Trump SCOTUS "Kennedy Replacement" List Down To Two - Granite Grok

Trump SCOTUS “Kennedy Replacement” List Down To Two

Judges Barrett and Kavanaugh
And then there were two: Judges Barrett and Kavanaugh

We’ll know the next Supreme Court nominee’s name on Monday, but by all accounts, the choices are already down to two.

CBS News has learned that D.C. Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Chicago Circuit Court Judge Amy Coney Barrett are currently Mr. Trump’s leading contenders for the appointment to the nation’s highest court.

A brief tour of the interwebs suggests that Barrett is the odds-on favorite. She’s a solid originalist and textualist  (she clerked for Scalia), and thanks to two other points her confirmation hearing could be a Yuge win for Trump.

She’s a woman and a Catholic. WaPo c/o Legal Insurrection, explains.

Amy Coney Barrett is thought to be one of the leading contenders and is almost surely one of the two women Trump has now said is on his shortlist ahead of the announcement of the pick July 9. She’s the one female candidate who was on pretty much everybody’s shortlist, in fact.

And she checks a lot of boxes. Like his previous pick, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, she’s young (46), good on her feet, telegenic, unmistakably conservative and, with seven children, has the kind of family you want sitting behind you during tense confirmation hearings. Unlike Gorsuch, of course, she’s a woman — a fact that could help mitigate the onslaught of questions about whether she would help overturn Roe v. Wade. Barrett is also from Indiana, which could apply pressure on its vulnerable Democratic senator, Joe Donnelly, to vote for her.

As far as reinventing the court for decades to come, she’s everything Trump’s base could want. But she also gives something Trump something less tangible: The opportunity to stoke a culture war.

Senate Democrats will be tripping over themselves to appear like anti-religious bigots for their base. This will play well to Trump voters, Catholics, and Independents who have not yet realized the left doesn’t give a damn about women who don’t toe the far-left liberal line.

Another showcase of progressive arrogance that could rival the Democrat Socialists of America harassing people in public in the name of the #Resistance.

But what about the RINO’s?

I have to think Mr. Trump will be meeting with the Susan Collins faction of the small ‘r’epublican Senate before proposing a Catholic who practices her faith. While he doesn’t need her vote (Pence can break a 50-50 tie) going in he’d want a sense of who can be counted on to get this done.

We’ll know soon enough.

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