When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died from pancreatic cancer on Friday evening, Rosh Hashanah, President Donald J. Trump was holding a “Peaceful Protest” rally for his many thousands of supporters in Minnesota, suddenly a battleground state in light of the recent extensive rioting and lack of law and order there. Plus, early voting there has just begun.
Trump’s Democrat opponent, the pathetic, dawdling, and senile old fool, Joe Biden, was en route home from Minnesota, too, where he had flown in to hold a very rare campaign appearance and speech by teleprompter for several people, as he peeked out from behind his ghoulish black cloth protective mask that tightly covered his sallow face, revealing only his receding hairline and a vacant stare that occasionally broke out into a look of downright fright.
By the time Trump boarded Air Force One after his rally, the press widely reported rather remarkably that R.B.G. had made a recorded statement dictated to her granddaughter Clara Spera just prior to her last breath: “My most fervent wish is that I not be replaced until a new president is installed.”
It’s hard to say Spera is lying. R.B.G. may have recorded this statement, but it’s presumptuous, arrogant, and inconsistent with prior statements of the justice, which would be very much out of character, at least her public character. It’s a vainglorious appeal because the justice knew full well she would have no standing to complain and that U.S. law prescribes the procedure to appoint justices. It’s also a bit obtuse inasmuch as the plain meaning of the words, which she would most definitely be attuned to, suggests she not be replaced by Trump, even if he is reelected. A new president is potentially different from the next one. Yet, the statement was released, unfortunately making the dead and revered justice seem just as bitter, angry, and untethered to reality as the rest of ‘progressive’ anti-Trump America.
While the president was campaigning, other dignitaries were chattering about what should happen next. When Trump first heard the news after his event Friday night, he seemed truly surprised and saddened, but he was well-prepared, promptly lowering flags to half-staff and issuing a gracious statement, after having supplied a newly-updated list of potential nominees to the press earlier in the month. He vowed to get a name to the Senate promptly. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was quick to announce any nominee would be voted on by the Senate even though the election was less than two months away. Democrats were just as fast in expressing their outrage at that plan. By Saturday, they were protesting outside the Leader’s home, at least one being arrested in the process.
These people were enraged over McConnell’s perceived hypocrisy. When at the end of the Obama administration in 2016, conservative Justice Antonin Scalia (and interestingly, B.F.F. of R.B.G.) died in office, McConnell refused to consider the president’s well-qualified nominee, then-Chief Judge at the D.C. Circuit, Merrick Garland, because, it was claimed, the next president about to be elected, either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, should chose. It wasn’t a completely crazy argument, but it was without precedent. Yet now, the Democrats claim it is a precedent. McConnell’s explanation that in 2016, the White House and Senate majority were different parties but now in 2020 they were not, fell on deaf ears. And it really was a distinction without a difference, Nonetheless, he stuck to it.
Violence and rioting was threatened, especially on social media, if Trump dared to nominate anyone and the Senate voted on any nominee no matter how qualified they might be. One activist tweeted, “If they even TRY to replace RBG we burn the entire fucking thing down.” Another said, “Fucking A, Ed. If you can’t shut it down, burn it down.” And this: “Burn Congress down before letting Trump try to appoint anyone to SCOTUS.” These were typical, and so, too, were fires. Much of the West Coast was engulfed in uncontrollable smoke and flames from fires, visible from space, which arsonists had set.
And the mobs put their money where their big mouths were, too, using the dead justice to fundraise for ActBlue. It got worse in very short order. Politicians jumped into the fray. At Saturday night’s “Peaceful Protest” rally, Trump teased the humongous crowd in the swing state of North Carolina he would likely nominate a woman. “Fill that seat!” they cried out enthusiastically. Not to be outdone or out-‘woke,’ Biden refused to supply a list of possible nominees in a Biden administration, but he promised this nominee would be a black woman.
Hillary Clinton had to weigh in despite being irrelevant in any context beyond her overdue indictments, saying, “Democrats should use every tool at their disposal to prevent” McConnell from moving forward. Her sexual predator husband and former president, Bill, slammed McConnell for his “power play,” in a remarkable twist. Equally as unimportant and boisterous, former 2020 presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) screeched something about “Mitch McConnell and his henchmen…” when she was supposed to be paying tribute.
The worst, though, was Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) who fell back to her old stand-by for all things Trump: impeachment. She was literally prepared to try to impeach him again on no grounds to delay the vote. Threats by others like Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-CA) or Ed Markey (D-MA) to “abolish the filibuster” or “stack the court” if Trump moved forward weren’t exactly music to Republican ears, either. The Constitution, after all, does not mandate the number of justices on the Court, and Democrats would have every interest in diluting a conservative Trump Court. Retaliation was to be swift and sure.
The only people whose opinions really matter immediately are senators who will be called upon to vote a nominee up or down. With a very slim G.O.P. majority, McConnell could only afford to lose a maximum of three Republicans. Already, RINO Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) had spoken out about her refusing to vote until after the election. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) was also a ‘no’ vote. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) was probably more interested in getting even with Trump than with who was on the Court, so he was questionable, too. A vote could boil down to Vice President Mike Pence breaking a tie.
An interesting comment about voting on a replacement came from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), a 2016 presidential candidate against Trump, who opined that the importance in getting someone on the bench before years’ end was due to the potential legal issues arising from the election itself, where a 4-4 tie could conceivably cause a constitutional crisis. It was really the strongest argument that could be made for that result.
Important cases on Obamacare and the Mueller Report had been docketed one week after the election, next month, among others. They had already been delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Whether the confirmation could be consummated before the election, or at least before inauguration day isn’t clear. Whether a recess appointment could be made is an open question. All this even before the second woman ever appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court has been put in the ground!
sua sponte 