Law of Unintended Consequence is how the Democrats did it – starting with the passage of Obamacare when they owned the Presidency, the House, and the Senate by majority proof margins. The TEA Party movement flashed into being and the pushback on the Right hasn’t stopped. With the recent capturing of all three by Republicans because of the Democrat overreach during the Obama years, we got one of its goals:
Saturday’s confirmation marks more than the dramatic conclusion to a political battle that has waged for more than three months, and instead could mark an inflection point in a philosophical war that has raged for decades. The Supreme Court has not had a conservative majority since 1934, when the New Deal took hold and the Court moved to the left, giving the federal government vast new powers over economic issues. The Court massive broadened federal powers over commerce, taxing, and federal spending.
The New Deal did turn from being a court into being a supra-legislative body and the New Deal also started the process of turning the lower part of the Judiciary to the Left as well. it also served as a bulwark for Democrats that when they lost those New Deal majorities, they could always depend on the courts to uphold its agenda (re: the decisions against Trump shutting down immigration from suspect countries). Now that is at risk:
A conservative majority on the Court has been considered within striking distance since 1993, when two moderate justices were the swing votes on almost every issue that divided along philosophical lines. In 2006, conservative Justice Samuel Alito replaced one of those moderates, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Since then, the Supreme Court has long been divided with four conservative justices to one degree or another, and four liberal justices on the other. The crucial fifth vote was the sole remaining moderate, Justice Anthony Kennedy.
When Kennedy announced on June 27 that he would retire during the summer, both political parties – and especially their respective bases – leapt into action with the most expensive, most brutal Supreme Court confirmation in American history. Both sides understood that issues of overwhelming importance both to conservatives and to liberals could be at stake.
Regardless of all that, at age 53 Justice Kavanaugh now takes his seat as the newest associate justice on the Supreme Court, and is expected to serve for decades. Major cases already pending before the Court could reveal very quickly whether he is what conservatives have been waiting for these many years.
This is the pushback which the Democrats wrought – finally Conservatives replacing the Left leaning Justices. For those on the Left wailing about it, remember that it was you, during the New Deal years, who politicized it for the “modern” era., We watched, sometimes in horror at what was being dredged up and plucked from thin air, the alledged wrongs against Kavanaugh to keep that Power to yourselves.
The strange thing that no one should forget is that the Republican tide was on its way out – the Dems were unabashedly all over the “Blue Wave” that was building. A wipe out, a tsunami – a certain retaking of the US House and a fevered pitch about retaking the Senate. You could just about see the drooling from their lips smacking as they mouthed “my preccioussss” Power returning.
And then they have done what King Canute was never able to pull off – they reversed their own (political tide). Those awful smear tactics used during this latest SCOTUS confirmation hearing didn’t just abetted the reversed the political tide – it caused it (along with promises of investigating almost everything under the sun and every other thing, including raising taxes) that the Collectivists have promised to do to the rest of us. How’d they do it?
While the Dems railed about their victimology, the Right are now rightly worried about the men in their lives becoming victims as well – by the Left attacking them like they attacked Kavanaugh. But I digress.
A Conservative bench? Yes? No? Will Kavanaugh turn out to be a Scalia / Thomas or a Souter / Kennedy?
Only time will tell but while the Left will be watching for any chance to wail about losing their supra-legislature, Conservatives will be watch not for liberal judicial activism but to see how well a newly formed originalist Court will hew to the actual words and meanings of the Constitution. Not deciding based on their own political prejudices but what the rest of us can see are the plain words of the Constitution applied to the cases coming before the Court. Not that some group was wronged, not that the Court should “protect” one group over another.
Simply, are they putting on the blinder that Lady Justice wears that says “it doesn’t matter who you are, only the Law matters”. And that if a Law clearly violates the Constitution, it is thrown out. That’s all that Conservatives have been waiting for – simple parsing of the “as written” instead of the decades of “penumbras and emanations” wafting from Liberal Justices pronouncements.
As it was written, so should it be.
(H/T: Big Government)