As Lyndon Johnson once said, “Come, let us reason together.” There’s a pattern forming with respect to filling Justice Ginsburg’s seat on the bench which is worth considering. First, Lindsey Graham came out and wildly contradicted himself on his 2016 stance on filling a supreme court vacancy in an election year. Then Mitt Romney surprised everybody with his own hypocrisy, advocating that Trump fill the seat a couple of months after he voted to have Trump removed from office. So where is his God to advise him on “impartial justice” now?
Consider this: maybe the flagrant hypocrisy of these senators and the desperation that Mitch McConnell displays to immediately fill the seat is because doing so efficiently accomplishes two massively important things: One, it satisfies Trump’s base, and all shades of conservatives, by getting a Biden-proof lock, 6-3, on the Supreme Court and two — and this is the biggy — it gives the GOP the opportunity to cut Donald Trump loose, finally. McConnell knows Trump is losing and he’s fine with it now, because Trump has served the purpose for which he was designed and now he can be disposed of. He’s not only fine with Trump losing, he doesn’t give a damn. He just wants Trump to serve one last function for him.
The trade off in nominating Trump from the beginning was put up with the buffoon of all buffoons as the GOP standard bearer because it served the higher institutional purpose of stacking the courts. Now, there’s a chance to both control the Supreme Court and be rid of Trump, and a deliriously happy Mitch McConnell isn’t letting any grass grow under his feet.
Imagine him on Friday, when Justice Ginsburg passed, contemplating the deliciousness of of the scenario that fate brought him, kill two birds with one stone; get rid of Trump’s raison d’etre by filling the seat, and you get rid of Trump. Poof. Because there is no question that the 2016 GOP, fractured as it was, was galvanized by the prospect of Trump winning so he could pick the next Supreme Court justice. And if he does that now, pre-election — then there’s no reason to reelect him, now is there? The Bulwark:
But if Trump does make his pick and McConnell does push the choice through the Senate, his coalition of traditional conservatives and populist nationalists will likely dissolve. Gone will be the fear that a Democratic president will appoint a justice who will swing the Court so far to the left that gay marriage will be mandatory and abortions will be performed at Costco.
In effect, by making a pick, Trump may be rendering himself obsolete in November.
According to an August Pew poll, 64 percent of registered voters said they consider Supreme Court appointments to be a top issue, trailing only the economy (79 percent) and health care (68 percent.) Conservatives who find Trump wholly unfit for the job but currently burn a candle in front of a portrait of Amy Coney Barrett on a nightly basis lose the need for four more years of Trump if Republican-appointed justices hold a bulletproof 6-3 majority on the bench.
“But Coney Barrett” only works if the seat is open in 2021. […]
Many Trump critics will likely see winning the Supreme Court and losing the presidency as a fair tradeoff – a rock-solid conservative Supreme Court was the only reason to vote for him in 2016, so once that’s a done deal, it’s best for the GOP to cut him loose. But it will also impugn the integrity of the Court, poisoning future decisions and turning nomination fights into unwinnable wars of attrition.
The courts have always been the only justification for having Trump’s idiocy and vulgarity stain what little credibility the GOP had left after Bush Lite. But they put up with Trump, because the ends justified the means. The only question now is, will somebody explain to Trump that he’s self immolating by filling the vacancy before the election?
And most probably that won’t take place in any event, in just 39 days, and McConnell is prepared for that eventuality. He just wants the post filled by January 3. But here’s the rub, Mitch: Trump is insane. Once he’s lost and he doesn’t owe you anything, or owe the base anything, plus he’ll be hopping mad at losing, he just might welch on the bet and not fill your SCOTUS seat. Ever think of that?
I would say he must have. McConnell knows as well as we do what a cheat Trump is. So he may cheat the GOP out of their prize. This is a credible possibility.
Lindsey Graham is betting that in ramming through this SCOTUS nomination, he will become the hero of the conservatives and this will get him reelected. He’s going balls to the wall, pledging the support of every judiciary committee member for a nominee that is as yet unseen. The message there is that Graham has given up being a senator and sees his job as more of a mafia consigliere. The Boss (and we’re not talking about Trump) has made it clear he wants a nominee confirmed, Graham will get him a nominee confirmed. Ironically, John McCain used to rail against this kind of precipitous action, calling for “procedure. I just want procedure.” Alas, McCain’s ideals didn’t rub off on Graham, or if they did, it was a quick rinse and not a dye job.
Mitt Romney is safe and so now he’s showing his true colors again, waffling like mad on a position he held was inspired by God just a few short months ago. Or, maybe he does believe his current batshit allegation that the “nation is center-right.” Who knows? What is known about both Graham and Romney and Republicans in general, is that they seek office for power, and power for power’s sake. Say what you will about the Democrats and our fragmentation over issues of ideological purity, we are the party of principle and social conscience.
There’s only one thing for certain: Justice Ginsburg’s death plunged us into a dystopia and anything is possible before the airship of state pulls out of its nosedive and levels off. Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy 43 nights.
They like having power. They don’t like having to share anything.
Jennifer Rubin, who knows these people inside and out, isn’t buying any of that. All McConnell has said is that there will be a vote before the end of the year. Per Rubin, neither before the election (which would put any vulnerable Senators in further peril) nor after (which would set up FURTHER Senate losses in the 2022 midterms) are of any benefit to the GOP. So if this is their plan, it’s a stupid plan.
I think we also need to get over this idea that SCOTUS is any kind of true vehicle for social change. For every Brown Vs. Topeka Board of Education, there’s a hundred Dredd Scott decisions in the court’s history. The real drivers of change run through the executive and legislative branches. This may prove especially true if we get SCOTUS term limits and extra Justices.
Far be it from me to disagree with Jennifer Rubin. I think she’s spot on the vast majority of the time. I would like to know her take on why Graham is bragging about how he’s got all the votes locked down, if not for an immediate vote. What’s the point of what he’s doing, otherwise? What am I not seeing?
What are you not seeing, Ursula? That it’s a bluff. He’s got the votes to let the confirmation hearings go forward, yes. But contrary to popular belief, that does nothing to make the actual confirmation a mortal lock. If we ACT like they are one and the same, however, THAT is how we lose. You can bet your rent money that each of these Senators are going to see how these hearings will play out. And if it’s ugly to put their reelection in peril, they’ll back off.
Rubin reminded me of one other Senator on the Senate Judiciary Committee who will likely get a lot airtime: one Kamala Harris. The GOP push their luck too far, they’re handing the Biden-Harris campaign free publicity that will help worsen Trump’s odds and by extension, their own on the down ballot. With these guys, NEVER think about it in terms of principles or conscience. It’s always what will benefit them personally most.
I am thinking about it only in terms of how it benefits them the most. And to my mind, Graham doing this, and Joni Ernst going along with it, is suicidal — unless they both think that they’re going to look like heroes of the conservative empire for pushing this madness through. And putting the focus on Kamala Harris, in her element on her own turf, I also see as suicidal. So why are they doing it again? They’re bluffing and they’re going to pull back when? The election is in 43 days.
Polling says that people want Biden to fill the seat., so I don’t get what Graham is achieving by being so blatant with his flip flopping.
Red-state voters apparently don’t care about flip-flopping, the end justifies the means, y’all.
They pull back when it’s obvious that it’s not doing a damn thing to improve their polling. I give it a week, maybe two at the outside. This strikes me as a ploy to win back some of those Republicans who have been exiled and are now intent on wrecking their former party in order to save it. Yes, it’s suicide. But when you’re THIS desperate, any play looks good, even when…maybe ESPECIALLY when your other options suck this bad.
The question is whether as our VP nominee she will take part in the hearing. Think about it because there are pluses and minuses to her doing so. I can’t remember off the top of my head who it was but there was a hearing not long ago where she didn’t join in even virtually by videophone.
Oh, come now, Denis, you think Kamala is going to miss out on this one? It’d be one of those times I could see her making an exception, due to its importance.
This made me LOL: Once he’s lost and he doesn’t owe you anything, or owe the base anything, plus he’ll be hopping mad at losing, he just might welch on the bet and not fill your SCOTUS seat. Ever think of that?
I have from the very beginning, actually. I so get tired of people mistaking Trump for a regular GOP politician. His consistent characteristic in all his personal dealings is betrayal. The Republicans will be no different.
God, I want to see him set McConnell up for a big win and then betray him. Oh, what catharsis that would be.
Stay tuned, Ursula…it’s coming in one form or another.
The problem is that his anger at rejection will go beyond the GOP and towards the whole country, especially if the GOP loses the Senate. I don’t doubt for a second he’s the type who would do a “take that motherfuckers” to the GOP but given what a solidly conservative SCOTUS would do, the benefits that would acrue to his business and so on his rage might cause him to not properly factor in his legal jeopardy and he might give a “take that motherfuckers” to the entire country by allowing his pick to get on to the Court.
See, Denis, now you’re making that mistake I just mentioned. Please stop assuming that his interests in anything but staying out of jail will be on his mind after he takes a loss. His businesses will be ruined beyond repair in the event of such anyway, regardless of who sits on SCOTUS. He will have little to no time for much else outside of an escape plan.
During WWII when he knew the battle for Saipan was lost (a crushing blow to Japan because it set things up for the final battles that would end in the invasion of Japan itself and allow long range bombing in the meantime) the commander of the Japanese troops chose to do the ritual suicide thing out of the honor code they had. But he didn’t leave it there. His last orders to his troops to fight to the death (pretty standard) were left to stand, but that wasn’t the end of it. He told the substantial Japanese civilian population on the island it was THEIR duty to fight (to the death of course) or commit suicide, and even reminded parents of (I can’t recall the Japanese term) the ancient “parents-children death pact” which an appalling number of people carried out in brutal ways. Such as having a group of children form a small circle, pulling the pin on a grenade and tell them to toss it to each other until it exploded. Or bashing baby’s heads out on rocks. Then there were the scenes at Suicide and Banzai Cliffs. Mass suicides.
See where I’m going? History has other examples of those who when faced with complete loss and disgrace have been known to use whatever resources at their disposal to take as many people, even their own with them. Especially military commanders or civilian leaders who felt their people hadn’t fought hard enough to protect THEM – the honcho. So imagine someone with a personality as malignant as Trump’s, the destruction he’s already wrought on this country and our institutions and his fear growing by the day that he will lose causing him to set things up to get as many people as possible to reject the election results. And still getting his ass kicked anyway. I have a decent sense of confidence people will step in if he tries to do full on dictator, especially since the military will refuse to play along. So he will seek out and take every chance to fuck over the entire country. That of course includes sticking us with a Justice who will help SCOTUS roll back a helluva lot more than Roe v Wade. The Federalist Society wants us all the way back to the Lochner decision era complete with the robber barons. Back when women were legally chattel of course those dark skinned people “knew their place.”
I of course think we can keep things from getting THAT bad but it will mean epic fights over a period of decades to do so, or the uproar and fights that would result from expanding the Court. Either way we’d be fucked for a very long time, and that would be the case even if we weren’t trapped in a pandemic that will kill untold hundreds of thousands of Americans (if not more) because of what Trump’s rhetoric and actions have already caused.
Oh, of course he’s going to say any election results that don’t have him winning are fake. His record in reality denial points to nothing else. What’s changed is the number of people willing to go along for that ride. Expect that number to publicly dwindle in the likely event of a Biden win.
At his core, Trump wants OUT. If he wasn’t on the hook for multiple criminal offenses the second he leaves office, he’d already be gone. Couple that with his increasing senility and inability to not tell on himself and I find your historical examples disrespectful to the folks you’re comparing Trump to. We need to face up to the fact that it was a ridiculous POS like this, NOT any criminal mastermind, who reduced us to rubble in four short years.
I have this image of Trump the preschooler with all his GI Joe action figures and his cookie and milk lined up and then scooping it all up and walking off in a huff. LOL
Graham implied that his change of heart was the Democrats’ fault because of the way they treated Kavanaugh. He is using this opportunity to retaliate.
It is a crying shame the the Supreme Court of the United States can ever be characterized as conservative or liberal. It should be characterized as impartial and unbiased. No decision can ever be taken as a fair ruling on the merits. There will always be the taint of partisanship as long as the court is either left or right leaning.
McConnell’s problem with Garland was two-fold. 1) He was an Obama appointee, and McConnell, like Trump, hates Obama. 2) Obama was careful to appoint an impartial and unbiased judge in order to make confirmation easier for the the GOP, but McConnell did not want impartial and unbiased. Garland is impartial and unbiased, and McConnel could not have that.
My problem with the suggestion to expand the court is that the Dem’s implied corollary is that the expansion will consist of all left-leaning judges.
Yeah, well, too bad. As Ms. Piggy famously put it, “I tried to be nice.” At this point, only the cult would have a problem with what Dems are poised to do when they take power again.
No, It is perfectly reasonable for people to want the court to be impartial and unbiased. It is certainly not “the cult.”
No one’s going to be in a reasonable mood for quite some time to come. Best get used to the ideals you espoused being ignored in favors of things you cannot stand.
More’s the pity. That is just the other side of the coin of Trump supporters all in for trump becoming a dictator. The ideals we espouse as patriotic Americans will definitely be ignored in favor of things we cannot stand if Trump manages to stay in the white House.
Interesting thoughts from everyone for me to contemplate.
I tend to agree with Ursula’s take. That MoscowMitch has used Trump as a tool/fool for his machinations as he sees himself as the ultimate power broker, in his head for of rocks at least and will gladly trade a 6-3 advantage over losing the presidency. What exactly that’ll do is give us the presidency, the senate and a larger advantage in the house.
What’s your all’s take on throwing out the filibuster and expanding SCOTUS to either 11 or 13 justices?
For what it’s worth here’s my take. I think it’s imperative Joe and Kamala’s admin throw an atomic bomb on anything and everything, including the filibuster and expansion of SCOTUS. Why? Because everything the admin proposes will be stymied by court battles and when the 2022 midterms roll around voters will pissed and or lackluster and we will lose seats because they won’t see the progress they’ve been promised.
I also don’t believe that it will backfire on us as we move forward because of the changing demographics, Joe getting things done and the fracture of the Republican Party.
While Trump was distracting us he and the Gop were quietly delivering tax cuts to the rich and getting rid of regulations of fossil fuel industries to te rich ownerds of industry….. plus the Supreme Court.
When Susan Collins was in, it was a done deal. I am ready to vote. Also, when mitt didn’t join in to say no, immediately, I knew they had the votes. This is another awful decision, like ramming through kavanaugh. http://www.jobztip.com