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Filling the SCOTUS Seat Isn’t an Option, It’s an Obligation
With Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death and a newly vacant Supreme Court seat, the political madness of 2020 got even madder. But this moment is precisely why so many Republicans voted for Donald Trump despite their misgivings. A conservative majority on SCOTUS has been a signature goal of the party base going back to Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Now, 40 years later, the opportunity is finally here.
To quote Margaret Thatcher, this is no time to go wobbly. As expected, many are.
The center-right’s appetite for catering to the Democrat base instead of their own is insatiable. In reaction, GOP voters launched the Tea Party movement. When that fizzled, they elected Trump. Many Republicans still haven’t learned this lesson and want to surrender before any battle begins.
At The Bulwark, Jonathan V. Last oddly casts this moment as a “political crisis,” which it most certainly is not. Justice Ginsburg’s passing is a sad event, as is anyone’s death, but it was as inevitable as every other Supreme Court vacancy. We’ve been through this more than 100 times before.
Yet Last believes RBG’s mortality is an unexpected “black swan” event. His solution is to toss aside the simple Constitutional process and replace it with a complex backroom deal:
There are only a handful of ways out of this trap and all of them require the prudential coordination of elites. Which is … not something we have seen a great deal of in the last, say, generation of American life.
Nearly zero voters, left or right, want to be governed by the “prudential coordination of elites.” In fact, the Constitution doesn’t mention “prudential,” “coordination,” or “elites.” It does state that the President is obligated to nominate a jurist and the Senate to provide advice and consent.
Why invent some novel aristocratic contraption when our foundational document provides a simple path forward? These are the rules every elected official — left, right, and center — agreed to uphold since our founding.
One expects knocking knees at The Bulwark, but the demand for some extraconstitutional haggling is spreading.
Jonah Goldberg and David French, two conservatives for whom I have great respect, recommend a different type of deal with Senate Democrats. I’ll let French explain:
First, Trump makes his pick.
Second, the Senate applies the Schumer principle and gives the nominee a hearing. This will have the benefit of giving the American people a more-complete picture of the qualifications and philosophy of the nominee and thus the stakes of the presidential election.
Third, the Senate then applies the Graham/Rubio/Cruz rule and does not vote before the election. If Trump wins, they then vote on the nominee.
But what if Trump loses? What principle comes into play? Joe Biden’s own words provide the guide.
In the October 2019 Democratic debate, Joe Biden clearly expressed his opposition to court-packing. “I’m not prepared to go on and try to pack the court,” he said, “because we’ll live to rue that day.” He continued, “We add three justices. Next time around, we lose control, they add three justices. We begin to lose any credibility the court has at all.”
Goldberg, offering similar advice, adds some context in his LA Times column:
Even before Justice Ginsburg’s demise, Democratic support was building not just for packing the Supreme Court by increasing the number of justices (which Ginsburg opposed), but also for D.C. and Puerto Rican statehood and abolition of the legislative filibuster. Now Democrats are all but vowing to go through with expanding the court in response to a rushed replacement for Ginsburg.
What will be the GOP’s argument against such schemes?
…Moreover, merely on the level of realpolitik, abandoning all considerations other than what you can get away with amounts to preemptive disarmament for the wars to come. The pernicious logic of apocalyptic politics works on the assumption that the long term doesn’t matter. But the long term always becomes now eventually.
Making a too-clever-by-half deal instead of simply following the Constitution is also a type of “preemptive disarmament for the wars to come.” The GOP has the White House and the Senate, while the Democrats have nothing. If the Packers are leading 42-3, they don’t give two touchdowns to the Vikings if they promise to be nice to them in the next game.
Any deal is especially suspect given the Senate Democrats’ abysmal track record on upholding the slightest of norms. A party willing to portray the dullest nominee in SCOTUS history as a high-school drug lord and gang-rapist has no interest in comity or fair play.
French and Goldberg’s deal is better than Last’s but still attempts to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. Trump and McConnell hold all the cards; the left has only screaming.
Democrats high and low have already promised to pack the court, create new states, and abolish the electoral college. They have allowed their constituents to create mayhem, attack citizens, destroy businesses, and burn buildings in their cities for three and a half months. This is who they were before RBG died and they will only radicalize further as we move toward the election.
The Republican base has set everything in place for a conservative Supreme Court. It is the party’s obligation to deliver it to them.
Forget “prudential coordination of elites,” it’s time at last for “We the People.”
Published in Law, Politics
We’ve got all this extra rope, might as well see if the Democrats will hang themselves with it.
“Acme Predator” would have the same meaning, but it would sound like something the Coyote would try and unleash on the Road Runner.
I thought originalist judges were a fairy tale.
Repealing Roe v. Wade was just a dream.
What’s the use of trying?
All you get is pain.
Remember what happened with Anthony?
Then Trump won the race,
and we got conservative judges!
There’s no trace of doubt in my mind.
I love Trump!
I’m a believer!
I couldn’t vote Dem if I tried.
Sincere question for participants in this thread: why do you let Gary get under your skin? Wouldn’t you all be happier, calmer people if you just ignored him?
Honestly, I wonder about this every time. Give it a try: skip right past his comments and address something else. It’s way more productive and much better for your blood pressure.
Lies must be confronted.
Mona is giving him some competition for the award this year.
She’s also a damned liar.
You can’t be talking to me although I occasionally respond. I don’t take him seriously enough to let him get under my skin, and my blood pressure is right in the middle of the normal range. There is also the fact that silence is frequently and wrongly interpreted as agreement.
Love it when they go over the top like that.
V. amused.
I don’t elect presidents hoping they will be ‘constrained’ and presidents don’t appoint cabinets for that purpose either.
Nor do I elect Democrats hoping they will constrain my preferred president (all but guaranteed to be a Republican).
This is because I am a conservative and want conservative policies (or better, lack of policies) to be in force so that my country is not hobbled, hamstrung, or humbled.
Edit: Closed rogue parenthesis.
I haven’t read all of the Supreme Court justice threads, so I don’t know if this has already been covered. Is anyone else complaining that Trump appears to be using a criterion that we were taking Biden to task for just a few months ago? That is, his selection must have a certain set of genitalia? Fortunately, Trump’s choice of female justices seem to have more qualifications than the selection pool Biden was left with when he declared that his vice president choice had to be a woman. Just nominate the best person for the job.
I agree, but I don’t see how it could go any other way.
Yes.
I don’t know. The list I saw had several men on it, but that might be the list for any as opposed to this particular spot.
I’ll grant that the most likely picks are women but I don’t have a problem with that.
I would also argue that picking a woman here for tactical reasons* is better than doing it for pandering reasons but YMMV.
*Said reasons being that a woman held the seat, so it might be easier to confirm a woman, and the opportunity to display leftist hypocrisy. Or get them to admit that the way one thinks is the most important part of the process.
True. There are political realities to contend with. I’ll take small comfort that Biden had the additional condition that his choice had to be a minority. So his choice was sexist and racist while Trump’s is just sexist.
If someone lies on a comment thread, and no one acknowledges it, does it make a sound?
If it is not challenged with facts, how many readers will believe the lie?
Did Cocaine Mitch, AKA “Apex Predator”, lean on her a bit?
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/09/23/lisa-murkowski-reverses-position-on-filling-scotus-vacancy-wont-rule-out-vote-to-confirm-n958661
At Instapundit they were speculating that the pressure was coming from the voters. Either way works for me.
Or her constituents laid down the law. Or both.
Maybe, but that’s a pretty hefty burden for the lurkers and the less-attentive to bear.
Lies unchallenged can reach many low-information voters. I’ve run into too many conservatives who believe all the garbage spewed forth about our President because they consume mainstream news. It’s time we stopped pretending that nobody could believe their lies, because too many do.
Essentially, we need to stop thinking that our fellow citizens are smart enough to separate truth from lie. The media is too powerful, and has effectively brainwashed the populace into never questioning anything it says.
I don’t understand. Those are the people I’m concerned about. You have to hit them before the Trump-hate establishes itself, because it’s nearly impossible to deprogram a Never.
Indeed. Maybe sometimes it’s a plus when someone is desperate to hold onto their cushy job.
It’s been depressing to discover just how true this is.
I just meant that assuming agreement from someone who doesn’t speak up one way or the other puts them in a difficult position. Do you (or @django, who made the original comment) assume that every member who doesn’t vigorously refute Gary’s assertions believes or agrees with them?
Charlotte: “You should comment like a responsible adult.”
Me: “OMG UR NOT MY MOM!!!!!!11”
I’ve probably been around long enough that I know where most of the regular posters stand. It’s the people who have memberships here and never post anything . . . those people, you don’t know if they’ll be taken in.
Also, when Ricochet posts get main-feeded and highlighted on Instapundit, there are a whole bunch of non-members who are going to read it. Outside these walls, Ricochet has a reputation for being a NeverTrumper site, and in any associated Instapundit thread, you can find the people who automatically reject a Ricochet post and call us all NeverTrumpers. I have frequently attempted to correct them and invite them to go beyond the paywall. Ricochet could get more members that way. (But probably not the members Ricochet wants. I mean, this place hosts some rather Trump-hating podcasts, and it’s no wonder it’s got that bad reputation.)
Go to your room.