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.
No, Goldwater heartily endorsed Reagan. I remember him saying at the Convention, from the podium, that if Reagan was not elected, the U.S. might not ever have another presidential election.
When he got older and married a liberal woman, he did flip to Liberalism to a certain extent.
https://spectator.org/pro-forma-republicans-vs-roy-moore/
Their are people debating it, however think of this if correct....
* McConnell calls for a Pro-Forma Session before they break for Winter.
* Senator Moore says, no, and calls a voice and calls for recess, now they have to vote on that if I am not mistaken. You think we are going to let them get away with Pro-Forma vs Recess after that? They ( R Senators ) know we are watching them like a hawk.
* It is then that PDJT can make an unkuboko massive appointment of a ton of Judges and who knows who else.
Some of these Judges can become Supreme Court Judges in the future.
They are reaching for the Mylanta IMHO, because more than anything the Swamp doesn't want to another Originalist on the Supreme Court. We are barley 5-4, If Kennedy Retires this spring ( PDJT sent up a slate of another 10 days about a week ago ) we are solidly 5-4. Ginsberg gets sick and or Bryer decides to retire, we would move to strong 7 - 2, with Kagan and the Wise Latina being the only Liberals left on the S.C.
That is the way I see it. This one is for all the marbles. Imagine a case(s) starting ( Like the Texas Sodomy case ) in some small court somewhere that come up through the ranks to challenge Gay Marriage or Rove V Wade. If they left can do it, why can't those decisions be challenged?
And oh yes Senator Moore Will Vote for the Next SC Nominee.
Yes but, we know that some Christian conservatives are so narrow minded that no amount of reason will prevail. Once they decide against sin, there can be no forgiveness nor reasoning.
It is easier just to say “hell no” than to read Pat’s appeal
All for show, he didn’t believe it. Reagan at least “believed” in Goldwater in 1964 when he heartily endorsed him, but the reverse was not true of Goldwater in 1980, or 1976 (when he endorsed a damaged Jerry Ford).
He was always married to “liberal” women. His first wife was a huge mover and shaker for Planned Parenthood going back to the 1940s and was a friend and disciple of Margaret Sanger. He was always pro-abortion and sadly lied to the people of Arizona about it, especially in 1980 when his Democrat opponent was to his right.
He was effectively a Democrat in his last decade or so of life, endorsing Democrats for office, railing against religious Conservatives and embracing the radical homosexual movement.
“...but the reverse was not true of Goldwater in 1980, or 1976 (when he endorsed a damaged Jerry Ford).”
From the Cambridge University Press:
“The Arizonan’s endorsement of Ford provoked a complete break between the two erstwhile friends. Reagan did not correspond with Goldwater again for fifteen months. When he finally did so, Goldwater responded, “It was a pleasure hearing from you and I hope someday the hatchet, if there is a hatchet, can be buried.” They made amends. Goldwater endorsed Reagan in 1980 and continued to support him during Reagan’s two terms in office. For his part, Reagan never invited his former mentor to the White House.”
Other than that, I remember thinking Goldwater jumped off the rails in later life.
In one of his books, when he ended his career, he was the first senator that I know of who warned about the One Worlders, the globalists - New World Order crowd.
A very simplistic description that doesn’t really reflect their relationship. Goldwater couldn’t actively demonstrate a disdain for Reagan running for his last term in 1980. Still, he had alienated enough Conservative votes in Arizona that Reagan outstripped him by a wide margin of 61% to Carter’s paltry 28% (with Reagan losing just one county) while Goldwater got just 49.5% of the vote to pro-lifer Democrat Bill Schulz’s 48.4%, and (embarrassingly) won only 3 counties statewide (1 by a narrow plurality), while Schulz swept the rest.
Unfortunately, time in office began to expose Goldwater’s rotten core. :-(
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