One of the arguments Republicans have long used in urging people to vote for conservative presidents is that if the Democrats had their way they would pack the Supreme court with liberal judges, like they presumably have the lower federal courts. This was one of the reasons Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 as there was an open seat on the bench with Antonin Scalia's death earlier that year. For the first time in a very long time, the Democrats had a chance to regain the majority of seats on the bench, but the Republicans had won the mid-term elections and controlled the Senate. Mitch McConnell refused to approve Obama's nominee Merrick Garland, citing the so-called "Biden rule" that a president shouldn't nominate a Supreme Court justice in the last year of his term. It was crucial the Republicans won the 2016 presidential election as it is doubtful Mitch could have used this "rule" to stall a judicial appointment for another four years.
Trump lost the popular vote by 3 million but it didn't matter as he won just enough states to put him over the top where it counted - the electoral college - an anachronism left over from the antebellum days. This allowed Mitch to push through not one but three Supreme Court justices during Trump's single term thereby establishing a supermajority in the Supreme Court. He blithely ignored the "Biden rule" when it came to replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the last two months of Trump's term. Mitch pushed through the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett in record time.
Of course, one can argue that Ginsburg should have stepped down when there was still the opportunity for a Democratic president and senate to replace her, but she chose not to despite being treated for early-stage pancreatic cancer in 2009. She got a few gentle nudges to retire but she had fully recovered from the treatment and was enjoying a great deal of celebrity as the Notorious RBG. We were even treated to her exercise regiment and how she was close friends with Scalia, even going to the opera together after her husband passed away in 2010. It made for a swell story but the Supreme Court is the highest court in the land and you want to make sure it stays in prudent minds, not ones driven by ideological agendas, as we have seen in Justices Thomas and Alito.
It looked like Ginsburg would survive Trump but then just like Scalia she died unexpectedly and Mitch seized his opportunity like the buzzard that he is. Donald gleefully got the opportunity to appoint his third Supreme Court justice, not that he had anything to do with the selection. The arch-conservative Federalist Society had already screened the potential nominees and gave him Amy Coney Barrett, a virtual nobody but one that would stick to the conservative agenda like her immediate predecessors Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. Most importantly, she was only 48 so she could well be sitting on the bench for 30 more years.
With a supermajority the Republicans could now be assured that Chief Justice Roberts wouldn't muck up their plans to overturn all the "liberal" legislation and decisions that were made over the last 50 years. Ironically, Republicans had controlled the bench since the early 1970s, so it is not like any of these decisions were the product of overreaching liberals. It's just that Republicans were far more moderate in their views than they are today. They understood the meaning of the civil liberties enshrined in the Constitution. They weren't theocrats.
Somewhere along the line this sense of moderate jurisprudence was lost. Most likely with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. He ushered in new age of evangelism by embracing Jerry Falwell's "Moral Majority," even if he wasn't much of a religious man himself. The Republicans realized that the only way they could win a national election was by tipping the deeply religious Southern conservatives in their favor - a demographic group that had traditionally voted Democratic, but had started drifting toward Republican candidates since the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
These "Dixiecrats" completely tilted toward conservative Republican candidates with the infamous Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 that legalized abortion. A 7-2 decision reached by 6 Republican-appointed justices and only 3 Democratic-appointed judges. Of course, Republicans didn't expect all but one of their hand-picked justices to vote in the majority on the decision. Justice Blackmun, who had recently been appointed by Richard Nixon, wrote the majority opinion. William Rehnquist, a Nixon appointment, was joined by Byron White, who had been appointed by Kennedy, in dissent. So, it wasn't liberal judges they should have been worried about but rather their own moderate judges.
Nevertheless, they promoted this idea that Democrats were to blame for Roe v. Wade. In their addled minds, it had been the Women's Liberation Movement that spawned this ill-conceived decision and they were determined to rub out this movement any way they could so that no more harm could be brought to innocent fetuses.
Ultimately, these radical Republicans prevailed as they were able to block the ratification of the Equal Rights amendment. Just the same, equal opportunity legislation was passed and the so-called liberal Supreme Court upheld this legislation despite all the hue and cry from religious conservatives who felt a woman's place was in the kitchen.
It has taken 50 long years to finally put a court in place that will side with their petty grievances like being forced to sell wedding invitations to gay couples, even if the gay couple in question is most likely fictitious. We now have a court that is entirely driven by conservative ideology and Republicans are gloating that they will be able to overturn the last half-century of liberal-minded decisions that stripped them of their religious freedom.
In the last three years they have done a pretty good job of it by gutting the voting rights act, overturning Roe v. Wade, dismantling affirmative action, and establishing corporate personhood, thanks to Justice Clarence Thomas' unique interpretation of the 14th amendment. Give them another three years and they will pretty much turn the country back to 1963, and we will be forced to go through the same painful process of establishing equal rights all over again. Instead of the misused Uncle Tom epithet it would be more fair to use Uncle Clarence, as he seems to be the one in control of this anachronistic court, not Chief Justice Roberts.
One of the things Democrats haven't figured out is the old rebel saying, "Forget, Hell!" It was quite popular on mugs, cigarette lighters and automobile plates back in the 70s and is still true today. Dixiecrats and their Northern collaborators never let go of their anachronistic views and so you constantly have to fight for your individual rights, never thinking for one moment that Roe v. Wade or any other decision reached by the Supreme Court is the "law of the land." It can be overturned. Now that it has happened, maybe Democrats will be more aggressive in their campaigning as Republicans have been for the last 50 years. We can no longer take anything for granted, especially with this Supreme Court.
The problem is that the justices outlive the presidents who appointed them. This is why it is imperative to have term limits. We shouldn't have to live with the consequences of Clarence Thomas being affirmed by the Senate 30 years later, especially after it has been learned that he has been taking expensive gifts from wealthy conservative backers for decades and that his wife was actively involved in the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
One hopes that the recent decisions to roll back affirmative action, crush President Biden's student loan forgiveness program and allow persons the "religious right" to serve whomever they want in public will mobilize younger generations once again in the 2024 elections. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan aren't getting any younger and no doubt the buzzards will be hovering over their heads if the Republicans are able to get their presidential nominee in the White House. They already have their beady little eyes set on replacing 69-year-old Sotomayor, giving them an insurmountable 7-2 supermajority. At that point they might as well call it the Supreme Council like they have in Iran.
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