Rush Limbaugh: What if Holder’s resigning because Obama wants him on the Supreme Court?

See, this is how a master scares his audience. When an amateur like me tries to do it, it tends to devolve into lame “Romney 2016? trolling. As if Romney isn’t, relatively speaking, the most appealing RINO in the field. (Seriously, would you prefer Jeb Bush or Chris Christie?)

That said, I am and will forever remain proud of how effective my many “Huckabee 2016?” posts have been in getting readers to pee their pants. Rush may be a master but I’m at least semi-pro.

After you perform your six years of government service, you then retire to the private sector and get paid off for it. People hire you who are grateful for what you did or you go back to your law firm where you are a rainmaker, don’t even have to do any work.

They put your name on the letterhead, on the door, and you attract clients and get a percentage of what walks in the door. There is any number of ways this can happen. But there’s also another possibility regarding Eric Holder. I just want you to prepare yourself. It may happen. We still have two years to go.

There may be a Supreme Court vacancy, and I can see Barack Obama nominating Eric Holder to fill it, and it would be much easier for Eric Holder to make the jump from private sector law firm rainmaker after six years at DOJ to the Supreme Court, than from DOJ straight to the Supreme Court. I don’t know how much that would matter, but don’t rule any of that out. I don’t think there’s any scandal. I don’t think it’s Fast and Furious. I don’t think he’s worried about the Republicans investigating anything if they win the Senate.

Making the jump directly from the DOJ to SCOTUS would be a headache because Holder would have to recuse himself for the first few years from ruling on federal prosecutions he oversaw as Attorney General. (Elena Kagan, who served as Solicitor General, had a similar problem.) That’s why Rush is imagining a few years in private practice for Holder; the cases he supervised at Justice could work their way through the system in the interim and then he could be appointed with a clean slate.

Any chance this could happen, then? If nothing else, it would be a master stroke of presidential trolling for O to send a guy who was held in contempt by the Republican House into a confirmation battle with a newly Republican Senate. Holder is so despised by righties, though, that it’s hard to imagine any GOPers voting to confirm, even the squishes like Murkowksi, Collins, and Kirk. Obama could nominate him anyway, expecting that he’ll be blocked; that would be a nice GOTV play for his base ahead of 2016. (“The GOP voted down the would-be third black justice in American history!”) But … why would Holder subject himself to that after battling Republicans for six years? Hard to believe he’d willingly endure the ignominy of being voted down in front of the country just to help Democrats with a campaign talking point, especially since his nomination would give the media an excuse to revisit his most dubious moments as AG — starting with his investigation of reporters like James Rosen. Besides, as a Twitter pal pointed out to me, Holder’s set to turn 64 in a few months. You might get 20 years out of him as a Supreme Court justice. Why not appoint a much younger liberal if you’re O and aim for a 40-year tenure? As much as lefties enjoy how Holder drives the right nuts, longevity on the Court is worth way more to them than annoying the GOP.

Having said all that, though, I understand and appreciate the appeal of “could [hated liberal] end up on the Court?” arguments. I’ve made ‘em myself in the past about Bill and Hillary Clinton, both of whom are also too old now to be viable SCOTUS nominees. In fact, my very favorite entry in this genre was this 2010 op-ed by Jeffrey Rosen wondering if Obama might not appoint … himself to the Court. Not going to happen, needless to say — but imagine if Hillary gets elected in 2016 and then Ginsburg finally steps down. The One will be just 55 years old on Inauguration Day 2017. There’s precedent for presidents joining the Court too, per William Howard Taft. I bet there’d even be a few Senate Republicans who’d vote to confirm him purely on grounds that a Harvard Law grad who was twice elected by American voters to the country’s highest office is qualified to join the Court, notwithstanding any ideological objections. If you want to worry about a big name being appointed to fill a vacancy, I’d worry less about Holder and more about O down the line. How’s that for masterful SCOTUS-related trolling, eh?

While you try to compose yourselves, via RCP, here’s the new host of “Meet the Press” reflecting on how remarkably non-political Eric Holder was as AG.

ERIC HOLDER'S CAREER: Scandals, activism and race politics

Eric Holder is the fourth-longest-serving attorney general in U.S. history and has attracted more than his share of scandal.

1995 – Holder told the Woman's National Democratic Club that the DOJ would soon launch a public campaign to 'really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way ... in the way in which we changed our attitudes about cigarettes.'

January 2001 – As deputy attorney general, Holder interceded with President Clinton and advised him to pardon Marc Rich, a substantial campaign donor and 20-year fugitive, in a tax-evasion and racketeering case. Clinton granted the pardon during his final hours in office.

Eric Holder also pushed and got from Clinton a controversial presidential pardon for 16 members of violent Puerto Rican nationalist organizations. Holder, as deputy attorney general, pressed subordinates to drop objections to clemency for a group of terrorists convicted of numerous heinous crimes. Overall, they had been linked by the FBI to more than 130 bombings, several armed robberies, six slayings and hundreds of injuries.

February 2009 – Holder was confirmed as attorney general by a 75-21 margin in the U.S Senate and became America's first black attorney general.

February 2009 – A newly minted AG Holder said during a speech marking Black History Month that the U.S. was 'essentially a nation of cowards' on race-relations. He said in January 2014 that 'I would not take that back.

May 2009 – Holder stunned legal watchers by decided to try a terror-bombing suspect in civilian courts instead of giving him a military tribunal at the Guantanamo Bay detention complex. Ahmed Ghailani, indicted for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies which killed 12 Americans and 212 others, became the first Guantanamo prisoner brought to U.S. soil for a trial.

November 2009 – Following an Islamist Army doctor's jihad-related mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas, Holder's DOJ classified the casualties as the result of 'workplace violence' instead of opening a terrorism case.

April 2010 – Holder personally OK'ed search warrants demanding the secret collection of emails belonging to Fox News Channel reporter James Rosen. The DOJ wanted to track the source of a national security leak without Rosen being aware he was being surveilled.

May 2011 – Holder testified under oath during a congressional hearing that he hadn't heard about the failed 'gunwalking' program Operation Fast and Furious until one month earlier. A memo later surfaced from 2010 showing that Holder had been briefed on the program, which lost track of nearly 2,000 guns that killed hundreds including an American border patrol agent.

June 2012 – Congress voted to hold Holder in contempt, an unprecedented move, for refusing to turn over the Fast and Furious documents that a Republican-led committee had subpoenaed.

November 2013 – a Texas Republican congressman filed Articles of Impeachment against Holder but only attracted 26 cosponsors for the bill.

March 2014 – Holder declined Republicans' demands to appoint an independent Special Prosecutor to probe allegations that IRS officials politically targeted conservative groups with intrusive investigations. Instead he endorsed the work of a DOJ lawyer who was an Obama campaign donor.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2769620/US-Attorney-General-Eric-Holder-resign.html#ixzz3EMoJFnqp

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