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Containing Trump
Let’s assume that my prediction is wrong and that, on the evening of November 8, President-Elect Donald Trump gets to say “Hillary, you’re fired.” Liberal heads explode, NeverTrump garments are rended, and — while everyone has their suspicions — no one can prove that Jeff Sessions intentionally popped that champagne cork into Ben Sasse’s eye. Let’s further assume that Republicans hold the House and — to make matters interesting — say the Senate is split 50-50.
Come 2017, Trump and the new Congress are sworn in and… things go well. Construction begins on the Wall, the Chinese start behaving, Speaker Paul Ryan passes some sensible-if-underwhelming ObamaCare reforms, and Attorney General Rudy Giuliani accepts the FBI’s new recommendation to indict Hillary Clinton following the latest WikiLeak revelations. Then, out of nowhere, Ruth Bader Ginsburg announces her retirement so she can spend more time with her cats. In response, President Trump nominates a previously-unheard-of immigration judge (and close friend) from Staten Island as her replacement*. Journalists quickly discover that the judge — though tough on immigration — believes that Roe and Casey are subject to stare decisis, opposed Heller and McDonald, and has written several articles defending Kelo and Obergefell as “misunderstood.” When conservatives balk, Trump takes it as a personal insult to his friend and doubles-down on the decision, saying that if conservatives won’t make a deal, he can look elsewhere. Simultaneously in Paris, Boston, and Phoenix, three EEG monitors that had lain dormant for months begin to show signs of activity.
What do we do in that circumstance? When George W. Bush went off the reservation and nominated Harriet Miers, conservatives’ anger was able to manifest itself through establishment, ideological, and populist channels such that Bush eventually smartened-up and withdrew the nomination. For obvious reasons, these levers will have less effect on Trump who, after all, will be riding pretty high at this point while the glue is still drying on the newly-reformed conservative movement.
Game it out, Ricochet. We may need to.
* This character is an invention.
Published in Domestic Policy
I think that Hillary’s position on Citizens United makes whatever Trump’s latest position on Kelo immaterial to the point of irrelevancy. Kelo does not possess broad extension to other case by case scenarios of “public use” property. In fact, I think that it goes no further than Susette Kelo’s little pink house by the water in New London, CT.
Thank you.
Baked Alaska. Bombe variety.
There is also this:
The homeowner in Kelo lived to tell the tale. How would Clinton have handled her? Drop the IRS on her? No-knock raid in the middle of the night because an anonymous tip said it was a meth lab?
Pretty lame take ( I’m guessing you want me to say that he’s a property grabbing piece of crap) although we have entered the days of #NoLivesMatter. My expectations of Trump are pretty low. I just want the democrat machine’s agendas thwarted for now.
I don’t like it.
Now, do you think a President is going to willing suffer a political revolt within his party in order to nominate someone who favors a Supreme Court decision that legitimizes business practices he will never engage in again?
I trust Trump because I don’t think he cares, so he will do the easiest thing. As for judicial appointments, the easiest thing will be to appoint conservatives who can pass the Senate with minimum fuss.
There are many good reasons to be worried about President Trump without having to create boogeymen.
I would expect the path of least resistance to be screwing over Constitutional conservative interests.
@skipsul, you’re welcome to pose an alternative scenario to your liking.
The problem, I think, remains that conservatives who think the threat of congressional revolt and (if need be) impeachment are sufficient to keep trump on the straight-and-narrow may find themselves in a tight spot should he win.
The essence of “gaming it out” is determining incentives. What does A want? What does B want? And then, in each case, what are the rational expectations of each strategy?
But that’s the problem with Trump. We don’t know what he’s really committed to. Now, of course, that could be because he’s a cagy strategist, or it could be because he’s making it up as he goes along. He claims that his positions are part of a larger negotiation, where he bids big and walks it back when he feels pressure. We don’t know where he’ll cave. If the media keep “being mean” to him, will that make him compromise or make him just bitter?
When the quarterback calls a play, but then he free-lances and does something different, it means the other players on the team can’t trust him and therefore can’t coordinate their blocking, routes, assignments, etc. His selfishness means the rest of the team can’t play as a team. And until now, Trump has been so erratic and inconsistent that the rest of us have no idea what he’s going to do. In that respect, Trump is not a leader, or a lousy one, because he makes it impossible to follow him. Even if we wanted to, how can we play for this guy?
Heh. Well, the Clinton Campaign over at NBC News has a list of “117 distinct policy shifts on 20 major issues.” I expect him to perform like Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California- a good first year and then a bid for strange new respect. We’re doomed.
Harriet Meier?
The path of least resistance is someone who won’t get talk radio all fired up, but who won’t spark a Democrat filibuster.
@midgetfadedrattlesnake
Okay, that’s actually a pretty good analogy.
The problem, I think, remains that whatever scenario that is posed for Trump giving conservatives severe heartburn, it is 100% guaranteed that Hillary would in fact be worse on the same scenario. Trump/Pence 2016 … Embrace the Suck.
Yep, relax Mr. Meyer. They got this.
We’ll all wish that Trump had never been nominated.
Curiously enough, the first marijuana vendors are due to be up and running by November, so Baked Alaska it is.
I second Midge in that screwing over constitutionalist conservatives is generally the path of least resistance. Trump likes to make deals. What gives you confidence that SCOTUS would be one of the things he fights for, rather than the one he gives away? Plenty of Trump’s supporters are constitutionalists, but that’s not his core constituency, and we’re hard to please.
(And yes, Clinton’s nominations will likely be worse, but that won’t matter at that at that point.)
The great tragedy of all this is the coin toss that is Trump.
Hillary isn’t the Democratic nominee because she’s due (that’s 2008), she’s the nominee because the GOP has (politically) killed everyone else.
If we’d defeated her with Rubio, Cruz, Paul, Jindal, Walker, Perry, etc. we might have been able to deal liberals a deathblow. Their state apparati are in shambles, their high-profile legislators are crazy or ancient or both. For heaven’s sake Hillary almost lost to Bernie Sanders – probably would have without the superdelegates.
If she wins it could give them not just the ability to recover but to kill the GOP as they lay dying, using the administrative state as their poisoned dagger.
The question I have before me in the voting booth is whether I’m willing to gamble it all on the mother of all Hail Mary passes to win the game or do I want to play it safe, kick a field goal and hope I survive in overtime?
Choice of a Supreme Court nominee is one of hundreds of major issues our next Commander-in-Chief will face – and the way things are going in the world, will not even be in the top ten tasks after taking office – I had a very interesting conversation today with a very knowledgeable person, someone who knows the inside out “state of things” personally and professionally, and as they now stand – they will not be pulling the lever for H – and I’ll tell you something else – I’m trying to get people to join Ricochet and too many I don’t like Trump stories are screwing it up!
I’m not going to propose a scenario for the reasons already delineated. It’s playing a What-If game, and what-if games of this sort are not fair.
I know even of hard lefties who are pulling for Trump because Hillary terrifies them.
“I’m trying to get people to join Ricochet and too many I don’t like Trump stories are screwing it up!”
As a member, I’m sorry for thinking that is hilarious. A little.
Look, as someone who at the beginning was a huge Walker supporter and ultimately voted for Cruz, I have learned to lower my expectations. With President Trump, the best case scenario is we will get another Roberts; worst case, another Souter; likely case; another Kennedy.
That is less than ideal, but it is not Hillary.
Miers’s problem was incompetence, not Leftism. She had not even been a judge previously, if I recall, just a lawyer close to the Bushes. What about the Anthony Kennedys?
One of the few things it makes sense to me for Trump not to be indifferent about where jurisprudence is concerned is Kelo. Trump has believed that eminent-domain abuse is a reasonable thing, even a good thing, for years and years, and not just in some uninvolved fashion: that perspective was very much part of his identity as a real-estate developer, who he is and what he does. As far as talk radio, I picture it being easier for talk-jockeys to develop a strange new respect for eminent-domain abuse than to hold Trump’s feet to the fire. Perhaps I am wrong about this, and even if I’m right, the “but better than Hillary” argument still stands. I don’t claim to be Cassandra, but Trump strikes me as particularly likely to happen upon “right leaning” justices who go way left over time.
I admit I was involved in the Kelo stuff way before Trump’s 2016 presidential run. I know folks who fought against Trump. It probably does color my perspective, though not in a way that persuades me that this color is any more unreal than any other colors.
In my opinion of the scenario, you are down by more than 3 points. You don’t have a safe field goal option at all!
Hail Mary, full of Grace …..
“Straight and narrow” exceeds my expectations. I’d settle for “loosely corralled.”
Of course it does. But Hillary is a slam dunk to make terrible appointments.
It would be a genius move on Trump’s part to appoint Ted Cruz to SCOTUS. It would make him an offer it’d be hard to refuse, the Senators that Cruz has ticked off would be happy to
get rid of himconfirm him, and Cruz wouldn’t be around as a political rival. Not to mention he’s be a pretty good bet not to sag left.Or “pointed to within +/- 90 degrees of the intended direction”.
If Cruz got his fanny on the SCOTUS bench, I would be happy. I’ll give it a nonzero likelihood, but I’m not sure a large one – somewhere between 1 and 10%. I would be happy to revise my estimate upward if the opportunity arose.
I think Meier’s problems stemmed from a lack of a proven record of commitment to originalism, not incompetence. If President Trump nominated a true progressive to the court, the outcry from Senators like Lee and Cruz would echo through through talk radio and other outlets and would doom the nomination.
We might get another Kennedy, but that’s better than another Kagan.
Lowered expectations.
@midgetfadedrattlesnake