Justice Antonin Scalia died six weeks ago, almost exactly 11 months before a new president will be inaugurated in 2017. What since then? 1) Senate Republicans met and signed a paper that they would not put up for vote any person Pres. Obama put forth to replace Justice Scalia. 2) Conservative Justice Alito said the court "would manage" without a ninth justice. 3) Democratic voters have leaned toward the more centrist president candidate, although they have their far-left kicked into a pretty high gear. 4) Republican voters have leaned--strongly--away from the centrist candidates, with Marco Rubio dropping out after he couldn't beat Donald Trump in his home state of Florida. 5) Obama nominated Merrick Garland (another white male--we'll do a post later on how this is the court of the white males, for the white males, by the white males--note I'm a white male), called a consensus builder, previous supporter of Democratic candidates, and centrist. 6) Trump has gone on winning primaries and people like Lindsey Graham, a thoughtful Republican, have voiced concern that not only does he have almost no chance of winning in November, but that he is likely to push a bunch of senate races into the democratic column. 7) Apparently worried about the same thing, Senator Hill, R-Ill, yesterday became the first Repub senator to say he will talk to Garland. 8) Trump in Arizona came closer than ever to winning half of the primary votes, with 49%. 9) CNN did a poll saying that 64% of those polled thought there should be hearings on Garland by the Senate. 10) Ted Cruz has come on stronger against Trump, and centrist John Kasich won his home state of Ohio, but Kasich seems to have no practical chance of being nominated. After all, he's actually been caught negotiating with Democrats in the past.
Ted Cruz, in a showdown over raising the deficit a couple of years ago, proved he was willing to ruin the full faith and credit of the US government before he would negotiate with anybody. Had he got his way, the feds would have been unable to pay their bills, then some banks would have failed, then . . . . Ask the citizens of Puerto Rico and Argentina if having your gov say it ain't gonna pay is a way to have fun. They've had that experience in recent years, and Greece is teetering on the brink of it. What is it in Greece? 30% unemployment, with 1/3 of people working for government? I guess the Great Recession wasn't great enough for Mr. Cruz. He hoped to bring wicked modern US society all the way to its knees. Then maybe it would get back to God. Had he succeeded in that, the insolvent government certainly wouldn't have been as able to fight terrorists.
Back to the Scalia effect: To me, when the Justice died, the odds that Trump and Clinton would be nominated and Clinton would win looked like 50-50. Now our odds of having the first female president in history seem closer to 2-to-1. Surprises are inevitable, and there could be an upset either in primaries or in the general election. That leaves us with questions:
First, is the Republican Party as we have known it since, say, Herbert Hoover in the act of disintegrating, or is it just in the much smaller act of handing the Dems a presidential election?
Second, who might a President H Clinton nominate? Not someone as centrist conservative as Merrick Garland?
Third, is it time for all those libs to be quietly grateful that the Repub Senate is playing into their hands? Will it end up with Ms. Clinton nominating an genuine liberal who also isn't another white male?
Fourth, will Mr. McConnell try to keep her from putting anybody on the High Court for four years?
Will Mr. Trump go on making up his mind on the spot about questions like, "So do you think women who have abortions should be fined or go to jail?" To be fair, I had never thought about that myself, even though I was already 23 years old before abortion stopped being a crime. In the 43 years since, I had never imagined that anyone would suggest aborting women might be treated like criminals again. Yet as this blog has pointed out, it took a Supreme Court decision about 1967 (Griswold v. Connecticut) to decriminalize Giving Birth Control Advice, for heaven's sake! Somehow giving birth control advice doesn't seem quite as nefarious as giving certain other kinds of advice, like how to overthrow the gov or kill the pres or blow up the skyscrapers or the Pentagon. Hadn't Connecticut heard the saying, "Free advice is worth every penny you pay for it?"
Stay tuned for the next twists and turns of our national drama. Unless I get a job and this blog goes silent again. How could any of us live without these lines?
No comments:
Post a Comment