parliament gets very little say in actual EU policy--it's left to the European Council which is "elected" as a slate by the Parliament and never faces the voters themselves. 

Romanian protesters have taken to the streets to contest the government’s ban on Calin Georgescu’s candidacy. pic.twitter.com/iA800USA1p

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) March 9, 2025

I know that many dreamers out there still live in a fantasy world where the Europeans are the good guys dedicated to freedom and Western values, but that is becoming less and less true over time. Sure, the EU is happy enough to allow the population to vote, as long as they vote the "right" way. If they threaten to exceed the Overton Window set by the technocrats--the transnational elite--the elections can be canceled until the "right" candidates are put on the ballot. 

Romania has banned right-wing nationalist Calin Georgescu from running for President…

He won their first round of elections, and their court quickly overturned it. He is now *still* leading in the polls, so they are simply banning him from running.

This is somehow “Democracy”. pic.twitter.com/YernnCifPJ

— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) March 9, 2025

Georgescu is unacceptable because he goes head to head with the transnational elite. This makes him too "right wing." I can't say whether he is or isn't "right wing," is my cup of tea or the opposite, and chances are there is much to dislike about him from my point of view. Or not. 

JUST IN - Italy's Deputy PM Salvini says banning Călin Georgescu from the Romanian election is a "Soviet-style euro coup" and "a serious theft of democracy."

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) March 9, 2025

I don't care. At least not enough to believe that Eurocrats should have a veto power over Romanian voters. 

This is Călin Georgescu, the frontrunner BANNED from the upcoming Romanian election…. He was onto something: pic.twitter.com/TQpw3bdkSM

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 9, 2025

Now some people will claim that the decision wasn't made in Brussels but by a Romanian Court, but that is a nicety and fundamentally untrue. How do I know? The Eurocrats admitted as much. Just as they admitted they would do the same in Germany if AfD won. 

NEW - Former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton fantasizes about a possible annulment of the upcoming elections in Germany: "We did it in Romania, and we will obviously have to do it, if necessary, in Germany."pic.twitter.com/2sYxWE4hhi

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) January 10, 2025

It is striking to me that many Americans love this version of "democracy" as much as the Eurocrats do, and they do because they share the same vision of governance: rule by technocracy. 

As expected, Calin Georgescu is banned from the Romanian presidential elections, he was judged as being the wrong sort of candidate and he would have won. Democracy has fallen in Europe. It’s now a dictatorship. The UK is on the same trajectory under Starmer. https://t.co/J2QmhF8ZHP

— Andrew Bridgen (@ABridgen) March 9, 2025

They imagine the permanent bureaucracy to be a check on the president and hence the voters, so they accuse Trump of being an autocrat because he, as an elected official in charge of the Executive Branch, is using his powers instead of deferring to the unelected bureaucrats. 

ACLU: “Not only would such mass layoffs violate federal law, but this action would undermine the important and historic check that the career civil service has had on curbing abuses by the executive branch.”

When people talk about a “Deep State”, this is part of what they mean… pic.twitter.com/dW4XH2H0RK

— Jerry Dunleavy IV 🇺🇸 (@JerryDunleavy) February 13, 2025

Newsflash, Deep Staters: civil servants only have power through the president, and the president has his power through Article II of the Constitution. 

Here is what Article II of the Constitution says in the very first sentence. 

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. 

Nowhere is there a bureaucratic power or some mythical fourth branch of government. 

The transnational elite seriously believes that all power does or should rest in their hands. That there is a global technocratic elite that serves as the rightful leader of the hoi polloi and that elections should rightly be shams to calm us all down and provide "legitimacy" to their rule. 

🇷🇴 Georgescu stood today in front of a massive army of supporters who came to demand their country back

We demand the resumption of the second round of elections, an end to arrests and political persecution, and no more EU and NATO interference!

Georgescu is our president! pic.twitter.com/KgpXzgNLEB

— Daily Romania (@daily_romania) March 1, 2025

In Europe, the EU decrees who can be elected. In the US they tried to use lawfare to keep Trump off the ballot, but it amounts to the same thing: the elites should get to decide who can have power. 

Trump has defied them, and is having to move quickly--like a bull in a China shop--because he has no choice. It is a race against time because there are millions of bureaucrats in the Deep State and trillions of dollars mobilizing to impede his retaking of power away from those who have run things for decades. 

Trump is riding a populist wave, and populism is always messy and just a bit dangerous. But populism rises as the elites become so corrupt that the people have no choice but to rise up against them. 

I hate that we are here. I wish we had decent and trustworthy elites, but we don't. 

We have elites who do things like this: kick candidates they dislike off ballots because they might win. That is what tyrants do.