By Mike Huckabee
September 22, 2020
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"Nine seems to be a good number. It’s been that way for a long time...I’ve heard that there are some people on the Democratic side who would like to increase the number of judges. I think that was a bad idea when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to pack the Court.”
So said Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg in an NPR interview on July 24, 2019.
Democrats are now threatening to pack the Court with as many as four more justices; it seems they have no problem going against RBG on this, while using her name as a pretext for doing it.
As reported by NPR, she also dictated a statement to her granddaughter in her last days saying it was her “most fervent wish” that she “not be replaced until a new President is installed.” Ah, but this time, Democrats consider RBG’s wishes sacrosanct.
And they ignore something she’d previously said: “...the President is elected for four years, not three. So the powers that he has in year three continue into year four...and that’s how it should be.”
Never mind the confusion created by these very different versions of what she said she wanted, let alone the idea that someone’s deathbed wish should override the Constitution. And what did she mean by “new President”? “New,” as in “different”? Did she mean that if Trump is re-elected, we should hold her seat open till the “new” President takes office in 2025? That sure is a long time to struggle on with a tie-prone 8-member court. Just getting through the next few months that way would be a nightmare, given the inevitable election challenges.
Times sure have changed. As I said on Sean Hannity’s TV show Monday night, it was Sen. Harry Reid who “threw the match in the gas can” in 2013, when he killed the filibuster for judicial appointments. He was told at the time that it would come back to bite, and now it has. Thank God we have a President who won’t be intimidated and will do his duty, and I pray the Senate will do the same. I also wish we had some real journalism going on; then people would know that proceeding with nomination and confirmation of a new justice under these circumstances is constitutional and customary.
Andrew C. McCarthy, writing in NATIONAL REVIEW, makes the same point I did over the weekend --- that what happens now really all comes down to politics. One party will do what it calculates it has the power to do, given the anticipated political fallout.
As McCarthy points out, there was nothing wrong with President Obama nominating Merrick Garland for Supreme Court Justice, just as there was nothing wrong with Sen. Mitch McConnell’s Senate majority blocking that nomination. It’s all constitutional. The rest –- all the “outrage” –- is pure politics.
McCarthy worries, though, that Republicans’ push to confirm before the election may make it harder for Trump to win against enraged Democrats, as it motivates them even more. I don’t know about that. At the risk of sounding like Chandler Bing from FRIENDS, could Democrats BE more enraged? Republicans could smile and nod and confess to deep-seated racism and capitalist greed and cave to everything the left wanted, no matter how insane and unconstitutional, and they’d still move the goalposts and find more reasons to be enraged. It would never end. Republicans have the opportunity to make this appointment, it’s perfectly constitutional, and they must take advantage of it, just as the Democrats absolutely would. Case closed.
Sen. Lindsay Graham said on Hannity’s show that “we’re gonna move forward in the [Judiciary] committee, we’re gonna report the nomination out of the committee to the floor of the United States Senate, so we can vote before the election. That’s the constitutional process.”
Why so determined? “After Kavanaugh, everything changed with me,” he said. “They’re not gonna intimidate me, Mitch McConnell or anybody else...We’re gonna have a process that you’ll be proud of, a nominee who’s gonna be supported by every Republican in the Judiciary Committee, and WE’VE GOT THE VOTES TO CONFIRM THE JUDGE [emphasis mine] on the floor of the Senate before the election. And that’s what’s coming.”
Trump says he'll announce his choice on Friday or Saturday. Senators know it'll be Judge Amy Coney Barrett, who reportedly met with the President on Monday, or one of several other women on his shortlist (which he, unlike Biden, has revealed).
So this is apparently happening. Get ready to hear a lot more threats about packing the Court as “payback” for doing what the Senate absolutely has the constitutional right and, arguably, obligation to do.
REASON has a must-read (cautionary) article that outlines the various power-grabs the Democrats intend to make as soon as they are able. What everyone needs to understand is this: IF THEY GAIN POWER, THEY WILL DO THESE THINGS WHETHER TRUMP WAS ABLE TO GET HIS NOMINEE CONFIRMED OR NOT. For this reason, no matter what else happens, Biden and the Democrat ticket absolutely must not win. I cannot say this strongly enough. If they do, the America we love will be largely over. Republicans have to win in such a landslide that there’s nothing Democrats can do after November 3 to upset the process and the will of the electorate.
Author Josh Blackman agrees with Jeffrey Toobin in the NEW YORKER that these changes are not only good payback but “good policy as well.” He’s all for 1) the complete elimination of the filibuster, 2) statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, with two new senators for each (“an appropriate rejoinder”), 3) adding to the number of lower-court judges, and 4) adding to the number of SCOTUS justices (“the greatest and most appropriate form of retribution”).
"If Republicans succeed in stealing two seats,” he writes (note his choice of the word “stealing”), “the Scalia and Ginsburg vacancies, the Democrats could simply pass a law that creates two or three more seats on the Supreme Court." He likens this to playing a game of hardball.
See how the “game” is rationalized? (Again, they really don’t care what RBG would think of adding seats.) I brought up this article to get you into leftists’ heads and show you what they have planned. Clearly, they intend to do these things whether Trump gets his way on a new justice or not.
Permalink: https://www.mikehuckabee.com/2020/9/democrats-would-pack-court-regardless-given-the-chance
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