Since Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death on Friday, the propriety of the Senate confirming a replacement justice before the 2020 election has dominated the news. Nearly every take that could be made has been, from both the left and the right.
It is hard to care about propriety, however, when two years ago Democrats served as accomplices to Christine Blasey Ford, who offered false testimony, under oath, to the U.S. Senate in an attempt to thwart the Supreme Court confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh. In the words of her whom they hoped would nominate the next several Supreme Court justices: “What difference at this point does it make?”
What difference does it make what Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell said in 2016 about voting on the nomination of President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland? What difference does it make that at the time the White House and Senate were controlled by different parties, and now they are not? What difference does it make that Sen. Chuck Schumer has threatened that, if Republicans confirm a justice then Democrats regain the Senate, Democrats will expand the size of the court and stack it with leftist justices?
What difference at this point do any of these lawful exercises of raw political power have on our constitutional republic? None.
The brute exercise of political power has consequences and counters, but Democrats’ decision in 2018 to collude instead with the criminally minded—and the media’s willingness to play along—has rendered the discussion of today’s political power plays meaningless.
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