By Steve BermanIt’s a given that modern Marxists-parading-as-liberals not only oppose actual conservatives, but also believe them to be evil incarnate. Therefore, no bounds of political “Geneva convention” rules apply to their tactics. This has been true since the red-baiting days of the 1950s. In the last 100 years, social experimenters and red revolutionists have always been able to count on the Supreme Court to enable their schemes–a Court bent toward inventing “penumbras” and “emanations” that exist nowhere in the text or the intent of the nation’s founders, or those who repaired this country after our devastating civil war.
In the last few years, however, a new era of the Court has made itself apparent. The excesses of the left have been steadily rolled back, while the textual, plain meaning of laws has been placed at the root and center of the Justices reasoning. And the Democrats, along with their mainstream media mouthpieces, are losing their minds over it.
President Biden intends to defy the Court on his unconstitutional effort to hand a trillion dollar payout to college-educated voters in exchange for political fealty:
I believe that the Court’s decision to strike down our student debt relief plan is wrong.
But I will stop at nothing to find other ways to deliver relief to hard-working middle-class families. My Administration will continue to work to bring the promise of higher education to every American.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/06/30/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-supreme-court-decision-on-student-loan-debt-relief/
The media has painted the decision to end openly racist policies of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, which prevented Asian and white candidates from admission by applying incredibly difficult double-standards based on their skin color and heritage. They called that “affirmative action” but it’s just plain racism. The Court was right to end it, and force these schools to rely on other means to make their quota-based reality happen–if that’s even possible. (Harvard has a history of keeping Jews out. It’s no secret.)
This AP headline accurately sums up the past year: “In 370 days, Supreme Court conservatives dash decades of abortion and affirmative action precedents.”
Why is this true? Because as president, Donald Trump stood by his appointments. It’s that simple.
This goes back to the end of Barack Obama’s term. Many Democrats were urging Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to retire at 80 years old so Obama could replace her. Though the media has tried to downplay RBG’s narcissism to remain to the death (and she did), the fact remains that the Senate would have been forced to replace at least one Justice after Antonin Scalia’s death, if RBG’s seat were also empty. As it happened, Trump got two nominations: Scalia’s replacement Neil Gorsuch, and Anthony Kennedy’s (when he retired in 2018) Brett Kavanaugh.
Democrats wailed at the GOP-controlled Senate’s failure to confirm Obama’s nominee, whose political feathers are now in full plumage, Merrick Garland, Biden’s Attorney General. But the precedent of the Senate keeping its own timetable had been set in 1829, when John Quincy Adams nominated John J. Crittenden. The Senate simply postponed its vote, voting 23-17 to explicitly do nothing. That nomination lapsed and President Andrew Jackson nominated John McLean, who was approved.
The Senate tried its “postpone” trick with Jackson in early 1835. Jackson simply re-nominated Roger B. Taney again after the elections flipped the Senate to a more politically friendly composition. Politics and Supreme Court nominations had been intertwined for 189 years when then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell let Garland’s nomination twist in the wind.
Without a majority, the best Democrats could do, when faced with Kavanaugh’s nomination (Gorsuch was a gimme, really), is try their time-honored tradition of Borking. President Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Bork in 1987. Bork was one of the most prominent originalist jurists at the time, and Democrats were not about to have him. They went out of their way to vilify him (in fact, the Oxford Language Dictionary defines “borking” to mean “obstruct (someone, especially a candidate for public office) by systematically defaming of vilifying them”).
The Borker-in-chief in 1987 was a comparatively-spry then-Senator Joe Biden. Of course, Democrats controlled the Senate 55-45 in Reagan’s second term. Biden’s “gross mischaracterization” of Bork provided enough political capital for the Senate to deny the nomination outright 42-58. Later, the Senate approved Anthony Kennedy 97-0, after Reagan’s next pick, Douglas Ginsburg (no relation to RBG), withdrew after revelations he smoked weed at Harvard. The rebuke against Reagan was political. Trump never cared about rebukes, and by the time Brett Kavanaugh was nominated, emboldened Democrats felt they could pressure any nominee into withdrawing or simply discredit them politically to the point where they are defeated.
Who is going to thank Donald Trump for sticking with Kavanaugh in the face of what is arguably the most libelous smear campaign in the history of SCOTUS nomination politics? I mean, seriously, the New York Times wrote that Kavanaugh’s high school yearbook was “Horrible, Hurtful’ to a Woman It Named.” The pressure was intense to the point of individuals plotting to do harm to Kavanaugh and his family. Were it not for Kavanaugh’s perseverance and Trump’s ability to absorb massive amounts of criticism, there’s no way Trump’s third nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, would ever have been discussed, never mind voted on during an election year.
Instead of the Senate putting Trump in his place, regarding SCOTUS nominees, it happened the other way around. Barrett was confirmed 52-48 a little more than a month before the election. It was Trump’s standing by Kavanaugh in 2018, the the subsequent shame Democrats endured for their over-the-top no-holds-barred tactics, that put the fear in them to try to do the same to Barrett so close to an election.
Say what you will about Trump–and I have had a lot to say about him, just about all of it dealing with his massive character flaws and toxicity–he did what no president in the last 70 years could do. In one term, Trump flipped a court that was the toy of Marxist leftists in expanding their social engineering schemes into an originalist, nearly textualist, body of jurisprudence. That court has, in 370 days, reversed the horrible Roe v. Wade decision, blocked state overreach in compelling speech against conscience from Christians who personally believe Biblical entreaties against the homosexual lifestyle, stopped federal agencies from exercising fiefdom over citizens, kept the Biden administration from acting like a monarchy, and put a stop to racial profiling by elite colleges.
Now Democrats will say SCOTUS is evil for the next 15 years. Someone should thank Trump.
Follow Steve on Twitter @stevengberman.
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