Jonathan V. Last, of the Weekly Standard, wonders why would anyone trust Donald Trump’s Supreme Court promises:
Pretty much the only reason conservatives have for supporting Donald Trump is the Supreme Court. “Think of SCOTUS!” is a superficially compelling argument. But only superficially.
For starters, conservatives have no reason–none–to believe that Trump would appoint a conservative justice. I point you here to Ramesh Ponnuru’s depressingly compelling assessment of Trump’s views of the high court:
Trump’s word is meaningless. He stiffs creditors and contractors. He lies about matters small and large: about having told Republicans to hold their convention in Ohio, about letters he supposedly received from the NFL and about having opposed the Iraq war from the start. Trump isn’t even trustworthy on his signature issue of immigration: He flip-flopped twice in one day during the campaign about whether high-skilled immigrants should be kept out as a threat to American jobs or welcomed as a boon to our economy.
Why would he keep his word on the courts? He doesn’t care about the Constitution or the proper role of judges. When he talks about the Constitution, it’s glibly and dismissively. When it’s suggested that the Constitution might pose an obstacle to his plans, he says it “doesn’t give us the right to commit suicide.” He knows almost nothing about the law: He can’t tell the difference between a judicial opinion and a bill.
The few times he has taken an interest in constitutional issues, he has been on the other side from most conservatives. He thinks the government should have broad power to take people’s property and give it to developers; they don’t. He has used courts as a weapon to silence critics, and thinks it should be easier to use them that way. Most conservatives find that record and that idea appalling. If President Trump asks his aides to find him a judge who agrees with him on these issues, they will start by scrapping his list.
The next part of “Remember the SCOTUS!” insists that Republican senators–the same group of sell-out, RINO elites that are always being blamed for Trump’s rise–will somehow discover the backbone to force Trump into picking a conservative. What in the history of Trump’s relationship with institutional Republicans might lead one to believe that they, the GOP, could bend Trump to their will? Search me.
Last week David Frum wondered if the dynamic might not run the other way, actually: “Isn’t it more likely that President Trump will choose his judicial nominees to spite Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell than to please them?”
After watching Trump attack Paul Ryan, Kelly Ayotte, and John McCain last week, the answer to this question has got to be–at least–maybe?
And here’s Ponnuru again, gaming out a much more plausible scenario for what Trump might do:
To get a conservative on the Supreme Court would require a President Trump to wage an ideological war with Senate Democrats, even though he says he would prefer to be a dealmaker, and even though that war would turn on issues for which he has never in his life shown the slightest concern. Instead of making good on his promise, he could cut a deal with the Democrats. His nominee could then win confirmation with the support of most Democrats, moderate Republicans, and some conservative Republicans who will want to be on the same side as Trump.
Read the whole thing.
BrianE
This really reads like an elaborate attempt to assuage your conscience for electing Hillary.
“But the biggest problem with the “Remember the SCOTUS!†argument is that it’s such a blanket theory that it’s ultimately useless. Should you vote for any candidate with an R next to his or her name, because SCOTUS?”
The next President is going to nominate two, possibly three supreme court justices.
And the left has made it crystal clear that the supreme court is just the legislature of final resort.
Fred
Whoever is running against Hillary Clinton gets my vote. She is the worst that politics has to offer. She is a career criminal, and should be behind bars until the flesh rots off her bones. She is a lying, conniving, hateful toxic stew barely resembling a human being.
She has a decades-long trail of blood on her hands extending from Arkansas, through Washington DC, all the way across the world. She is an unindicted felon many times over.
And, she’s incompetent, to boot! Other than conniving behind closed doors and hiding the truth, she’s failed at everything she’s ever done!
Why in God’s name would any sane person want such a power-mad hellion in the White House? WHY?
Whoever is running against Hillary Clinton gets my vote.
GoneWithTheWind
IMHO it is mathematically impossible for us to avoid a disastrous economic crash in the future. Obama and the FED has proven though that it is possible to delay and hide it. But everything they have done has only made the underlying problems worse. This situation cannot last the stock market will regress to the mean and below and the weight of all those taxes and regulations will strangle businesses at home and push more of them offshore. I believe it will crash regardless of who is elected. However the course we take to deal with it will be very different with Hillary than it would be with Trump. I believe that Hillary will follow the left wing mantra of more free stuff, more borrowing, more printing press money, higher taxes and micro-managing the economy. Trump would, I believe, do the opposite.
We need a better man than Trump. A statesman! A born leader! Someone who can see us through what will be a terrible crisis. But there is no one. The GOP offered us Jeb and Kasich. But they didn’t offer a “better man” than Trump just more of the same. Like it or not the choice is Trump or the crazy commie bitch.
TmjUtah
I’m not voting for anybody.
I’m voting against Mrs Clinton. And as a matter of fact, worrying about who a President Trump might appoint pales to insignificance when considering who Mrs Clinton will appoint.
Guaman
Y’all can focus on a specific, in this case the SCOTUS issue. Trump can suffer the ad hominem attacks meant to destroy a this particular (but not the only one) reason for voting FOR him.
Quite frankly, I trust him and truly believe he is interested in bettering the condition of our nation, including the freedoms.
This never Trump movement is absurd and in the end, despite the pundits and the media, I predict a landslide as America seems to have had enough pragmatic political BS.
ahem
Since when did Hillary Clinton become a a ‘moderate, hawkish Democrat’?
Since never.
Hillary is an unscrupulous Marxist and dedicated Alinskyite who wants to tax the middle class out of existence (i.e. finish the job Obama started); is in the pocket of our deadly enemy, the Saudis, the wellspring of 9/11, from whom she has accepted over $20 million in campaign funds; has employed as her right hand a woman whose parents are influential members of the Muslim Brotherhood; is promoting and enforcing 7th-century Shari’a law over the Constitution in the United States; devised and managed the disastrous foreign policy that abandoned all our former allies—Israel especially—and led to the consolidation of ISIS, the rise of the new Caliphate, and the genocide of hundreds of thousands of Christians in Syria and Iraq (She and Obama are up to their ears in blood); sold 20% of America’s strategic uranium ore to Russia and stashed millions of dollars from the sale into her personal slush fund (the Clinton Foundation); is bought and paid for by he big business and the banks; and supports ‘Globalization’, that is, the abandonment of America’s national borders, sovereignty and superior and enlightened body of Constitutional law to rule by the nameless, faceless, technocrats of totalitarian Globalism, who are appointed—not elected, not responsible to the average citizen.
Trump supports Israel and our hard-won, traditional alliances 100%; he is fighting against Globalist totalitarianism and for America’s safety, sovereignty, and ability to continue living under Constitutional law—you know, all those things the president is supposed to be sworn to uphold; he recognizes the Islamic Revival for the existential danger to western civilization that it is, and rejects it, and seeks to protect Americans from its medieval madness (stabbings, bombings, hostages, torture, murder of gays, pedophilia, FGM, stoning, limb-chopping) before it can take hold here; and he continues fighting the literal tsunami of lies about him and his positions propagated by an unhinged leftist media; and he continues to campaign despite his life being in grave danger from any number of vicious sources opposed to him–and opposed to our personal welfare.
Mark M.
Hillary will stack the court with young ultra left-wing justices who will turn this country into socialist France. The court will be 6 – 3 Liberal for the rest of our lives. Obama but in 2 young ultr0left women who will sit on the court for more than 30 years… much like Ruth Bader Ginsberg is doing. Once the court is stacked 6 – 3, the only way the country will move back to being more conservative is with a civil war.
Hrefn
It is incontestable that Hillary’s Supreme Court nominees would swing the court far to the left. Incontestable, unarguable, a certainty. Against this certainty, Mr. Last worries that Mr. Trump might not stick to his proffered list of potential nominees. In other words, Mr. Last is equivocating between an outcome certainly bad, and one which could go bad, but may be good.
I believe it is the responsibility of every citizen of our Constitutional Republic to vote for the candidate who suggests he will nominate justices who will judge according to Constitutional principles. Hillary is on record as saying the Second Amendment cases recently before the court, such as Heller, were wrongly decided. If her appointees dominate the court, we can wave goodbye to our Second Amendment rights. Surrendering our weapons from our cold, dead hands may become an administrative action plan rather than a rhetorical flourish.
As for the problem of eminent domain, Mr. Trump is legally correct. Kelo does permit government to seize your property for almost any reason. I do not believe that was the intent of the Founding Fathers, but it is decided law. I would like to see this rectified, as I suspect would Mr. Last. But only a lunatic would expect greatery respect for private property out of a Hillary-appointed court.
Heck, the government “eminent domains” a huge chunk of my paycheck every two weeks. Again, which of the two candidates is likely to increase confiscation of the fruits of my labor? Does anyone possessing a single functional neuron believe HRC is a better choice here?
This article is one of the stupidest opinion pieces I’ve ever read. Congratulations, Mr. Last. You’ve won the Stupolympics this year.
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