What’s striking about the recent announcement of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death is the relative calm in its wake. The news broke on Friday night, and Lefties threw the expected fit on social media, but the weekend passed without any more street violence than usual.
Perhaps all the false alarms pertaining to the status of RBG’s corpse these past few years desensitized the public to the real event. The initial shock soon gave way to rampant speculation about what happens next.
Moderates were quick to downplay the likelihood of Trump getting a third Justice confirmed by the end of his term, owing to Mitch McConnell’s refusal to hold hearings on Merrick Garland before the 2016 election. Those concerns were quickly dispelled, with McConnell declaring that the senate will vote on Trump’s nominee.
And if the vote were held today, a generic nominee would be confirmed.
To no one’s surprise, Leftists have responded with the customary threats of insurrection and mayhem.
Surprisingly, republicans have resisted this political extortion so far–probably because they know the Left will continue to riot in the streets and play dirty tricks in Washington no matter what happens.
Talk in Conservative circles has now turned to Trump’s choice of nominee. The establishment want him to appoint a woman. The Christian base despised by the establishment want somebody who’s tough on infanticide.
Highly respected pundits are warning the plebs not to get our hopes up on that count.
The, “Overturning Roe is unpopular, so we shouldn’t appoint a social conservative,” canard jibes with the GOPe’s thought process, so Trump’s advisors are probably plying him with that argument. Its absurdity doesn’t occur to them. They are backwards men from Bizarro World, where the only way to win is to lose.
It’s become SCOTUS’s sole legal function to impose unpopular edicts on the American people. The Left habitually rams their agenda through by judicial fiat precisely because they know Conservatives won’t do anything to stop it. They also embrace a fact of human nature that the Libertarian infection has erased from Conservatives’ minds. Laws do in fact dictate public morality.
Consider gay marriage. Within the lifetime of most people reading this, the idea of two men tying the knot went from a crass joke to a sacred institution you can get fired for disrespecting.
Note that the rise in popular support for gay marriage accelerated when democrats started legalizing it through the courts at the state level. Even republican support for butt nuptials surged after Obergfell.
SCOTUS justices serve for life and are practically impossible to remove. If republicans who claim to support pro-life constituents were serious about ending abortion, they’d appoint justices who could be counted on to overturn Roe, and that would be it.
Instead, they wring their hands over what their nominal enemies will think and try to meet people who want them dead halfway.
The truth is, you win by changing the law first, and public opinion will follow. The Left understands this fact. Republicans need to cast off their Libertarian accretions if they ever want to actually solve a problem.
Television played a big part in changing the normie attitude on homosexuality. Will & Grace and Ellen presenting the lifestyle as quirky and cute, then bombarding the populace with the actors at awards shows and the like added to it.
Thing is, the series had no longevity. They faded away almost as soon as they went off the air. Never let it be said that you can't use art as a bludgeon.
This is what happens when you control the arts.
It's both/and. Yes, politics is downstream from culture, but all the cultural capital in the world is worthless if you lack the political power to enforce it.
Government is the only institution where Conservatives wield any power. Not wielding it due to fear of being unpopular is suicide at this point.
Bingo. Politics and law are downstream of culture. Changing marriage laws in the 2000s were the result of decades of normalizing homosexuality in media and education. If they'd tried to change the laws before they moved the needle on culture, it would have been roundly rejected.
I've got to push back on that. Changing marriage laws was the result of the legal process. No amount of propaganda in and of itself can change a law.
The legal process was only viable because the majority of people supported the change in the law. You can *try* to change laws without aligning with the culture of the governed, but more often than not when you do that, you marginalize the validity of the rule of law.
This isn't really true, though. Remember prop 8?
Or Roe v Wade. Abortion was rightly seen as abominable before being enshrined in law. Overturning it seemed very doable for about 10 years, but constant hemming an hawing about SCOTUS brought zero change until our present situation, where political opposition to abortion seems novel next to the practice of convincing people to keep their children, which was the only viable option while boomercons refused to do anything except hamstring any efforts to move the needle.
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Whoops. Malchus, the historical record seems to disagree with you.
https://www.nytimes.com/1973/01/28/archives/gallup-poll-finds-public-divided-on-abortions-in-first-3-months.html
Although you're partially right, they did that one too early and the results for them have been terrible. Can you name a ruling that's done more to devalue the rule of law in the eyes of the people than Roe?
Kelo v New London is the only one I can think of that's undermined trust.
Wickard v Filburn probably undermined the rule of law more than Roe, but since nobody's heard of it outside lawyers and wonks, it hasn't swayed opinion much.
That NYT article reinforces my point. A minority of Americans supported Roe at the time. Now 70% support it.
The notion that laws passed without majority support are quickly overturned is ahistorical. Reagan said that government programs are the closest thing to immortal in this world.
A majority opposed to Obamacare helped elect Trump in 2016, yet neither the courts nor Congress could bestir themselves to repeal it.
And now REPUBLICANS, who correctly pointed out that a pre-existing condition legislation would kill insurance in 2010, are now assuring people they won't repeal said legislation.
Government programs' nigh-unkillability has little to do with popular support and much more to do with the horde of special interest that attach themselves like barnacles to any new initiative.
Abortion, butt sex, and forever wars are now multi-billion-dollar industries reliant on the government trough. Republicans have been powerless to stop any of them because whenever they try, the special interest groups circle the wagons.
SCOTUS, which consists of unelected, lifelong appointees, has the greatest resistance to lobbyists. Retaking the culture is the work of decades. The high court is within our grasp. Anyone who counsels against seizing it and wielding it now is a hopeless ideologue or a defeatist.
Pre-existing condition legislation only kills "insurance" (we'll ignore the issue of whether insurance is a financial product or a 'healthcare' product arguendo) if coverage isn't universally bought, because people just go without insurance until they need it. The problem along those lines with the ACA (there were many other problems, don't get me wrong) is they implemented the Swiss healthcare law without the penalties of the Swiss healthcare law for not buying your own insurance (namely, them buying a plan in your name anyway and charging you extra for the inconvenience).
You absolutely have to take the court while you can because without a doubt it is a massive seat of power. I don't think anybody with any sense would dispute that.
I also wouldn't say that laws passed without majority support are quickly overturned, but that laws passed without the consent of the governed undermine authority and weaken the rule of law.
You could, hypothetically, with a sufficiently conservative court, repeal Roe and homosexual marriage, but you'd have mass insurrection and the rule of law and the legitimacy of governmental authority would be likely irrepairably broken.
The rule of law is already a distant memory.
If it were only Democrat cities at risk of "mostly peaceful" protest, I think I would find the Reza the Cowardly Lion's terms acceptable. Trump does his job, the TDS crowd throws their regularly scheduled tantrum, a few more blue cities burn, and life continues as normal.
As awful as it would be for the Dems to bork (or kavanaugh) Amy Cone Barrett, I suspect watching a slanderous travesty like that might be very educational for moderates and might even red-pill a few of them. If as you suggest, she is too conservative to make Trump's short list, the upside is that she and her family will be spared the torment heaped on Kavanaugh and his, which I cannot really wish on anyone, least of all on a lady. They will malign whomever he picks.
To be honest, I never liked Barrett. Recent history shows that giving women leadership positions is a bad idea in general. Trump's vow to appoint a female judge shows he's bowing to his establishment advisors.
Playing the woman card won't avert a Kavanaugh style circus, just like playing the black card didn't spare Thomas.
Heck, let's say Trump goes with Lagoa for the woman/POC combo. The Dems will dug up some homosexual who clerked for her to accuse her of blasphemy.
The benefit to a woman is to see one of their own treated like garbage by the Democrats. Considering Trump has tweeted several times about how he's good for suburban women, it's probably explicitly part of his strategy.
Almost certainly. In 2016, Trump lost women as a whole and won white women by the skin of his teeth. This time he's in danger of losing white women. Nominating a female justice is politically expedient, but the fact that it's necessary highlights a major flaw in the current system.
"The Conservative Case for Giving the Democrats What They Want Now In Return for Promises They Will Inevitably Renege On Later."
-David French and Jonah Goldberg
This may as well be the actual title of the article.
Unfortunately true. I don't know about French, but Goldberg is too deep into the "Orange Man Bad and I'm above it all" to see the danger. He doesn't realize that the game has changed and the other side is playing for permanent power.