Posted on 09/22/2020 4:52:19 AM PDT by Kaslin
President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are on the cusp of making history.
With Trump having named two justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, they have an opening to elevate a third justice to fill the seat of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, thereby securing the constitutionalism of the court for a generation.
Trump and McConnell need only persuade 50 of the 53 Senate Republicans to vote to confirm the nominee Trump says he will send up at week's end, following the days of mourning for Ginsburg.
Two Republican senators, however, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have said that they will not vote to confirm a justice nominated this close to a presidential election.
Yet, if Trump appoints a qualified female jurist, as he has pledged to do, and she passes muster in the Judiciary Committee, would four GOP senators really collude with Chuck Schumer's Democratic Caucus to kill that Republican nominee and risk having President Joe Biden fill the seat?
A Senate vote to reject a Republican nominee, in which Republican senators cast the decisive votes, would demoralize and divide the party on election eve and betray a cause for which some have fought for 50 years. It is hard to conceive of a greater act of political treason.
Many Republican presidents made strides toward recapturing the court after the radical rampage of the Earl Warren era. None achieved it. Three of Richard Nixon's four picks went south on Roe v. Wade, and Justice Harry Blackmun authored the abominable decision.
Gerald Ford's lone nominee, Justice John Paul Stevens, went left as soon as he went up. While Ronald Reagan nominated Antonin Scalia, his other choices, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy, became "swing votes." George H. W. Bush picked David Souter and Clarence Thomas, with the latter's constitutionalism canceled out by the former's liberalism.
But today, the hour of Trump's triumph may be at hand, and the stark panic on the left testifies to it.
Mobs are forming outside McConnell's home in Kentucky. Former Attorney General Eric Holder threatens that if Republicans confirm a justice this year, a Democratic Senate will cancel out its victory by "packing" the courts. Rep. Joe Kennedy III says that if McConnell prevails in 2020, "We pack the court in 2021." Radicals are threatening to take to the streets and burn the country down if a Trump nominee is elevated.
Let them try.
When FDR, after his landslide reelection, sought to pack the court by increasing the number of justices in 1937, the result was a national recoil and a political rout that cost him 72 House seats in 1938.
Republican senators have to bite the bullet on this one and vote on whomever Trump nominates before this session of Congress ends.
And, in this battle, there is no room for conscientious objectors.
Even "Never Trumpers" and Republicans for Biden have to take a stand. For if they play a role in killing Trump's nominee, and Biden wins in November, they will have helped to turn the Supreme Court over to leftist Democrats who will fill both the Ginsburg seat and that of Justice Stephen Breyer, 82, and hold the court for years.
Consider the issues that the new nominee will decide.
The cause of right to life. Affirmative action. Religious freedom. Immigration. Gun rights. All could be lost if the opportunity to fill the Ginsburg seat is forfeited by Republican defectors. The 50-year struggle to recapture the Supreme Court would be over.
Are there Republicans who would really walk away from this last, best chance to secure the court, simply because the process offends their sense of proper procedure?
This may be a hard vote for Murkowski, Collins and a few other Republicans. But to vote down a qualified conservative nominee, on the eve of a presidential election, would amount to a crippling blow to their party and to their reputations within that party.
It is said there is not time enough to get the vote done responsibly.
Nonsense. Gerald Ford's choice of John Paul Stevens went through in 19 days. Only 49 days lapsed between the nomination of Ginsburg and her confirmation.
Of the nominees to the Supreme Court, those who have been brutalized worst in the last 50 years were all Republican appointees: Clement Haynsworth in 1970, Robert Bork in 1987, Clarence Thomas in 1991 and Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.
No Democratic nominee has been savaged like these four federal court judges. And for Biden to condone a relentless partisan attack on a qualified female judge would seem to be risking the women's vote in 2020.
Assume that Amy Coney Barrett, Catholic jurist and mother of seven, is nominated. Would fellow Catholic Joe Biden demand that his Democratic colleagues reject Barrett because she might be a vote against Roe v. Wade, which Joe now enthusiastically champions?
What’s it take for Dems to be able to add more judges to scotus??
Or either party? Ever?
Just curious
Trump will win but like I said just curious
Alright. I’m also a LITTLE but concerned
Sorry
why is there NEVER punishment for Collins, Romney
and the other backstabbers????
NO Accountability in Congress. EVER.
FDR packed the court from 5 to 9. It could happen again.
What would be the punishment? No supper? Losing their seats to a Democrat and losing the majority?
Maybe once upon a time there was a Democrat that was better than the Republican choice. That time is long gone. They have lost their minds and even a rino is better than a Democrat.
we are not going to get a conservative out of a moderate at best state.
It was like voting for Rudy in nyc. He’s not a conservative but my God compared to de Blasio and Bloomberg he looks like the best political figure ever in New York history
No mention of Mitt Romney?
Does anyone really believe that Mitt Romney would pass a chance like this to stick his thumb in Trump’s eye?
Romney doesn’t care how important this nomination is to the future of this country. He will block this appointment for simple spite.
House and Senate pass a law, President signs it. Just like any other law.
That didn’t really answer my question. I knew it wasn’t in the Constitution. So a president just decides he wants more pics and then sends it to the Senate?
Thank you for your first reply.
Not much of a helpful answer either but thanks. I’ll go read it on Google
“The Constitution says nothing about how many Supreme Court justices are required.
FDR packed the court from 5 to 9”
************************************************
First sentence is true. But the expansion to 9 seats happened back in the 19th century. FDR tried but failed to expand it further.
Hey, I’m curious. They need 51 to confirm. ‘No’s’ are obviously are against but let’s say Murkowski and Collins vote ‘present.’ How does that affect the votes needed? Do they count the same or is the number required to confirm lowered?
A democrat president and both houses of congress can change the number of justices. All it ever took was the political will to do it. There can be no questioning that they now have the will and will pack the court the next time they have control. We might as well fight the civil war now with a strong leader than to wait until the dems have the chance to implement their plans.
https://www.thoughtco.com/how-many-supreme-court-justices-are-there-104778
Barrett is Catholic? What about Lagoa? I’m concerned about Roberts bending ears and influencing.
Actually they only need a simple majority, so if those two vote present they only need 48-47 and they win.
They just need a majority, so if some senators don’t vote or just vote “present” then those votes don’t count. If all dissenting republicans just vote “present” then they just need 47 “yes” votes since the vice-president will then brake the tie.
“FDR packed the court from 5 to 9.”
FDR tried to increase it beyond 9.
It’s too important to our republic to chance this Supreme Court seat to an election since elections can be fickle.
I believe near 100% that Trump will win on election night but I also believe near 100% that the Democrats will try once again to steal the election with fraudulent mail-in votes and political activist judges like RBG was.
Romney is the new McCain. Appeasing everyone on all sides, with a priority on virtue signaling, and totally gutless.
I've thought for a long time that if Republican presidents had made better Supreme Court choices we wouldn't be in the mess we're in. Sigh. And as far as I can remember, no Democrat president has every accidently nominated a conservative.
Should Trump lose the election with out filling the vacant seat, the Republic would certainly fall given that Biden would name a left loon. Now because the departed justice was a left loon, one would assume no harm no foul but Thomas is unlikely to survive a Biden(even typing the words make me cringe) term leading to the fall of the Republic. Just sayin.
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