As usual, Monday’s post was submitted by Stephen Hall. Thanks, Stephen.
Devoid of a topic and starting to get a headache, I thought perhaps this week I would just settle for a short rant concerning the current Supreme Court nomination and the tactics surrounding such. So I anticipate a brief post this week. Yeah, I know, you don’t believe me, but to be fair . . . I don’t know that I believe me on that point either.
So, a couple Motrin and a couple beers . . . and here we go.
President Trump, for all of his long history of being in bed with leftist New York politicians, though he seemed to have some affinity for Ronald Reagan back in the day, is clearly a populist and not at all a conservative or even a libertarian. I suspect he liked Reagan because of his overwhelming popularity rather than his political stances, just as he cozied up to Democrat politicians when they appeared popular.
However, part of his strategized appeal to woo conservatives to support his populist candidacy was to create a list of reasonably conservative judges from whom he told the conservatives he would choose any Supreme Court nominee.
With an seat open on the Supreme Court during the election, held open by the Senate Republicans, it made the selection of the President more than merely about who would be in charge of the executive branch but also placed the ideological balance of the judicial branch in play in that very same election.
The List was a brilliant, if cynical, ploy by then candidate Trump for bargaining for the support of the conservatives who generally opposed Mr. Trump’s behavior and rightfully suspected his sincerity given his previous political affiliations and populist rhetoric.
Many people on the right, myself included, did not expect him to actually go by the List if he managed to get into office and to pull a bait-and-switch once elected and nominate a liberal Republican not on the list in the name of “moderate”.
I admit that I underestimated the pull of the man’s desire to be a potential two term president, as I suspected he would lose interest in actually doing the job once he had it as had often been the case of his business history.
However, in order to maintain his populist position, and in particular to keep alive his personal ambition of a second season in the limelight, it becomes apparent that he pretty much had to stick to the List, not only for his first nominee, but also when presented with a second opportunity within his first term.
I would caution the reader that if he were to get elected to a second term there would no longer be any leverage to keep President Trump’s nominees to the List, and we might see a potentially more leftist nominee should the occasion arise. However, we may not as it doesn’t seem to be a major point of contention so he might just keep using the List for convenience as it requires less effort on his part.
Which brings us to the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh for the United States Supreme Court and the overblown roll of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary in serving the Senate’s role to “advise and consent” on Presidential appointees.
One can only wonder at the gate-keeping function of the committee as opposed to the vote of the full Senate. Remember that the committee consists of only 21 of the 100 members of the Senate, and their function is really limited to issuing a recommendation to the full Senate regarding the nomination.
Generally speaking if the committee recommends against confirmation, the nomination is typically dead in the water, but by law there is nothing stopping the Senate from confirming a justice in spite of a negative recommendation by the committee. However, it must be noted that the Senate traditionally supports the decision of the committee and it would be extremely unusual for the Senate to contradict its own committee.
As far as the actual work of the committee, you know what they say . . . the platypus was an animal designed by committee. Committees are usually where bills go to be killed, often simply never to be heard from again, as for nominees the same thing can often happen. This control of the legislative committee agenda gives the head of that committee tremendous, and quite unwarranted, power to kill legislation and even nominations by simply not placing the issue on the agenda.
However, this tactic would be intolerable for a Supreme Court nomination as it is way too high profile and garners the public attention. It is this power which Sen. Grassley controls to extend or cut off debate and discussion of the nomination and bring the issue to a head, or more precisely to a vote.
The Committee on the Judiciary becomes far more important when the particular nominee is for the Supreme Court than a meager District Court appointment. When that particular Supreme Court appointment carries the potential to move the center of judicial gravity to the left or the right that appointment takes on increased partisan importance.
It is not that Judge Kavanaugh is the extremist right-wing partisan as which the left wants to paint him, rather he is about middle of the road right wing but he would be replacing a marginally left-leaning justice, which would move the swing vote on questionable issues significantly, though not completely, to the right.
Having lost the legislature, having lost the executive, the left is desperately clinging to their hold on the judiciary and the bureaucracy. Leaving off the leftist corruption of the bureaucracy for another time, the judiciary has been the bulwark of the leftist agenda for almost a hundred years.
With the limited exception of the Roosevelt and Johnson administrations, the left’s agenda has primarily been advanced through the judiciary rather than the legislature, and that is the way the left prefers it. It is not necessary to convince the majority of Americans to buy into the leftist agenda if that agenda can be advanced through a much smaller number of people through he courts.
The elitist left typically holds the common man in contempt, which is why they imagine people will be better off if they just let their superiors take care of them and make decisions for them. The judiciary is the least democratic of the branches of government which is why it appeals to the Democrats so much. For all of their calling for democracy, the last thing they want to do is leave any important issue up to the plurality of the common man.
It is this desperation to hold their judiciary which causes them to fight so hard and so dirty to try to hold on to their position. All of this posturing about Judge Kavanaugh is just a circus, a show for the voters this fall.
The committee member on the left have already announced how they are going to vote, so why bother with more hearings and more delays? On the one hand it keeps Kavanaugh out of the court for another term of the Supreme Court; on the other hand it keeps a very public slander against Republicans in general on the network media; and on the other hand it keeps the possibility of derailing the nomination entirely.
If you think it unlikely, understand that several of the “Republican” members of that committee, which is divided 11 to 10, are rather left leaning Republicans relegated to what is usually a rather minor committee: https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1043615979748634630
Which takes us to the situation where as every Republican voter has come to expect, the Republican establishment may very well cave and throw a good man to the Democrat jackals to be devoured by obviously fraudulent accusations and a complicit media.
I could go into the lack of standards for the accusation, the abandonment of a thousand years of legal tradition, the complete misandry of the coverage, but we’ve all been over that. I just wanted to provide a little background for the stupidity we are all witnessing.
