Posted on 11/29/2017 9:59:26 PM PST by TigerClaws
Why would Christian conservatives in good conscience go to the polls Dec. 12 and vote for Judge Roy Moore, despite the charges of sexual misconduct with teenagers leveled against him?
Answer: That Alabama Senate race could determine whether Roe v. Wade is overturned. The lives of millions of unborn may be the stakes.
Republicans now hold 52 Senate seats. If Democrats pick up the Alabama seat, they need only two more to recapture the Senate, and with it the power to kill any conservative court nominee, as they killed Robert Bork.
Today, the GOP, holding Congress and the White House, has a narrow path to capture the Third Branch, the Supreme Court, and to dominate the federal courts for a decade. For this historic opportunity, the party can thank two senators, one retired, the other still sitting.
The first is former Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
In 2013, Harry exercised the “nuclear option,” abolishing the filibuster for President Obama’s judicial nominees. The Senate no longer needed 60 votes to confirm judges. Fifty-one Senate votes could cut off debate, and confirm.
Iowa’s Chuck Grassley warned Harry against stripping the minority of its filibuster power. Such a move may come back to bite you, he told Harry. Grassley is now judiciary committee chairman.
And this year a GOP Senate voted to use the nuclear option to shut down a filibuster of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, who was then confirmed with 55 votes.
Yet the Democratic minority still had one card to play to block President Trump’s nominees — the “blue slip courtesy.”
If a senator from the state where a federal judicial nominee resides asks for a hold on proceedings, by not returning a blue slip, the judiciary committee has traditionally honored that request and not held hearings.
Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota used the blue slip to block the Trump nomination of David Stras of Minnesota to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Franken calls Stras too ideological, too conservative.
But Grassley has now decided to reject the blue slip courtesy for appellate court judges, since their jurisdiction is not just over a single state like Minnesota, but over an entire region.
Thus have the skids been greased for a conservative recapture of the federal judiciary unseen since the early days of FDR.
Eighteen of the 179 seats on the U.S. appellate courts and 119 of the 677 seats on federal district courts are already open. More will be opening up. No president in decades has seen the opportunity Trump has to remake the federal judiciary.
Not only are the federal court vacancies almost unprecedented, a GOP Senate and Trump are working in harness to fill them before January 2019, when a new Congress is sworn in.
If Republicans blow this opportunity, it is unlikely to come again. For the Supreme Court has seemed within Republican grasp before, only to have it slip away because of presidential errors.
Nixon had four nominees to the Supreme Court confirmed and Gerald Ford saw his nominee, John Paul Stevens, unanimously confirmed. But of those five justices confirmed from 1969 to 1976, Stevens and Harry Blackmun joined the liberal bloc, and Chief Justice Warren Burger and Lewis Powell voted for Roe v. Wade.
Of Reagan’s three Supreme Court nominees confirmed, Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy cast crucial votes in 5-4 decisions to defeat the strict constructionists led by Antonin Scalia.
George H.W. Bush named Clarence Thomas to the court, but only after he had elevated David Souter, who also joined the liberal bloc.
Hence, both Trump, by whom he nominates, and a Republican Senate, with its power to confirm with 51 votes, are indispensable if we are to end judicial dictatorship in America.
And 2018 is the crucial year.
While Democrats, with 25 Senate seats at risk, would seem to be facing more certain losses than the GOP, with one-third as many seats at stake, history teaches that the first off-year election of Trump could prove a disaster.
Consider. Though Ike ended the Korean War in his first year, he lost both Houses of Congress in his second. Reagan enacted one of the great tax cuts in history in his first year, and then lost 26 seats in the House in his second.
Bill Clinton lost control of both the House and Senate in his first off-year election. Barack Obama in 2010 lost six Senate seats and 54 seats and control of the House. And both presidents were more popular than Trump is today.
If the election in Virginia this year is a harbinger of what is to come, GOP control of Congress could be washed away in a tidal wave in 2018.
Hence, this coming year may be a do-or-die year to recapture the Third Branch of Government for conservatism.
Which is why that Dec. 12 election in Alabama counts.
Pat ran on Trump's campaign platform against George H.W. Bush. He was certainly right about NAFTA.
NYT Headline: O WOE! MILLIONS OF WOMEN TO BE PUNISHED WITH BABIES
He’s right on. 25 years ahead of his time. Goldwater waited 16 years for Reagan to succeed.
Pat is the only political writer worth reading.
>> If the election in Virginia this year is a harbinger of what is to come...
It’s not. Virginia is pathetic as was the GOP candidate, Gillespie.
Complacency is our only enemy.
Goldwater hated Reagan.
When Buchanan is right, he’s very good.
As usual, Buchanan Bloviates and misses the real point.
Alabama matters because it is a showdown of We The People vs the Uniparty Elites.
Trump 2.0.
Moore looks very well worth voting for!
especially to prevent another leftie D from getting in there
I do believe the Senate and the judicial nominations are crucial.
One thing that screwed the Right, is Ryan and McConnell refusing to take advantage of their majority situations, and implement Trump’s agenda.
The public can be forgiven for being somewhat confused. To many it will seem like Trump failed on his major agenda items. We know that he did a lot anyway, but others don’t.
If we do lose the Senate, Mitch McConnell would deserve to be taken out, put in front of a brick wall, and...
Ryan would deserve to fallow along right behind.
These two men have screwed this nation over severely by their refusal to undo Leftist agenda.
This is a once in a 100 year chance to get things done, and these two have acted as an auxiliary defensive front line, while Trump tried to carry the ball over the goal line.
I have never even dreamed of such traitorous actions.
Totally unacceptable.
[[That Alabama Senate race could determine whether Roe v. Wade is overturned.]]
Holy crap- if that is the reason why the GOPe have opposed him so fiercely, then a pox on all their houses!
Stupid.
The Democrats have 25 seats up in 2018, while the Republicans have only 8
It is mathematically impossible that they could take anything
While I agree with the focus on WTP vs the Uniparty Elites, Buchanan touched on very important things.
The Senate majority and the judicial appointments are must haves.
This type of a judicial clean sweep very seldom comes along.
Good appointments will make changes to our judiciary that could last 30 year or more.
Appointing 40-50 year old judges to these courts, would mean they would be 70-80 in thirty years.
Where else can you effect change that will bring sound decisions for that long a period of time?
The SCOTUS is within reach of being protected for many years.
I have to agree with Buchanan here.
Let’s say we do have a clear Conservative majority for the next 30 years on the SCOTUS. The decisions made will carry on for many years after that thirty years.
We’re not just looking at a strong Constitutional court for 30 years. It would be a strong Constitution court for many years after that, as sound rulings were the basis for still further decisions after the 30 years had passed.
This is the ball game. The dems are terrified right now.
Another reason, almost as big: People like Gloria Allred, Mitch McConnell, etc need to learn that libel for political gain is not just wrong, it is also ineffective.
Roy Moore needs to win, and then he needs to file civil lawsuits against those who documentably lied to libel him.
At stake is whether evidence/truth matters. If we give up on truth mattering, we may as well just say that might makes right, because that’s the only “virtue” that can carry the day where truth is irrelevant.
Yes.” Moore, despite the charges of sexual misconduct”
Here we have the new fangled loose and unbridled use of ‘charges’. Unless the accusations are an actual charge re legal allegation they are merely accusations. And any person can accuse someone of any bloody thing.
Goldwater may have been jealous of Reagan’s success. He endorsed Ford in the 1976 primaries. Goldwater can in many ways be called a “RINO” in sharp contrast to his 1964 campaign.
This. GOP #NeverTrumpers are trying to run out the clock on tax reform, immigration reform, and the rest of the Trump agenda, hoping that the House and Senate return to the Democrats.
This is why the Republicans need to act quickly on this important legislation and on judicial nominees.
He was jealous. Unfortunately, as it turned out, Goldwater was more Libertarian than Conservative and had little use for pro-lifer religious Conservatives being brought into the party in the ‘70s and ‘80s. His last two terms in office were a considerable disappointment and a prime example of what happens when a formerly respected individual stays in office far too long. Add to that, he largely embraced the radical homosexual lobby in his final years.
Exactly.
And why they’re trying to tank Moore. They want to be the disloyal opposition.
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