Elections have consequences: Republicans are right to fill the seat.
We are currently looking at one of the biggest political freakout’s of our lifetime. With the passing of Democrat hero Ruth Bader Ginsburg the Democrats face the upsetting prospect that President Trump and the Republicans will have the chance to install a supreme court justice. Normally, this would not be controversial because this is exactly what the constitution says is supposed to happen. But with it being an election year Democrats feel differently.
Checks and Balances
The argument is that in 2016 the Republican senate refused to nominate Merrick Garland to the supreme court as the republicans wanted to wait until after the election to make their decision. The problem is that Democrats fail to realize THAT WAS EXACTLY WHAT THE REPUBLICANS WERE ELECTED IN 2014 TO DO. Have we forgotten that we live in a government of checks and balances? In 2014 Republicans were worried about what Obama was going to do in his last 2 years in office and wanted to check his power. They were able to convince enough people to agree with them that they were able to get control of the senate and thus act as a check on the Presidents power. They exercised that power in blocking the Presidents nomination. This is a feature of the system, not a bug.
In 2018 the people again elected Republicans to the senate . If the American people wanted to stop Trump from replacing RBG they would have voted for senators more likely to block his ability to select justices. So the election of a Republican senate was a signal of the American peoples support for President Trumps power in selecting justices.
Do you see how 2016 and 2020 are totally different? You have a Republican President and a Republican senate. They won. They have the power to select the justices as per the constitution. They were elected for that reason and that does not go away just because its an election year. Are we expecting these representatives to just ignore the will of the people that elected them? It’s like being in the 4th quarter of a football game and when the 2 minute warning happens the other team demands the game stop. Thats not how this works and even Ginsburg agreed.
But he said…
I have no doubt that Republican politicians made some stupid arguments in 2016 about why they were not nominating Garland. They did not need to claim that we can’t nominate justices in election years. That’s silly. What they should have said is simply that they were elected to represent their constituents and their constituents want them to wait until the election was over and that they had every constitutional authority to execute the will of their constituents.
Also while people point out the hypocrisy of the Republicans they forget that in 2016 the Democrats were calling to elect a judge in an election year without delay. Are we really to assume that Democrats would not have nominated a justice if we currently had a Democrat president? Give me a break…
Chuck Schumer in 2016….
But what about norms and precedent?
Well sorry to break it to everyone but 29 times in our countries history a judicial seat opened up during an election year. Only 2 of those failed to be appointed when the President and the Senate shared the same party. So the norms and precedent are on the side of the Republicans.
What’s really going on here is that the Democrats can’t accept that they have lost elections. They now are threatening to create new states, end the filibuster, and pack the courts (things that essentially have never been done before) all while claiming to worry about norms and precedent. These are terrifying possibilities. What are red states going to do when Democrats begin packing the senate and courts? If you want to see how nations get torn apart, this is how you do it.
Has anyone considered the danger presented by not filling the seat. We are currently at perhaps the most tense political moment since the civil war and have a very close election coming up that could end up being decided by the supreme court. By having 8 justices we also run the risk of a tie vote in the court during a contested election which would only serve to create a constitutional crisis like we have never seen before.
The Democrats lost and now are threatening to burn down the entire system if they don’t get their way. You don’t negotiate with political terrorists and at the very least you don’t vote for them.
