After the news of Ginsburg’s death broke on Friday evening, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer did not hesitate in tweeting that “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.” Soon thereafter he tweeted a message of mourning for the late justice. The fact that Senator Schumer jumped onto Twitter to tweet a political message prior to one of condolences should have been a red flag for anyone paying attention. His timely tweets spoke volumes about the left’s intentions, and we knew right off the bat what this was going to be about to them.
Yes, Schumer seemingly may have led the pack on Twitter in terms of giving away the left’s political motives, but the rest of the Democrats were right behind him to decry the probable intentions of Republicans to fill the seat prior to the 2020 election in just over 40 days from now. Boy were they right. Nearly an hour after Chuck Schumer’s tweets, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell released a statement, sharing it on Twitter as well, praising Justice Ginsburg while also stating that “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”
Despite Democrats’ yelling and screaming Friday night over the Republicans’ apparent “foul” in wanting to confirm a Trump appointee in an election year, let’s take a look at their own faults and hypocrisy.
For starters, Democrats brought this uncomfortable position upon themselves. Back in 2013, when Democrats still held the majority in the Senate, then-president Barack Obama, could have asked the approximately 80-year-old Justice Ginsburg to retire. He didn’t. Democrats were so sure they were going to retain the Senate going into 2014 as well as capture the White House in 2016 that they overlooked the need to replace an aging liberal Supreme Court Justice.
Fast-forward to 2016 – Republicans take control of the Senate and Donald J. Trump is elected to be the 45th president of the United States of America. Nowhere in the left’s wildest dreams did they see this coming. With the death of conservative SCOTUS Justice Antonin Scalia earlier that year, and now in the middle of an election year, President Barack Obama tried pushing leftist DC Circuit Judge Merrick Garland through Senate confirmation, only to be shut down by Mitch McConnell and the Republican majority.
Let’s get something straight while we’re at it. There is nothing wrong with Obama’s attempt to get a SCOTUS nominee confirmed in an election year. There is nothing wrong with the Republican Senate majority rejecting his nomination in an election year. There is nothing wrong with then-Vice President Joe Biden demanding Senate Republicans to review Garland’s nomination, writing "I know there is an argument that no nominee should be voted on in the last year of a presidency. But there is nothing in the Constitution, or our history, to support this view," and he was absolutely correct.
Unfortunately, there’s everything wrong with it when Republicans are in the rightful position to nominate a justice in an election year. Is it not enough that the nation gave Republicans control of the Senate in 2014, allowed them to retain it in 2016, and expanded it in 2018? To Senator Schumer and the rest of the Democrats who think that a SCOTUS pick should be left up to the American public to decide this November: America HAS spoken for the past 6 years and continues to do so. The American people wouldn’t have allowed Republicans to expand their control of the Senate with Trump in the White House knowing that some Justices are getting up there in age if they didn’t want change in the Court. Don’t forget, Trump has appointed a record number of federal judges to benches throughout the nation. If the people didn’t want this, they wouldn’t have let it happen.
Democrats make it sound as if this is the first time in American history that a Supreme Court Justice will be nominated by the president in an election year. For those who don’t do their research and rely solely on social media and leftist news outlets for their information, it sounds like the first time – (whisper) it’s actually the 29th time.
29 TIMES, PEOPLE!
There have been 19 times in American history where a SCOTUS justice was nominated by a president and reviewed by a Senate with a majority of the same party. Of those 19 times, 17 times those justices were confirmed.
On the contrary, there have been 10 times in American history where a SCOTUS justice was nominated by a president and reviewed by a Senate with a majority of the opposing party. Of those 10 times, only 2 justices were confirmed.
So what’s all the hoopla over Mitch McConnell saying in 2016 that Scalia’s vacancy should be filled by the American voice after the 2016 election? Well, for starters, everyone on the left, and even some Republicans, thought Hillary was going to win the election anyways and that Democrats would regain the Senate. Most people also thought that Hillary would nominate someone further left than Garland if the vote failed. Anyways, Obama still nominated Garland, despite McConnell’s plea.
This situation sounds eerily familiar to what Senator Schumer and other Democrats are saying today, right? So why would we respect their wishes now and hold up a nomination if they didn’t respect ours then?
We can agree that there are two rules set forth in the Constitution relative to nominating a SCOTUS candidate:
- A president, for as long as they are president, has the power to nominate a person to fill a Supreme Court vacancy.
- A presidential nominee can fill a vacant Supreme Court seat only with the advice and consent of the Senate.
Even Barack Obama came along after Ginsburg’s death to say that we should wait until after the election to fill her vacancy. His justification? Honoring Justice Ginsburg’s apparent wish as told by her granddaughter days before her death that her “most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.” Sadly, I can’t insert a sic erat scriptum next to “installed” since a president is actually elected, but that’s beside the point. Bottom line, the hypocrisy on the left runs rampant.
To add to it, the Democrats, since Trump came down the escalator at Trump Tower prior to the 2016 election to announce his candidacy, haven’t played by the rules. We’ve seen their lies and garbage in the Russian hoax across all ranks throughout the Obama administration and all parts of the government to unjustly impeach a duly elected president. In the days and weeks to come, I’m sure the Durham report will further expose their deceit to the American people, but that’s for another time. We’ve also seen the dirty games they play when it came time to nominate Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Dragging the Justice’s legacy and name through dirt in the name of politics proved that the left could go low, but not low enough.
A majority of Americans are not stupid like the left thinks. We’re aware of their shams and their attempts to move further and further left. Aside from a desire to grant what they believe are left-leaning Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia statehood, make no mistake, the left’s hope this year is to increase the amount of justices on the SCOTUS bench and pack the Court – similar to what FDR attempted through his far-left New Deal. That attempt was shot down, but it’s scary that it was even on the table. Well, it’s back and this time the left is not afraid to parade it.
This past Sunday in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said that Democrats would “use every arrow in our quiver” to block Trump’s SCOTUS nominee. We know what that means. More dirty tricks including packing the Court – something these Democrats have wanted to do for some time now to solidify their far-left ideologies into law for generations to come. If Democrats really wanted to respect the late Justice’s wishes then maybe they should look to Ginsburg’s distaste for FDR’s attempt to pack the Court under his New Deal and her admiration for the Court’s current number of nine justices.
Also, why should we take the left’s calls to wait until after the election seriously if Biden still hasn’t produced his list of Supreme Court nominees? Trump had absolutely no problem producing his list of conservative nominees prior to the 2016 election and again this year. Biden and the Democrats? Still nothing and no plans to do so anytime soon. What are they hiding?
This whole charade and elaborate show the Democrats are putting on is nothing but a political stunt. They know that a conservative pick to fill Ginsburg’s seat is a pick to solidify conservatism and our Constitution for years, and possibly decades to come. The left is done with the Constitution and they’ve been done with it for a very long time. They know the vast majority of Americans are fed up with their garbage but will do anything to skirt the will of the people for their own political (and personal) gains.
Take a seat, socialists, our Republic is not done.
(Repost from Patriot America)
About the author: Rich is financial analyst in NYC by day and conservative blogger by night. Author of the recently released conservative/Christian faith-based book "Is God A Republican?" on Amazon, he also runs his own website and social media accounts as Patriot America to spread the values of conservatism as envisioned by our Founding Fathers and outlined in our Constitution.