WhatFinger


Their own foolish moves against Neil Gorsuch would make it impossible for them to stop a real conservative as his replacement.

Panicky liberals to Anthony Kennedy: Please stay!



This is the guy who voted to toss out ObamaCare in its entirety in 2012. He was one of the majority in Bush v. Gore. Then again, he was also the deciding vote in the case that shoved gay marriage down the throats of all 50 states and denied them the opportunity to legislate to the contrary. The left doesn't really love him, but in a given case he gives them a chance to prevail over the four Justices who usually follow the Constitution. Take Kennedy out of the picture and give President Trump the chance to replace him with a more reliable conservative like (we hope) Neil Gorsuch, and the left could be on the losing side of just about every case for a generation. And now that there are whispers about the nearly 81-year-old Kennedy retiring, the left is in full panic mode, and is begging him to stick it out:
Liberal activists are urging U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative with whom they often disagree, to put off any thought of retirement, fearing President Donald Trump would replace him with a jurist further to the right. The liberal Democrats' keep-Kennedy campaign, being pursued publicly and privately, reflects how powerless they have become against the Republican president when it comes to high court vacancies since the Senate in April reduced the vote tally needed to confirm a Supreme Court nomination to 51 from 60. It also shows how big the stakes are for both sides in any decision that Kennedy, who turns 81 in July, makes about his future on the court. If he were to retire, Trump would have a historic opportunity to recast the court in a more conservative posture, possibly for decades to come. Some former Kennedy clerks have said he is thinking about retirement. He has declined to comment on his plans, despite requests from many media outlets including Reuters.

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Right now, Kennedy "is the most important man in America. He is the vote that swings the court on the most important cases that reach it," said Elizabeth Wydra, president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, a left-leaning think tank.. . . Wydra and other liberals are lionizing Kennedy and his legacy in the media. Some are reaching out to former Kennedy clerks and others who know him, asking them to urge him not to retire, said Michele Jawando, a legal advocate at the Center for American Progress think tank in Washington.
That last paragraph is actually quite something. How can liberals lionize Kennedy in the media? They don't own the media. Unless, of course, they're so in league with the media that all they have to do is establish a narrative and they know full well the media will trumpet it all they want. Gosh. You don't think . . . Of course, the real reason for the left's panic is the outcome of its own miscalculation on the Gorsuch nomination.

A reliable conservative succeeding Kennedy absolutely would tip the balance

Never before has a minority party staged a partisan filibuster against a Supreme Court nominee who had majority support, particularly a well-qualified one like Gorsuch. Chuck Schumer's decision to do so was mainly in response to the demands of the deranged, Trump-hating left. They want Trump's agenda blocked, absolutely, no matter what it takes. And even if the effort is fruitless at best and self-defeating at worst, they don't care. So Schumer went ahead and announced a filibuster, knowing full well it would force the GOP's hand into eliminating the filibuster for Supreme Court confirmations. Now it's gone. The next time Trump gets a chance to nominate someone, the Democrats and their Senate minority will have lost their ace in the hole. Why? Because they gave it away in a quixotic attempt to stop a man they had no legitimate reason to oppose. Confirming Gorsuch didn't even tip the Court's ideological balance since he was replacing another strong conservative in Antonin Scalia. A reliable conservative succeeding Kennedy absolutely would tip the balance, at least a little, and Democrats now realize that if it comes to that they have no way to stop it. Should have thought of that before they pissed away their only weapon for no reason whatsoever apart from being pissed off.


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Dan Calabrese -- Bio and Archives

Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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